Just A Night Creature

We're the ones who spent twenty years fucking up their country and murdering their civilians "for fun." And then we just collectively drop everything and say "the Taliban can have you."

Fuck that noise. It's disgusting. There are untold numbers of people fleeing the Taliban right now, across the whole country, with all of them -- but especially women and anyone who might be accused of helping the old government/foreign armies -- fearing for their lives.

The Western countries that have spent two decades fucking up Afghanistan have a duty of fucking care to the civilians left behind.

Breaking news as of 16 August 2021 is that the Afghan president and all other government officials have fled Kabul. The "last stronghold" that was predicted to "hold out against the Taliban for three months" has fallen within a week, and most civilians in that city and others that have been overrun are now fearing for their lives.

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

there is a shitton of evidence for OP (an egyptologist’s) claim including the literal pictures of the artefacts you just… reblogged? like they are right there? you’re looking right at them. they are in the post.

but also entire books. multiple. and the first page of google results. tut’s tomb is the most well-documented find in egyptology and the duck tunic is especially famous

“My home isn’t for sale”.

Thanks to a pair of a bionic gloves, this 80-year-old classical pianist can finally play the piano again. The maestro, João Carlos Martins, had lost dexterity in his hands due to aging and health complications. His face at being able to play piano again says it all. 🎶

By the time he was 20 years old, João Carlos had already been invited by Eleanor Roosevelt to play at the Carnegie Hall, played with the biggest north american orchestras, and recorded the entire work of Bach for the piano. At the height of his skills, he could play 21 notes per second.

In 1965, at 24 years old, he suffered an accident during a soccer match which ended up causing an injury on his right elbow, damaging his ulnar nerve and atrophying 3 of his fingers. This caused him to stop playing for a year, and to play with difficulty until his 30s.

After long periods of physical therapy, but still with much difficulty, he returned to the stages and was received several positive reviews and was acclaimed by the public. However, he ended up developing a work-related musculoskeletal disorder, which forced him to stop playing again.

This wasn’t enough to make him give up on his musical career, and even with atrophied fingers and paralyzed hands, he still managed to play and record all basically of Bach’s work from 1979 to 1985, still being wildly popular despite his difficulties.

However, the worst would come in 1995: at 55 years old, during a robbery in Bulgaria, João Carlos was struck in the head with an iron bar, resulting in neurological sequelae which paralyzed his right arm. After a lot of physical and neurological therapy, he managed to move his right hand again enough to play the piano with both hands, but due to a worsening of his condition, at 58, he started to develop troubles not only moving his hand, but also speaking, so he had to go through another surgery. It didn’t seem like he would recover much movement in his hand after surgery, however, so he used the short time he had before his hand atrophied completely to record one last CD with both hands.

In 2001, at 61, he recorded the album Piano Concerto for the Left Hand, written by Maurice Ravel for Paul Wittgenstein, an austrian pianist who lost his right arm during World War 1.

His intention was to record 8 albums using only his left hand, however, his left hand developed a disease called Dupuytren’s contracture, causing his fingers to become permanently bent and contracted, as well as causing pain. He went through another surgery, this time in his left hand, but it didn’t prevent him from losing movement in his left hand, causing him to have to abandon the piano, seemingly for good.

This still didn’t keep him away from music, and after learning to conduct from a friend of his, he became a conductor in 2003, at 63 years old. Due to his paralyzed fingers, João Carlos couldn’t actually hold the baton or even turn the pages in the score (at least not fast enough to not stall the music), however, so instead the maestro simpy memorized every score note by note. He memorized, on average, 5000 score pages. (Unfortunately, he started to develop dystonia on his left arm, causing it to twitch, which caused him to have to stop conducting for a while, but he came back shortly after and has been conducting ever since.)

He went through another brain surgery in 2012, to recover the movements in his left hand, but at this point it was so atrophied he hadn’t even opened it in 10 years. He still occasionally played the piano in important events, and he even played at the opening of the 2016 Summer Paralympics in Rio, but his playing was very slow and he could barely use his fingers, playing only a single note per second (compare with his 21 notes per seconds back when he was young).

(João Carlos Martins playing at an event in São Bernardo do Campo, 2013)

A blessed spring equinox to all!

‘All is pushing through’