Why a start-here at all
There is a tension on this page and it is better named than hidden. Cosmic Connections argues that this project runs on links rather than folders, that its categories are outputs rather than inputs, and that nothing here arrived in a straight line. A section called Start Here is the most folder-shaped thing on the site.
It stays because the alternative is worse. A reader arriving cold at a wall of thirty-six zines and eleven field guides is not being respected by the absence of a door; they are being asked to do the curation themselves, which is work we are better placed to do once than they are to redo every time. The fix is not to remove the door. It is to be honest that it is a door and not a queue.
So: nothing below is a prerequisite for anything else. Every piece on this site is built to stand alone, because that is what a person reading in a hard week can actually use. If a shark catalogue is what you can hold today, start there and let this page wait.
Four doors, and who each is for
- You want to know what this is. What Star Stuff Is — the shortest honest version, in a few minutes.
- You want the argument the whole site is named after. Love You Down To Your Star Stuff — one settled fact about where your atoms came from, followed until it says something about belonging.
- You want to know how it is made. Cosmic Connections — the method, and the two lineages behind the phrase.
- You want to write something of your own. We Are All Star Stuff — the open call. This is the door that goes outward.
Two of the four sit outside the reading chain on purpose. About and Cosmic Connections are reference pages rather than artifacts — you consult them, you don't read them in sequence — so the prev/next chain skips them and they are reached from the nav and from here. The other two are in the chain, which starts on this page and runs seventy pages to Shorthand Evolution.