Latest Posts by athomeamongtheheather - Page 3

Asian Royalty: 6 ruined castles across Asia, reconstructed While some centuries-old castles are still standing tall, sadly others haven’t withstood the ravages of time, war, or natural disaster quite as well. To give you an idea of what once was, Budget Direct has collaborated with a team of researchers, architects and digital CGI masters to bring six Asian castles back to life, digitally. Here’s Japan’s Hagi Castle, which was built in 1604 but sadly was dismantled in 1874: Other castles explored in the series of reconstructions are:

Alamut Castle, Alamut Valley, Iran

The Old Summer Palace, Beijing, China

Citadel of Ghazni, Ghazni, Afghanistan

Raigad Fort, Raigad, Maharashtra, India

Takeda Castle, Asago, Hyōgo, Japan

How do you fall back in love with life?

clean your room.  clean space, uncluttered space, space that doesn’t have miasma clinging to it can work wonders.  clean the dishes.  sweep.  take out the trash.  peel the clothes off the floor and wash them, and then actually fold/hang them.  take a long shower.  scrub behind your knees.  brush your teeth.  (this can be utterly exhausting, but try to get it done in a day, if you can.  the end result is worth it.)

pull out your notebook.  it doesn’t need to be a new notebook, but preferably one that you don’t usually write in, or that you haven’t touched in a while.  fuck moleskins.  the yellow legal pad will work fine.  sit in your room, or in the park, or in the library, and write a list.  count clouds.  describe all the colors that you see, and note patterns that arise.  sketch the cracks in the walls.  note the shape light makes when it enters a space.  talk about what the air tastes like, smells like.  what sounds are there?  even the white nose, break that down: air planes, fans, cicadas, anything.  remind yourself that you are sitting in the middle of a space brimming with detail.  remind yourself that you are not in nothingness and emptiness.  your world is fathomless.  it has potential.

drink cold water and try to eat something that isn’t processed.  it does not need to be fancy.  buy yourself an apple with the change between your couch cushions.  eat it outside.  if you’re someone who walks, walk somewhere afterwards, just to stretch your legs.  take your fucking meds.  remember that its a good thing that you are inside your body.  your body is a fantastic and endlessly intricate machine, and even though society has smacked a bunch of poisonous ideas on it, that doesn’t change its inherent worth and splendor.  take care of it.

read a novel.  underline your favorite lines, and write phrases that twist your heart inside your chest on the back of your hand with an ink pen.  read a novel like it’s poetry.  read poetry, something decadent but unpretentious.  watch a movie you haven’t seen before.  if there are free art galleries near you, walk through one.  take your time.  let yourself bask.  if there are patterns in what makes your soul ache, write those patterns down – marbles arches or soot crumbling bricks or dandelions or descriptions of dresses or whatever it is, write them down.

your chosen family is important.  remember, they picked you as much as you picked them.  the love has no obligation.  it is given freely and it is given from a place of compassion.  you are not a burden.  if you need to breathe, take a minute by yourself and just exist, but remember to go back to your people.  when they need you, listen and be gracious.  always be gracious.  the universe sometimes remembers things like that.

listen to new music.  link jump on youtube or related artist jump on spotify or ask the chap beside you in the cafe what their favorite band is, and listen to that.  listen to something that you don’t usually listen to.  we tend to tie up a lot of memory with music.  we are falling in love again.  the soundtrack needs to be specific to that.  

allow yourself to indulge in romantics.  press flowers in old books.  play movies with subtitles and mouth the words.  dance in your room.  wear something that makes you feel good, even if you wouldn’t wear it in public.  write your chosen family letters, even if you hand deliver them.  write poetry, even awful poetry.  revel in its awfulness.  eat dark chocolate and when your chosen family want to go out, try to go out with them sometimes, even if its just to the market.  

“She says nothing at all, but simply stares upward into the dark sky and watches, with sad eyes, the slow dance of the infinite stars.”

