#Under the fig trees

[whatamigonnawatchtoday]

Sous les figues (Under the Fig Trees) (تحت الشجرة)

2022. Drama

By Erige Sehiri

Starring: Fedi Ben Achour, Firas Amri, Ameni Fdhili, Feten Fdhili, Fide Fdhili, Gaith Mendassi, Abdelhak Mrabti, Leila Ouhebi, Hneya Ben Elhedi Sbahi, Samar Sifi

Country: Tunisia, France

Language: Arabic

[suchawrathfullamb]

I need this Will and this Hannibal falling in love and fucking tenderly hard in this aesthetic

[frodo-with-glasses]

In the Barrow, Part Two

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[r1errr]

no, you don’t understand, real girlhood is eating chocolate cupcakes at one am and thinking about the Roman Empire, Sylvia Plath, 45 kg, about Lana Del Rey’s book, Cillian Murphy, finding inspiration for poems, films, Lady Jane Gray, Joan of Arc , why am I so ugly, Greek myths, pomegranate and fig tree, Camilla from secret history, books, self-hatred, will prayers come true, thirst for all the knowledge of the world, twentieth century, symbolism of the deer, fashion, history, and what to do after death

[lifewithdream]

Like some trees, some memories are evergreen

[littlemissbigears]

Girls be like, “This character gets me!” and the character is having an emotional breakdown

[drunktuesdays]

me, with a blotchy, tear-stained face: it’s fine, all the rumors are pretty consistent that they’ve more than likely re-signed at least for a couple years. [hiccup] but if they wanted to retire, they should [wail] it seems like the internet has been getting to them more in the last few years [lays down on the ground] i know i’ll be happy for them whatever happens [lying]

[foundationsofdecay]

fruits!

[coralreeferband]

After forty-five years of my life dedicated to its service with an upright zeal

[haveyoureadthisfanfic]

Summary: The one where George Washington is Hamilton's real dad, and he gets to be a dad this time. (The Aegisverse spinoff.)

Author: @herowndeliverance

[alessia-photography]

Caravaggio's Rome is My Rome the book I've been writing for the past 20 years

When I first moved to Italy in 2003 I began researching, writing, taking photographs, collecting recipes, stories, experiences; I began gathering together the material that would become The Book, My Book

The book, my book began its life as "Under a Fig Tree in Rome", my love letter to the five years I lived on the streets, named after my first home, a fig tree on the Tiber Island.

In first-person narrative I told the tales that weaved together those five years. A way of apologising, forgiving, celebrating, remembering those faces & places. An exorcism of ghosts of sorts as most of the characters i wrote about are dead now. My book is a memorial. A glorification of the inglorious. But it was no Kerouac. I printed and bound "Fig Tree" and placed it in my bookcase.

My obsession with Rome remained a roaring fire in my heart after i left the city in the summer of 2007. By 2009 I enrolled in the history of art program at Birkbeck, University of London, graduating with a Masters degree in 2017, the majority of my credits being Roman/ Renaissance modules. I had learnt a great deal which made me aware that I knew absolutely nothing.

In 2016 I began writing about Rome again, but from a different angle. My boyfriend had a rickshaw which he used to transport tourists around the city. I realised the rione of Rome I had lived in & written about in The Book, My Book was also the backdrop of Michael Merisi da Caravaggio's twelve years in Rome at the turn of the seventeenth century.

I began to draw different lines on the same map, joining dots, making connections. I wrote another book, based on a series of walks in which you saw the paintings of Caravaggio as well as where he lived, where he drank, where he worked overlayed with where I lived, where I drank, where (and what) I wrote. Caravaggio's Rome is My Rome.

The lockdowns of 2020-21 changed everything for Francesco & I. No tourists, no work. Required by law to stay at home, 25 km east of Piazza Navona, I began to explore my patch the city, Giardinetti, just off exit 18 of the Grande Raccordo Anullare, the ring road around Rome. My geography had changed. & then our circumstances changed too.

In December 2022 Francesco had a car accident that left him semi-paralysed. From the moment he was discharged from hospital in February of this year I became a cook, cleaner & carer. My Rome work became a Mrs Beaton-like grimoire of recipes, household management tips, hedgewitchery and notes on a nightmare commute - with a wheelchair - across the city relying on (extremely unreliable) public transport.

My role changed, so my Rome changed and the book, my book gets re-written, again. More like a Cy Twombley painting than ever - scribble, scribble, scribble, WORD IN CAPITAL LETTERS, whitened, sanded back, text comes through the titanium white.

[s0fter-sin]

thinking about how little things about someone you lost stick with you

[neil-gaiman]

Hey Neil, I had Good Omens S1 on yesterday for noise while I was doing work, and I remembered that there's been debates over of it was really an apple that Eve picked, or if it was a pomegranate or some other fruit. Did y'all choose to keep it an apple to have it universal? What was the decision on that for the show?

The bible only talks about the Fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. Nothing about what kind of fruit it was apart from that. It might have been (according to various theologians) a fig, a grape, a pomegranate, wheat, a psychoactive mushroom, even a banana. The apple theory is based on a Latin pun, according to some scholars, and according to one book I read long ago but cannot find with a google search, was pushed by the Church of Rome trying to get the Irish and British Churches back under their control as they were using cider as their communion wine.

(More at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forbidden_fruit)

Fortunately, Terry and I were not called on to solve this problem. We were writing a funny book, and were thus able to do lots of jokes about eating apples, and didn't need to do and explain the banana jokes.

[thebestbrunettee]

imagine chiron sitting in his cave, and peering outside for just a moment. he sees a boy with messy dark waves and another with golden hair, chatting under a fig tree. for a moment he thinks it’s achilles and patroclus.

no.

it’s will and nico.

achilles and patroclus are dead, chiron… dead.

