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Table of Contents:
Part I: Air
Part II: Water
Part III: Fire
Part IV: Earth
Part I: Air
And when I was born, I drew in the common air, and fell upon the earth, which is of like nature, and the first voice which I uttered was crying, as all others do.
-Wisdom of Solomon, 7:3
“Did you guys hear about the astronauts who are stuck in space?” Tyler Thrasher asks, his deep voice echoing through Materia, his Tulsa shop, filled with crystallized insects and glow-in-the-dark flowers. “They got hit with debris, and now they’re stuck in space.”
The shop is just over a week open, and Thrasher—tall and broad at 32, his pink-dyed curls bouncing, big smile—has the energy of a new parent, fussing over this rack of cicadas, that presentation of roses. I catch him in the afternoon, on a warm, sunny day in early November, when the shop is, miraculously, empty except for a few employees. It’s a far cry from the store’s opening day, when around a thousand people wound their way around Admiral Boulevard to get inside. It’s abnormally quiet. It feels right that Thrasher immediately starts talking about space rocks, as he’s probably one of the most famous people in rocks right now.