— Neil Gaiman, Stardust (via surqrised)

Book Binding by PearFleur

the one problem i have with people my age and younger is that a lot of us do not have hands on hobbies. like i have spoken to so many people my age who go to work, go to school and then fuck around on their phone/computer for hours and then ???????? like no wonder ur depressed and have low confidence in urself. u need to get ur hands on something, feed those dopamine receptors! learn how to play guitar, garden, scrapbook, fucking make model trains. i don’t give a shit, MAKE SOMETHING!!

it feels better than drugs when i finish making a thing—and then show it off or gift it.

and then so people my age say to me ‘well—i can’t draw/paint/knit/etc. like you can. my stuff would be terrible.’ yeah, well duh—a part of developing skill is sucking at something and then practicing it over and over and over again until you suck less. u’ll have a hard time feeling lonely or bored when you can’t stop thinking abt a technique you want to try or something you want to make for someone else. making things has SAVED MY LIFE. it gave me a reason to keep living day after day when i wanted to die.

making things improved my generational relationships (when i worked for the newspaper i would talk to customers abt jamming recipes or cross-stitch, one of my grandmas always gives me pattern books and tell me abt when she knitted things for mom, my other grandma is giving me a wedding quilt that HER grandma gave her 50 years ago because she knows i will appreciate it). it also got me likeminded friends who also make things.

take a ceramics class! pick up water colors, bake cakes! learn to work on cars! make soap. DO SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T INVOLVE STARING AT A SCREEN.

Sudden wave of an immense love for humanity has hit me once again…

postcards from Orkney

so can we start hunting down white liberals now or what

“It’s funny. When you leave your home and wander really far, you always think, ‘I want to go home.’ But then you come home, and of course it’s not the same. You can’t live with it, you can’t live away from it. And it seems like from then on there’s always this yearning for some place that doesn’t exist.”

— Danzy Senna

Some racist asshole run a muslim family down with his pick-up truck this afternoon in London (Ontario), killing four and leaving only one family member alive. The terrorist was a 20-year old islamophobic dude who targeted muslims and wanted to kill as many of them as possible; when the police arrested him, he was wearing body armor, he had intended to commit more than just murders. There's a 9-year old who lost his family and is in the hospital right now. It's heartbreaking.

More info:

Killing of Canadian Muslim family with truck was hate crime -police

—Richard Jackson, from “Basic Algebra”

—Stephen Crane, “In the Desert”

“But even so, every now and then I would feel a violent stab of loneliness. The very water I drink, the very air I breathe, would feel like long, sharp needles. The pages of a book in my hands would take on the threatening metallic gleam of razor blades. I could hear the roots of loneliness creeping through me when the world was hushed at four o'clock in the morning.”

— Haruki Murakami, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

As someone who's going to be moving and starting uni soon, this is where I find myself most days. It's strange seeing someone else write out my thoughts practically exactly as I thought them, but comforting to know that other people have similar experiences!

i keep trying to memorize every detail of the moments i live in. in the soreness of my legs from standing so long at a concert, the chill of the night, the patterns of a tablecloth, the oily texture in my mouth after eating fried bananas. i keep trying to memorize the feelings, the quiet contentedness, the laughter, the excitement. i keep trying to memorize the people, their smiles, the way they speak, what makes them laugh. i’m constantly on the cusp of the next part of my life and that’s just so.. strange. but it makes it so much easier to find happiness no matter what’s happening to me, in a way? because i’m already kind of looking at life with those rose-colored glasses of nostalgia, simply because i know these are times i’ll never be able to live again, and these are people i might not always have, and that makes it so much easier to appreciate everything i might miss later. 

The Gates in June – Fritz Wildhagen / June in the Austrian Tyrol, John MacWhirter / A Month of First Crushes, Schuyler Peck @schuylerpeck / Flaming June, Frederic Leighton / June, Frederick Seidel / Evening, Joseph Brodsky / Romance, Arthur Rimbaud / June, Florence and the Machine / Sonnet XL, Pablo Neruda / Watermelon Sugar, Harry Styles / The Blacksmith, Arthur Rimbaud / Diaries, 1914-1923, Franz Kafka

thinking about “you haven’t met all the people who will love you” and like!!! you also haven’t found all the things that will make you happy!!!! there will always be new authors and musicians and artists whose work you will one day discover and love!!!! there will always be new hobbies and skills for you to learn and feel fulfilled by!!! there will always be new things around the corner that will bring sudden and unexpected happiness!!!!!!!!!!!

Ok I know this isn't what I usually reblog but yeah I'm still bitter

The Middle

I wrote and illustrated this story as a birthday present for my partner, I hope you enjoy it!

hir·aeth

/‘hir,āeth/

noun a homesickness for a home you can not return to or a home that never was.