[natjennie]

just got emotional imagining all the tiny ways the bad kids love each other. all of them have worn gorgug's hoodie at one point. it's basically threadbare but they trade off casting mending. kristen has tried to use fig's skateboard in the parking lot after school and ate complete shit on the concrete. they all chanted for riz to try it too and he did a bunch of sick ass tricks he didn't know he could do. they all have drawers in random rooms of seacaster manor for their stuff despite never formally agreeing on it. they sit out under the thistlespring tree on weekends and project tv shows and youtube videos onto the side of the hangvan. riz brings a stupid tea-cortado for kristen in the mornings for their campaign meetings without being asked. fabian's pool is open to them no questions asked, just shoot a crystal message so he can unlock the gate (unless it's riz, he likes to scurry over it or pick the lock, for enrichment). without speaking adaine grabs some hot sauce packets from her jacket the minute fig sits down at their lunch table. yknow what I mean.

[crevicedwelling]

I see at least one cool bug a day, and usually many more, but it’s not because I live anywhere particularly rich in strange, wonderful creatures (I live in an unremarkable corner of Pennsylvania, USA) or spend all of my free time looking for bugs (well, just *most* of it). in my experience, finding interesting bugs is less about actually locating them and more about looking closely at tiny things you’d otherwise ignore!

this very long post was compiled over a couple days in late July, although I spent less than 10 minutes at a time searching. there’s a lot of fun creatures just out in the open.

plants are always a good place to start when looking for bugs, and I chose this small fig tree (Ficus carica) with a mulberry sapling friend. feeding on the sap of the fig and mulberry is the first group I’ll take a look at, the planthoppers:

these two are flatid bugs, Metcalfa pruinosa and Flatormenis proxima. flatids are slow-moving bugs that can be approached closely, but once they get tired of circling around stems to avoid you they may launch themselves into a fluttering flight with spring-loaded rear legs.

Aplos simplex, a member of the related family Issidae, also likes fig sap. its “tail” is actually a tuft of waxy secretions, which get shed along with the bright colors when it assumes a lumpy, bean-shaped adult form.

cicadellids, or leafhoppers, are just about everywhere on plants, but can be hard to approach without scaring them.

Agallia constricta on the left is a tiny species that feeds on grass, but many were scared up onto the fig by my footsteps. Jikradia olitoria is a much larger species that does feed on the fig; juveniles like this are curled, creeping goblins while adults’ rounded wings give them a pill-shaped appearance.

this big, pale leafhopper belongs to genus Gyponana. it’s tricky to get to species ID with these.

Graphocephala are striking little hoppers that eat a variety of native and nonnative plants. G. coccinea is the larger, more boldly colored one and G. versuta is smaller but more common locally. they’ll sit on the tops of leaves but take flight if you get too close quickly.

another group you’re almost guaranteed to encounter are flies (Diptera). these are a very diverse group, so much more than houseflies and mosquitoes (though I did run into both)

where I live, any plant with broad leaves is almost guaranteed to have a few Condylostylus, long-legged flies that come in shades of blue, green, and red. despite their dainty physique, they’re agile predators, typically feeding on other small flies.

next, a few hoverflies: the ubiquitous Toxomerus geminatus and a Eumerus that I’ve been seeing a lot of this year (but maybe I’ve just noticed them for the first time). syrphids have varied life histories, but most adults drink nectar and many of the larvae are predaceous on aphids.

the metallic green soldier fly is Microchrysa flaviventris, nonnative here. Coenosia is a fun example of a “fly that looks like a fly,” with big red eyes and a gray body, and you might think they’re just another dung-sucking pest, but they’re actually aggressive predators! this one seemed to have nabbed itself some sort of nematoceran fly, maybe a fungus gnat.

many flies are very tiny, just millimeters long. the first two little fellows are lauxaniids, while the last one, an agromyzid leafminer Cerodontha dorsalis, burrows through grass leaves as a larva.

while moths and butterflies (Lepidoptera) are drawn to plants for their flowers or to lay eggs, many small moths can easily be found resting on or under leaves during the day.

these first two are tortricids, many of which are flat, rectangular moths resembling chips of bark or dead leaves. the apple bud moth, Platynota idaeusalis, feeds on a wide variety of hosts, while this beat-up old Argyrotaenia pinatubana would have developed in an edible tube nest of pine needles.

Callima argenticinctella feeds in bark and dead wood (a resource used by more caterpillars than you’d realize!) while the last moth, possibly an Aspilanta, is a leafminer.

although beetles (Coleoptera) are famous for their diversity, I didn’t find too many on the fig. the invasive Oriental beetle Exomala orientalis resting here can be found in a wide range of colors, from this common tan to to deep iridescent black. the other beetle is a Photinus pyralis firefly, sleeping under leaves as fireflies do.

a few spare hemipterans: a Kleidocerys resedae that blew in on a wind, and below, the mulberry whitefly Tetraleurodes mori feeds on its namesake host. as for Hymenoptera, I saw manny tiny parasitic braconid wasps and various ants attracted to the planthoppers’ honeydew excretions—always worth checking underneath roosting hoppers for things having a drink.

a couple handsome spider boys were scrambling through the fig seeking females, a jumping spider Paraphidippus aurantius and an orbweaver, Mecynogea lemniscata.

and to round it off, a young Conocephalus meadow katydid and a Carolina mantis, Stagmomantis carolina.

there’s 31 species of arthropod in this post, and I probably saw some 45, not all of which stayed for photos. if you walk slowly and look closely, you can see a sizeable chunk of your local biodiversity in under fifteen minutes! of course this will depend on where you live and what time of year it is, but there’s almost always more cool bugs out there than you’d expect, even on just a single plant.