#non f1 related post from moi? it's been awhile lmao

[hyacinthsdiamonds]

Butchered Tongue has completely shattered me. The slow, painful erosion of culture and language, of identity. The faded memories of those who came before us. The desperate yearning for a past that you don't remember because it was ripped from you long before you ever came to be. It makes me think of my great-grandfather, who left to work in America and who only returned, decades later, in a coffin. I wonder if he ever sat in some random Irish pub and simply listened to those around him, hoping to find a connection, for a glimmer of familiarity in the faces and voices of strangers. I think of my granny's cousin, the spit of my uncle, who embraced me and held me close as we said our goodbyes. He never lost his mother tongue even after decades of living far from home. He may have made a life on a foreign soil but home remains the quiet Irish village where he was born and which he might never see again. It's the stack of old photographs sitting in the attic, photographs from all over the world, that are all full of smiling, happy faces but there is not soul left who can name them. All we know for sure is that they were once cherished and that has to be enough. It's the names on headstones, of the many souls buried under names they never used in life, anglicized even in death. Síle became Cecilia, Máire Mary, Dónall/Domhnall Daniel, so on and so forth. It's the words my granny used to use, we don't where those words came from, whether it's older Irish words passed on to her before they faded to the sands of time or words lost in translation through learning English words from various relations returning home after working in the fields or in construction in Scotland, Wales or England for a season or if it's one of those unique sayings, the amalgamation of sayings and inside jokes every family has and that are unique to each individual one. We'll never know which, the knowledge passed with her. We still use those words, carry our memories with us but we feel that loss of history and their true meanings. How does anyone carry the weight of all that loss, all of that heartbreak, all that visceral grief? And how do we prevent more loss, how do we keep the fire burning, keep the glowing embers of our past alive? Keep them from fading into the darkness, never again to warm the heart? This song is beautiful and haunting and it's never going to leave me alone.