That second paragraph is.... something alright

it isn’t that i ache, but the swell in my chest when i tilt up to look at the top of ferris wheels isn’t fear anymore. it isn’t that i ache but instead that while you and i were drunk on your living room rug and you said you’ll find love i didn’t tell you otherwise because i liked the way the words looked in the air between us. i feel no lacking, but the night is a blue that is knifeish, all silver keen like the imagined collar of my future. it isn’t that i want a specific thing, but i am wanting, the soft call of a horizon that peeks out sunsets too far to touch no matter how fast i run. 

where am i going. why am i not home here, where it is easy, and where i could build a life unseasonably sad but bearable. i could stop feeling stuck and instead teach myself this is what it means to be planted. i could say that the strange pull in me is only the desire of entropy, to unseam what should be held together.

it isn’t that i yearn, but i picture the blues of oceans and ask - is this the color that belongs to her? when i find her, will i be a better person? i fill my mouth with tongues and chocolate and good times but i cannot pin her down. maybe one day i will step through the mirror and she will be there, easily, hungry for her same ache and want of me.

home, i mean. home. 

Edinburgh. A golden throne…

© Tom & Laura Scotland

Listen. Do it for the aesthetic. If you want to fill an entire 20 dollar sketchbook with anatomy drawings fucling do it. If you wanna get lost in the woods and come stumbling home with a bag of dried mushrooms and bones you go goblin dude. You aren't alive to go to work and hurt!! You're alive because bumblebees bump into little flowers and dandelions only open up in the sun! You're alive because cats purr when you pet them and coffee keeps you up all night!! Do everything for the aesthetic!!

I see a lot of dark academia aesthetic involving the classics fields, literature and languages and theater and music, but can the STEM kids get in on this too? Where’s my dark science aesthetic at? where’s my STEM gothic?

•  It has to be a mistake, on the syllabus your professor e-mailed over yesterday. The lab class can’t possibly start at 8pm. Not that you’d notice the time of night anyway, considering that for some reason it’s held in a basement of the STEM buildings that you were sure was closed off. You’ve never seen anyone emerging from its depths, and honestly you’re not even sure how to get down there. But not to worry, your professor assures you when you reply with your concerns. He’ll send his TA to pick you up. Just try not to stare at their hand. Especially if it sparks. They’re still working out the kinks.

• The transparent lightboard you use in your apartment building for working out math equations that require more room is the only illumination piercing your otherwise dim living room. You’ve been working for hours, and haven’t noticed how late it’s become, mostly because you’re pretty sure that you accidentally just determined exactly when the world is going to end. Before you can grab your phone to tell everyone, there’s a knock at your door. “Well done,” the man and woman in dark clothes and glasses that reflect even the minor light so that you can’t see your eyes as they enter your apartment. “A little too well done, we think. You’ll be coming with us now.”

•   H2 = H 2 0 [ Ωm(1+z) 3 +ΩDEexp {3 Z/z 0 dz 1+z [1+w(z)]}

•  “We are doctors,” in heart if not yet in degree,” the neurologist teaching your afternoon class says, laughing. “We are the ones who stand between that looming reaper Death and all of our patients, scalpels and syringes in hand, and say “not today, old friend. Not this one.” But then the mirth fades from his voice, and his gaze drifts to the left of the lecture hall for some odd reason, fixed on some dark corner. “That’s why it hates us, you know. Death. All of us. We as doctors must be very, very careful in our everyday lives, because Death despises us for stalling its work time and time again, and it constantly has its eyes on us. Waiting for us to relax, to look away. There are rituals, as we get older and Death steps closer every day…” but then they come back to themselves, shaking their heads and laughing. “Not enough coffee for me today, apparently!” Shadows in the corner where no one sits seem to be shifting.

•  The chemistry majors always seem to know something that no one else does. They all keep tiny glass bottles of clove oil in their backpacks at all times, for some reason. You’re starting to wonder if it wouldn’t be smart for you to do the same.

•  The engineering majors know exactly what the chem majors think only they know, and they laugh when you mention the clove oil. “They really think that will protect them,” one future robotics pioneer says to you, shaking his head. “They really think they can stop what’s coming.”

•  Something in the forensics lab whispers at night, but only when a lone student is working down there alone. One of them snags you in the halls one morning and says, “I know you’re not forensics and you’ve never heard it before, but last night I was working on a paper down there and, well. It knows your name.”

• Your roommate is a biogenetics student. She keeps beakers brimming with bubbling fluids in the fridge, and she often seems restless and distracted. You’ve caught her stealing hair off of your brush before, and one night as you watch her mixing and stirring and taking notes as she’s hunched over her desk, you realize that a single blinking eyeball is staring back at you from the green fluid surrounding it in her glass tube.

•  The mathematics students have figured out what the chemistry students know, and what the engineering students have known for years. They all look anxious now, walking around campus and constantly looking over their shoulders. One of them suggests to you that maybe you should start stockpiling bottled water. Just in case.

