madainn cheòthar

Parslay, sage, rosemary and thyme

[madainncheothar]

EXILE

Right now I'm in exile. There's a very long way separating me from my friends and the road seems hard and treacherous. In short, I'm not sure I want to make the journey at all. I would rather stay here and accept my fate. I would rather the comfort of a bed made of sand and rocks than the scorching sun and a promise that seems unsure. My friends are not even waiting for me. They don't know I exist.

I'm about to make this decision, but there's still a "but" in my head. It's always there. It's calling me a coward and a traitor. I ignore it as I always do. Yet now my decision to give up seems further away and I have to begin the debate in my head all over again. And again...and again...and again. That "but" never leaves me alone. It provides me no lasting comfort. It doesn't take me any closer to my friends but refuses to let me take one more step away from them. I don't know what to do with it. All I know is that I want my friends. That feeling swallows me whole. I stand still until it releases me back to the desert, let free from the beast's stomach that is this paralysing feeling.

My friends don't know I exist. I'm the one who has to go to them. Still, I wait that perhaps they will come to find me instead. They don't. I have to accept the fact that I have to cross the desert in order to find them. What would happen if I took a single step towards their direction? Surely, a single step mustn't be that bad. If only my foot would move. I urge it to move forward. Days pass, then weeks, until I realise it's already been years that I've been standing here. At this point, standing still, taking a step back or forward seem all equally difficult. The most rewarding of all, though, is the one leading to my friends.

Let me tell you about them and the loneliness that consumes me without them. They smile and cry like we all do, only that their smiles are brighter and their tears sweet. Their voices never shriek and their eyes are too benign to lay on me yet. Without their strength, I don't feel like I can make it through the desert. Yet they're nowhere to be found in this abandoned place. There's still that decision to be made...

My knees give in and I kneel. I touch the sand with my hands and feel that, though it's not welcoming, it's not appalling either. Is the thought of my friends enough to satisfy me? So much so that I would give up sitting under the trees with them? The beautiful trees that embrace you with their shade and breeze. A single step is better than none. So move that foot. That foot MUST now move forward. And to my surprise...it does.

[now-for-wrath-now-for-ruin]

"Éowyn, Éowyn, White Lady of Rohan, in this hour I do not believe that any darkness will endure!"

Available on print

[madainncheothar]

I just deleted all the poems I had written on my notes app by mistake. Twenty-three pages of poems gone.

Send help.

I was having a very difficult week but this was so unexpectedly bad that I'm actually laughing.

At least now I have the motivation to try and find every single piece that I've written on my notes and saved somewhere else.

I guess now I will finally learn to take the things I write more seriously and not treat everything that I create as insignificant.

[madainncheothar]

Can someone recommend me good biographies of Louis XVI and Robespierre or generally good historical books about the French Revolution?

(P.S. I will probably delete this post after a while)

[madainncheothar]

There is an endless feeling of longing when I think of "The Red Sleeve".

I realise it's been 4 YEARS since I finished this k-drama and for some reason I almost feel as strongly as I did when I watched it while it was airing. And that's why it's my favorite k-drama. The feelings of helplessness, endless love and yearning...The most perfect look in Yi San's eyes and the way he would speak with a soft voice, or he would use a domineering and suprising tone fit for a king, but unfit for a lover... When I listen to the OST, it feels like someone might rip my heart from my chest and only someone who persists with unwavering love and loyalty may bring it back to its place.

Even though there were definately some plot holes or things that didn't necessarily make a lot of sense in the script, there are so many dialogues engraved in my memory, so many stolen looks, so many teary eyes that move my heart in a way only a historical melodrama ever could, and in this case, in a way only "The Red Sleeve" has done.

I've said a lot of things but also a whole lot of nothing, because my feelings for this story are much deeper to be able to express in a single post. But if I listen to "San, eternity" one more time, I might write 10 more posts for the sake of it.

[the-mysterious-stranger]

silmarillion fandom be like “___ my beloved I love them so much” and it’s a character jrr tolkien mentioned once in a footnote

[kokodrawings]

Jiraiya: "He's gonna be great, you'll see"

[madainncheothar]

Pov: reading John Keats poems as a non-native English speaker

[birdytaste]

A piece of comic for Alexander Hamilton.

I have always wondered what he might have thought in his final moments. From the moment Burr issued the challenge to the duel itself, more than a month had passed. It is difficult to call it a purely impulsive act. He must have given the final decision careful thought and deliberate judgment.

But in the last ten seconds, with death closing in, did he truly still have the strength to think of any of it?

I imagined many things he might have thought of. I drew them all. And yet, when I finished, I began to feel that perhaps, in those ten seconds, he thought of nothing but the sun was too bright.

Anyway, wish you guys enjoy it :)

[madainncheothar]

That's poetry.

[bethanydelleman]

Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.

From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough

(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)

[janeeyreofmanderley]

oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.

in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:

The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.

[obi-troll-kenobi]

I raise you:

First Lesson by Akseli Gallen-Kallela (1865 - 1931)

Un Coup De Main (The Helping Hand) by Émile Renouf (1845 – 1894)

Italian Winegrower And His Daughter by Francesco Baratta (1590-1666)

[apoemaday]

Sonnet 116

by William Shakespeare

Let me not to the marriage of true minds Admit impediments; love is not love Which alters when it alteration finds, Or bends with the remover to remove: O, no, it is an ever-fixèd mark, That looks on tempests and is never shaken; It is the star to every wand'ring bark, Whose worth’s unknown, although his heighth be taken. Love’s not Time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks Within his bending sickle’s compass come; Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, But bears it out even to the edge of doom. If this be error and upon me proved, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

[tyger-land]

𝗝𝗼𝗵𝗻 𝗠𝗶𝗹𝗹𝗲𝗿 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘖𝘢𝘬 𝘛𝘳𝘦𝘦. Illustration from the 1776 edition of John Evelyn's sɪʟᴠᴀ, ᴏʀ ᴀ ᴅɪsᴄᴏᴜʀsᴇ ᴏғ ғᴏʀᴇsᴛ-ᴛʀᴇᴇs.

[madainncheothar]

Published author/historian or random tumblr account with an extreme hyperfixation on Alexander Hamilton? We shall never know...

[sad--beep]

[currentlycryingaboutlancelot]

unironically though humans have such an insane capacity for memory especially when words are put to rhythms or melodies and it kind of makes me so sad that there is now very little value placed on the memorization of poetry as both education but also just as beautiful human art. go memorize a poem right now it’s quick easy and free

[madainncheothar]

I tried learning "la belle dame sans merci" lately by John Keats and it was a lovely experience! Now any time I feel troubled I can say to myself "O what can ail thee knight-at-arms".

[madainncheothar]

Hamilton has me reading books online from the Harvard library and the Library of Congress. That man forces you to be educated.

[madainncheothar]

Unfinished sketch of Daisy Ridley in her role as Ophelia.