Jiyu: Days into Seasons

Jiyu is a small daily ritual: feed today with a few photographs of whatever is near you, and Jiyu draws out their colours and lays them down as the day. Once a day, a few photographs of whatever is near: the tree at the corner, the cup on the desk, the sky on the way home. Jiyu draws two colours out of each one and lays them on today's paper. Four panes, and the day has a mark. Nothing to frame, nothing to choose between. If the light is right, the photograph is right. WHAT IT IS A minute a day, kept by the sun. Not an album, not a journal, not a feed. Nothing is scored, no streak is counted, and it never asks where you have been. It does one thing: it takes the light that was near you today and sets it down as a few colours. LOOK BACK Each evening the day plays itself back: every photograph you kept, one at a time, in the colours it gave, and then the day's sheet. Send it as a card, or keep it as a short film. THE ALMANAC Enough marks, and the month stops being dates. It starts being weather you lived through, laid out by the twenty-four solar terms. KEPT BY THE SUN Jiyu keeps time by the solar terms, and it solves for them rather than looking them up. 白露 is not the seventh of September; it is the moment the sun reaches 165°. Each term has its own page: the length of its days, the light it leaves you, and the classical line that names it. YOUR PHOTOGRAPHS STAY YOURS No account, no cloud, nobody looking. Photographs stay on your phone, and Jiyu keeps only the colours it drew from them. Place is never noted more finely than a neighbourhood. ONE PURCHASE, FOR LIFE Jiyu is free. Today, and every day within the current solar term and the one before it, is always open. Jiyu Almanac is one optional purchase, bought once and yours for life, with no subscription: it opens the earlier days for viewing in Jiyu. Your days stay saved on your phone whether you buy or not.