•  An astronomy major comes barreling into one of your classes one dim and dying afternoon, slapping a star chart down onto a desk in front of a newly enlightened mathematics student, sweating and furious. “You weren’t even going to tell us, you bastard?! You were just going to let it happen while we sat around unprepared?!”

•  A week later. You sit up in bed and your roommate is gone. Their things are gone. Campus is still and quiet, the chem and engineering and astronomy and mathematics students having all cleared out save for you. The bio, forensics, and med students are left blinking, dazed. Clearly you’ve all missed something important, but your roommate responds to your text with assurance that it’s fine. You’ll all know soon enough.

oh, to be a d.a scientist

faded labcoats, stained with ink & clumsy experiments

cursive reports, scribbled notes

awkward meetings with peers; shuffling hands & bitten lips, quietly explaining research to interested friends

skeletons in glass domes & diagram posters pinned to walls

classical music filling the silence as dull reports are written out; heavy silence as unexpected results are obsessed over, desperate for an explanation

cold coffee in chipped mugs

flickering candles, dark brown walls, vintage desk with ink splotches & small chips

tweed jackets, faux leather briefcases, smart blouses for analysing experiment results & meetings

messy hair, focused eyes & rolled-up sleeves during experiments & field work

thrilled yells of excitement as everything starts falling into place, muffled groans when contradictory data appears

"Have you ever had that feeling—that you'd like to go to a whole different place and become a whole different self?"

"I’m still wandering through the streets, looking, sitting by the sea, enjoying the sunshine. I am entirely alone. I don’t know anyone, no one knows me, and for me that is a great pleasure."

hanya yanagihara, a little life / haruki murakami, the wind-up bird chronicle / stand by me (1986), dir. rob reiner / donna tartt, the secret history / phoebe bridgers, i know the end / daniel clowes, ghost world / j.d. salinger, the catcher in the rye / nikos kazantzakis, from a letter to galatea kazantzaki / lora mathis, how to disappear in the modern age / moonlight (2016) dir. barry jenkins / richard siken, the torn-up road / sylvia plath, the bell jar

You said you could talk all day about Welsh castles. Handily enough, I brought a pen and paper to this lecture, so Imma pull up a chair and wait patiently for it to start. :D

this is SUCH an exciting ask thank you SO MUCH for letting me talk about castles. okay im gonna talk about my favourites

Caernarfon

built as residence after edward 1st conquered wales in 1282, after he killed Prince of Wales Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

edward sought to consolidate power and conquer independent Wales, and built the "iron ring of castles"

caernarfon castle was built in 5 years and was primarily built for 🌟 show 🌟 so edward could basically show how much money he had and how powerful he was

he liked roman history and built the towers with colourful stone, reminiscent of constantinople. the colour has since faded tho

however! just because it was built to show how extra edward was, it was also defensive. the only entrance are the 2 gatehouses, the queen's gate being at the shore for supplies and the kings gate

the kings gate was fearsome and built with holes to pour oil and boiling water down on attackers (also known as "murder holes")

if you survived that, you'd have 4 doors and 5 portcullises to deal with

the castle was briefly seized by a welsh revolution led by my man Madog ap Llywelyn in 1294, but taken back by troops later.

the welsh were deeply angry about Edward and how he conquered wales and killed the Prince. we hate being conquered

it was challenged again in 1403 + 1404 by national treasure Owain Glyndwr but he didn't manage to take it.

it was built on the docks and caernarfon is a walled town so its really very useful for defence.

Conwy

one of eddie boys iron ring of castles, finished construction in 1287 on conwy River

intended to be a mirror of the now ruined Deganwy castle

this was built purely for defence. its pretty much impregnable, due to its steep walls and the fact its on the river so you'd see an army coming a mile off. the bridge was the only way to march over

it was mainly a garrison town. the english kicked the welsh people out of most of the iron rings towns and made it illegal for us to live there. theres an old law thats never been struck out that you can still shoot a welsh man with an arrow off the walls if theyre in the towns. that's right folks, it was illegal for us to be in our own country.

it had 8 towers and 2 barbicans

it was attacked by Madogs rebellion the same time as caernarfon castle but they didn't take it

it fell into disuse but was hastily reactivated during the civil war in 1642

in 1646 it was besieged and ultimately surrendered

Deganwy

there aren't many images due to the fact it's in complete ruins but here's a digital reconstruction

this site has a lot of history due to its highly naturally defensible position. evidence of prehistoric, iron age and Romano-British forts

situated on volcanic rock, and possibly the seat of Maelgwyn Gwynedd, circa 520-547

in AD812, it was damaged by lightning, then in AD822, what was left was destroyed by saxon invaders

robert of Rhuddlan rebuilt it in 1080. the history is vague and murky after this but it was in Welsh hands by 1191

in 1211, Llywelyn ap Iorwerth rebelled against king John, who previously let Llywelyn keep the castle. the castle was pre-emptively destroyed by the welsh to prevent it from falling into English hands (as I said, an enviably defensible position). Llywelyn rebuilt it again by 1228, THEN pre-emptively destroyed again

