#natural imagery

[inkliinng]

'𝑰 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒏𝒌 𝑰'𝒍𝒍 𝒅𝒊𝒆 𝒕𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒚𝒆𝒂𝒓, 𝑹𝒖𝒔𝒌𝒊𝒏,' 𝒔𝒉𝒆 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅.

𝑻𝒉𝒊𝒔 𝒘𝒂𝒔 𝒉𝒆𝒓 𝒖𝒔𝒖𝒂𝒍 𝒎𝒊𝒅-𝒎𝒐𝒓𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒈 𝒈𝒓𝒆𝒆𝒕𝒊𝒏𝒈.

'𝒀𝒐𝒖'𝒓𝒆 𝑵𝒆𝒆𝒏𝒂 𝒐𝒇 𝒕𝒉𝒆 𝒏𝒊𝒏𝒆 𝒍𝒊𝒗𝒆𝒔,' 𝑰 𝒔𝒂𝒊𝒅.

'𝑰'𝒗𝒆 𝒖𝒔𝒆𝒅 𝒕𝒉𝒆𝒎 𝒂𝒍𝒍 𝒖𝒑. 𝑻𝒉𝒆𝒓𝒆 𝒂𝒓𝒆𝒏'𝒕 𝒂𝒏𝒚 𝒍𝒆𝒇𝒕. 𝑺𝒊𝒕 𝒅𝒐𝒘𝒏 𝒂𝒏𝒅 𝒉𝒂𝒗𝒆 𝒂 𝒈𝒊𝒏.'

This book and its charming little subversions of plot. Its playful refusal to be pigeon-holed into any classification. Its absolutely unpredictable nature. I'm shaking my head as I write this. It's not extraordinary or monumental by any means. It's just a piece of pure defiant whimsy. It reminded me at times of the novels of P.G. Wodehouse, that air of general chaos and tragic hilarity, the ability to sandwich genuine sorrow between comedy.

There was frequent flitting from subject to event to memory, past and present, and even locations. There was equally frequent hopscotching between genres. This novella is part memoir (how true we cannot say), part nature writing, part gothic fiction (murderous kings and little boys, forbidding mysterious nuns, ghosts of cherubic little girls, need I say more?), part murder mystery and intrigue, part romantic drama with a side of adultery (or was it the other way round?), and a huge dollop of comedy throughout. Readers may enjoy the book or absolutely hate it- because there is not even the pretence of a plot. All that does justice to it's title is the fact that the narrator inevitably always returns to the lodestone that is the Maharani from his ramblings into other topics and territories.

The only constant throughout apart from the queen was the comedic timing, and as if the author realized this, he quite surprised me with the mood of the ending. This isn't a book that has grown dear to me in the reading of it, but it definitely was a good time and a laugh- most of the time.

Music: Aap Ki Aankhon Mei Kuch- Kishore Kumar

[bebs-art-gallery]

Procession in the Fog (1828)

— by Ernst Ferdinand Oehme

[kimiko24]

Night Hunt & Night Hunt 2 (via John Brosio)

[lost-wits]

x

[slushyseals]

What'cha thinkin' about?

[unrememberedrooms]

statues i found on the grounds of a retreat house | 11/9/23

[sp3cialgirl]

[a-dream-seeking-light]

Impact crater on Mars

In the southern highlands of Mars, CaSSIS spotted ancient and eroded craters filled with sediment. This is the case of this relatively old, 15 km diameter crater in Tyrrhena Terra, showing its age in its flattened rim – younger craters have sharper, more defined rims – and the degraded ejecta blanket.

There is a central uplift section to the crater, as well as many smaller craters, which also suggests an advanced age.

Beautiful dark dunes appear in contrast with wind-blown, pinkish ripples winding their way around the terrain.

Like most CaSSIS imagery, the colours in this image are stretched to highlight the diversity of surface composition.

CREDIT ESA/TGO/CaSSIS

[grainelevator]

Earth fractals from above

[strawberry-s0ap]

falin x marcille (dungeon meshi) stimboard for anon!

x x x / x x x / x x x

[beatriceportinari]

Oyster, origami, one square of paper. Loosely modelled on the black-lip pearl oyster.

[kimiko24]

Let's forge our own fate

[misersdream]

Slay the Prince - The Tower

[prolibytherium]

There's a LOT of things people do wrong when constructing fantasy beliefs in pantheons of gods, but one of the more specific is having only one god related to fertility and it kind of being just a horny sex thing.

Like you'll have one in the entire bunch whose sphere is listed as fertility and it's basically like Yeah this is the sex one. She's always depicted naked (but not TOO naked because censorship and/or the writer's own skittishness). She's going to have the exact body type epitomized in contemporary western beauty standards and there's usually no chance in hell that she's gonna be fat (unless MAYBE they're referencing 'venus' figurines). Her thing is fertility, which means having sex and making babies. Might be a goddess of beauty or love or marriage too, because these are kinda sex things, but that's probably it. And yeah that sort of thing is virtually nonexistent in real life.

Like the concept of fertility is so fundamentally important to the function of most societies in human history in ways that it is just Not in industrialized imperial core countries. Most people are getting food from stores, and not having to worry about harvesting crops or breeding livestock or foraging for food or having enough animals to hunt, so fertility only really comes up as a concern if you're trying to have kids (and there is certainly societal pressure to have children, but your wellbeing and survival is rarely going to Depend on it). And I think writing only from that perspective and not even trying to learn about WHY fertility is so conceptually important is why you see this trend.

There's no absolute universal statement about how people believe in gods but it's broadly accurate that systems with many deities will Usually have more than one deity associated with fertility, and these associations will certainly include human reproduction but also the fertility of livestock/hunted animals, plants, the land itself.

Some fertility deities may also be heavily associated with seasonal changes or environmental factors that agriculture or foraging is dependent on (spring/summer/fall, seasonal rains, seasonal flooding, rain itself, sunlight, good soil, rivers, wetlands, etc). Some certainly might be related to love, marriage, sex, and beauty, but that's VERY RARELY going to be the sole way the concept of fertility is embodied. And they'll often will have other associations not directly about fertility, or related to fertility in culturally specific ways.

[qui-gg]

Payjay Boat 2

[dead-man-stimming]

The Corruption

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