hear me out: olórin teaching elf kiddos how to make kites

Forest keepers.

I can’t remember where I was when JFK was shot, but I can remember exactly where and when I was when I first read J. R. R. Tolkien. It was New Year’s Eve, 1961. I was babysitting for friends of my parents while they all went out to a party. I didn’t mind. I’d got this three-volume yacht-anchor of a book from the library that day. Boys at school had told me about it. It had maps in it, they said. This struck me at the time as a pretty good indicator of quality.

I’d waited quite a long time for this moment. I was that kind of kid, even then.

What can I remember? I can remember the vision of beech woods in the Shire; I was a country boy, and the hobbits were walking through a landscape which, give or take the odd housing development, was pretty much the one I’d grown up in. I remember it like a movie. There I was, sitting on this rather chilly sixties-style couch in this rather bare room; but at the edges of the carpet, the forest began. I remember the light as green, coming through trees. I have never since then so truly had the experience of being inside the story

Terry Pratchett, Cult Classic (via currentboat)

hiranyaksha:

The moon comes down from the sky and falls in love with a woman

rain-storms:

_4LN5404-partie de cache-cache by Brestitude on Flickr.

tolrone:

and returning of Túrin

what do you think attitudes of elves who stayed in middle-earth during the 2nd/3rd ages were like towards elves who sailed west, especially ones who sailed west to ‘escape’ during difficult times? do you think some thought of them as quitters?

simaethae:

PROBABLY, anon, I expect any possible opinion was held by
some elf somewhere! Uh, going West for healing is clearly a thing, and
psychological and physical problems seem to be intertwined for Elves, so I
expect the general standard would be more compassionate and less judgemental
than that – but I can easily imagine, e.g. a sort of low-key superiority among
some of the Elves who stayed, like, “it would be wrong to blame them for being
too weak to stick it out”…

slightly off-topic, I kind of wonder to what degree the
Avari were still a thing in the Third Age? In the sense that obviously they
still exist, but the whole way the Elves relate to the Valar has to be super
different by that point – so of course loving Middle-earth is still a motive,
but I feel like distrust/fear of the Valar would have to have died down
somewhat by that point, possibly in some mild embarrassment. You know. “It’s
been like ten thousand years and Oromë still hasn’t been proven to eat anyone’s
soul, maybe it’s time to give it up a bit”?

anyway. “For it is not
the land of Manwë that makes its people deathless, but the Deathless that dwell
therein have hallowed the land” – like, the whole point of the Great
Journey was to bring the Elves somewhere safe, and look how that worked out, I’m
wondering how far that sort of viewpoint would have survived? Up until the end
of the Second Age Valinor is very definitely still part of Arda, and even afterwards,
it’s not completely disconnected from the world. So I’m wondering how far some
of the Elves might have been sceptical about the degree to which sailing West
was “escaping” at all, especially the Avari, or the ex-Noldor and their
descendants? It’s not like it was a demonstrably flawless method in the past,
after all. But I can’t see that being a common
attitude.

musingsfrombree:

Azaghal by TurnerMohan

thunderstruck9:

Millard Sheets (American, 1907-1989), Moon River, 1984. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 28¾ x 40 in.