1245-54, Henry 3rd built it into a medieval fortification, but it was captured by Llywelyn ap Gruffudd.

along came edward 1st and he built conwy castle instead, Deganwy fell to ruins

nowadays, you can visit the few ruins, but apparently you have to be careful because the history is so rich and long and bloody you might accidentally come across human bones

Gwyrch

while beautiful, the castle itself is actually pretty new. it was built between 1810-1825 by Lloyd Hesketh, to honour his wife and their ancestors. (forget a wedding ring, build me a castle as a romantic gesture)

the aforementioned ancestors were the Llwyds (anglicised as lloyd) of Plas yn y Gwyrch. gwyrch was their ancestral home. situated in the castle estate are 2 iron age hillforts, a roman shrine, lead and silver mines, and medieval battle sites. the reason I include this castle is because of the surrounding history.

built directly on the coast, nestled into a huge hill, with a watchtower, very hard to capture. the watchtower is further along the hill and would give fair warning via flaming arrow if an army was coming.

during the WW2, it was home to 200 odd Jewish refugees

was abandoned was was renovated and then became the film site for im a celebrity

Beaumaris

another one of the colonisers iron ring castles, built in 1295

edward built it on an entirely new site, and is known as one of Britain's most sophisticated medieval military structures

almost geometric symmetry

practically impregnable due to the defences shown in the image. high inner defences with low circuit walls

ironically it saw very little action till the civil war and the construction wasn't completed

the first line of defence is an 18ft wide moat, and the dock is protected by a shooting deck

the sea gate had murder holes

if you managed to get through that gate, you'd be faced with 11 obstacles, including a barbican, more murder holes, 3 portcullises and several sets of doors. you had to get through this while dealing with arrow fire and boiling oil from all directions.

Once you get in, there's 6 massive interior towers, and then you're dead

Abergavenny

built in 1087 to the traditional motte and bailey configuration

it was initially timber but was rebuilt with stone at around 1100

by 1175, the castle was in the hands of William de Braose, who wanted to defeat his welsh rival, Seisyll ap Dyfnwal. he invited Seisyll to the castle along with several prominent Welsh men who opposed saxon rule, to propose reconciliation. the men and their armies were brutally massacred once inside the Great Hall. I think I read somewhere it was inspiration for the Red Wedding in game of thrones.

in 1182, Hywel ap Iorwerth of Caerleon attacked and severely damaged the castle

several rebuilds, most notable addition in the 1400s which was the barbican gatehouse. this was placed to defend against our Lord and saviour Owain Glyndwr and his epic rebellion

known as a very very very difficult castle to penetrate

Denbigh

another of edwards iron ring castles, built in 1282

walled town, colonised and populated by the english after booting the welsh out

naturally defensible position

the work wasn't completed in 1294 when Madog ap Llywelyn seized it

the castle kinda passed hands until the 14th century when it came into the possession of the mortimer family

it was attacked during the wars of the Roses and the town was burned

held by royalists in the civil war but taken in 1646 after a parliamentary siege

seized again by royalists in 1659 and they lay waste to the towers and walls of the castle

the town lay pretty much abandoned until the 19th century

the castle has 3 octagonal towers at the gatehouse, which was constructed of impressive decorative stonework to symbolise Royal authority

it also has 8 mural towers, barbicans and defensive terraces to protect it

I've hit the image limit and I can't think of other favourites rn but if I remember ill reblog and add!! thank you so much for letting me talk about welsh castles theyre a special interest of mine i hope u enjoyed

I was hit by a wave of grief for the first time in a while today, and the weather was very polite in reflecting my mood as it was grey and rainy on my daily walk. I told the wind and rain about everything I was feeling, and let myself feel the anger I had been afraid of. I think it's important to share your emotions so that they aren't stuck inside. If you're not ready to open up to other people, tell the wind and the rain. They'll always listen.

Pays Basque, France

With the shadow and bone trailer being leaked and my rule of wolves book being delivered Leigh Bardugo has completely overrun my morning

As always Leigh delivering the most beautiful books

I have to say it's a lot bigger than I expected! I ordered from indigo so I got the bonus content and a poster too! I think I'll have to reread King of Scars because I don't remember anything but Hanne selective memory I guess