starting a collection

oh, i am finally old enough to know why my parents took so long to grab their coats. why they would ask us to get ready to go only to sit down for another round of coffee. what would i tell myself, at 10 years old? it’s okay. sit down with them too. take in the extra hour with your friend and her family. when you get home, write down every moment in your diary. one day you will be older and you will be waving goodbye to your best friend, and you will turn the key to start your beat up little car engine, and you will look back over your shoulder. her hair will be blowing in the wind and she will be beautiful and you will be, for a moment, struck by all of it. what you will feel is so wide and nameless that it will engulf you. and you will think of being 14 and kicking her under the table in math every time you wanted to whisper something behind the teacher’s back. you will think about how long the days felt, and how you could hold her hand whenever you wished, but you didn’t. and you will think about all of the people you could have lingered with. and you will wish, more than you have ever felt a wish, that the universe just gave you that - more time to linger. more time to say - i love you. i know i need to leave, but i don’t want to leave you. and when i go, i am leaving a piece of my heart that lingers too. 

one more round of coffee. the days are so short, and you are so lovely.

“The number of hours we have together is actually not so large. Please linger near the door uncomfortably instead of just leaving. Please forget your scarf in my life and come back later for it.” (mikko harvey)

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― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun

'Fight?' said Frodo. 'Well, I suppose it may come to that. But remember: there is to be no slaying of hobbits, not even if they have gone over to the other side. Really gone over, I mean; not just obeying ruffians' orders because they are frightened. No hobbit has ever killed another on purpose in the Shire, and it is not to begin now. And nobody is to be killed at all, if it can be helped. Keep your tempers and hold your hands to the last possible moment!'
 
'But if there are many of these ruffians,' said Merry, 'it will certainly mean fighting. You won't rescue Lotho, or the Shire, just by being shocked and sad, my dear Frodo.'

I don't know whether to laugh or cry but I am having An Emotion

excellent tags courtesy of @tathrin​

#i love this part so much though#it may be my favorite part of the whole scouring tbh#because they went on such DIFFERENT journeys and learned such different things about evil and hope along the way#frodo learned that pity and kindness and holding on to hope even at the end of despair can save you#he learned that there is nothing stronger than faith in other people and forgiveness#and even when your faith is misplaced it's still good to have put it there#he learned that you can fail and still go on#he hasn't figured out how to put back together the pieces of an old life no#but he is hoping that he will be able to#frodo learned mercy and pity and despair and love#while walking into the darkness both of mordor and the ring and of his own fragile heart#and the importance of holding your hand out both for help and for healing; offering and receiving alike#merry learned how to go to war#merry learned that not everyone comes back from the battlefield but that some battles must be fought nonetheless#he learned swords and death and sorrow and fighting anyway#he learned that sometimes you need to protect what you love with a blade#the quest burned frodo down to ashes and left nothing but grief and a kind heart behind#while merry was tempered like fine rohirric steel into a warrior ready to lead and follow both#someone who knows the grim reality of war and yet also understands its necessity#and neither of them are wrong#that's the beauty of so much of lord of the rings: so often neither of them are wrong#lord of the rings#scouring of the shire#frodo baggins#meriadoc brandybuck#hobbits#lotr#war

we are ALL horse girls when watching the ride of the rohirrim at the battle of pelennor fields

A few along the lake early yesterday.

Early sunlight through the mist in the inlet at the lake.

the real life version of being doomed by the narrative is knowing you have work in the morning

the irl version of being stuck in the timeloop is also going to work

Rainer Maria Rilke in a letter to Lou Andreas-Salomé, published in Rilke and Andreas-Salomé: A Love Story in Letters

“The oldest olive tree in the world located on the island of Crete. It is estimated to be as over 3,000 years old and still produces olives.”

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gotta share @telesilla’s tags -

#that was (give or take) around the time of the bronze age collapse #crete was no longer a major player #and the known world was kinda in turmoil #and yet someone planted an olive tree #i’m not saying there’s a direct parallel #but you know…systemic collapse thanks to many things including climate change #and it sucked for a lot of people #but they still needed olive oil #and idk man…maybe plant a tree #because the world has ended so many times #but the tree is still here #and so are we

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I Am Not Your Asian American Doll: a comic for AAPI Heritage Month 2023

I usually spend a lot of time editing and fine-tuning my comics so that they come across as polite and inoffensive. But honestly, I’m really tired of the way Asian cultures and countries are treated / talked about while Asian people themselves are excluded, and thought it was about time I really let my rage out lol.

id in alt

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the majority of cultural-specific imagery in this comic is Korean-based (the kpop idols, the tteokbokki and kimchi and kimbap, Namsan Tower, the girl in hanbok), since I drew from my personal experiences

I have included imagery from other Asian cultures (including Japanese) in this comic, but mostly to make the point that this issue is not just Korean-exclusive, and also that outsiders tend to group the wide variety of Asian cultures together. I expand more on that in another comic.

Korea and the Philippines, the two countries from which I draw my heritage, have been ravaged by colonialism and imperialism from multiple countries including Japan and the US.