Fill Your Soul With Stars
fill your soul with stars
More Posts from Braindumpbutaesthetic and Others
Academia but you're in Cairo
staying up late looking up ancient jewllery, its symbolism and the stuff it was made from and the methods they used because that was some intricatte stuff you know
having an unhealthy addiction to tea. milk tea in the morning before stting off. plain tea in the afternoon when youre back. tea with mint in the chilly hours before sunset. tea with lemon when youre sick, with honey when youre sad...
listening to asmahan and laila mourad because their voices make flowers grow in your heart. you see abd el wahab or sayed darwish's names and you know youre about to heaar the most heavenly sounds you ever have.
constant debates about history (esp modern history! which is, regarless, my favourite to study!)
thrifting books from soor al azbakeyah and soor al sayeda zeinab and coming across literal gems that were sold for cheaper than dust
your uni is probably a historical site
just kidding your entire city probably is
long walks in old cairo's warm dusty mornings
constantnly stopping short to take in the glorious architecture you see before you. buildings brimming with equal parts menace and cordial affection that are simultaneously overwhelming and welcoming
does their age take your breath or does their sheer size? does their beauty make your heart flutter or is it the deep, undeniable knowledge that theres never going to be something quite like it ever again?
youre never really out of museums to visit. theres always going to be annother you just havent spotted yet
Did i tell what "cairo" means? It is derived from the arabic word "Al Qahira" meaning, She Who is Victorious. She Who Devastates. She Who is a Conqueress. She Who Is Meciless. a drop in the rich seaof her triumphant history
Visiting the ancient temples in upper egypt, the beauty of whom is so eternally breathtaking it makes you forget the tremendous amount of stairs you had to climb to get there.
Calling north Bahari (meaning "of the sea") even tho that could also be east. But you do it anyway.
The poeple going to and fro being endearing; shout/waving greatings to one another, so full of sincerity and hope in the early morning dew. It feels less lonely somehow
Romanticising everything about life as a form of conscious escapism, like all the poets and playwrights whose blood runs i your veins
there are translated works, and then there are arabic-ized wrorks of literature. its not hard to see that you prefer the latter.
also who came up with titles like "god of sword and quill" and "prince of poets"? we need to have a conversation. i love you and so does everyone else with a basic sense of art
visiting the old palaces and castles and always coming across abandoned ones. you wonder who would dare abpndon something so beautiful. you feel an immense sadness and and a crippling blow of yearning that do nothing to remove the dust coating everything or bring the music back to the pianoforte.
going to bazaars even if you knoe youre not going to buy anything. youre here for the copper, thr bass, the spices and occasional gleap of wine red jewllery. oh and the cat you befriended right outside the coffee shop!
buying jewllery and pottery from khan el khalili or el mo'ez streerts becaue everything is just so pretty and we shop local
going to century+ old cafes and sitting at a table that might have been naguib mahfouz's who knows
analizing the "foreign" words in your dialect and feeling an otherworldluy ense of knowing when you recognize wherethe come from! plage is french! shanta is turkish! em bu comes from coptic eb mu meaning water! nunu is ancient egyptian for fragile! and so much more!
Arabic dark academia
Having tea first thing in the morning, the afternoon, evening, night and whenever you have nothing to do and whenever you have everything to do
Practicing calligraphy, hoarding calligraphy pens and quills like a dragon hoards its jewels
Youre now a calligragon btw
Pretentious hand written letters
Fragments of poetry and prose on the wall
In Egypt you can buy a vintage gramophone (as far as I remember)
Wrinkling your nose at orientalists who have clearly never been anywhere near the culture they're trying to portray.
Appreciating the orientalists who have in fact been there and paint like it. (Sorry to disappoint but there were never sexy slave babes roaming the streets)
Mourning for the scholars of Al Andaluas and times when Arabic was the language of science
Arguing over e'arab (the value of a word with regard to others in the sentence) and balagha (it translates to "eloquence" but is more like a complex version of figures of speech) of words
Arabic being such a complex language you get carried away sometimes
Passing the allotted wordcount so you start going over your paper and compressing a whole sentence, consisting of a conjunction, a subject, a verb and two objects into a word in desperation
Words like فأسقيناكموه (faa'skainakumooh) meaning "and so we have let you drink it" being an example.
Tea over burning coal. Over logs (hatab) tea over bokhour/oud hits different and you know it.
Brewing coffee over low heat and humming to Layali Al Ouns
"No offense but I like real coffee" when someone mentions starbucks
Um Kulthoum and Asmahan are superior you cant change my mind.
NO I DID NOT FORGET ABDUL HALIM HAFEZ I WANTED HIM A BULLET OF HIS OWN.
Fareed al atrash concerts at 3 am.
Nothing you ever cook will be under seasoned.
Reciting poetry to yourself in the mirror
Big chunks of jewelry (usually gold) engraved or woven through with intricate patterns and swirls. Wearing four bracelets in one hand is absolutely fine and under dressing is a myth
Owning swords is not out of fashion (ancient arabs were well known for their swordsmanship) but using them is, unfortunately <3
Wondering how they won wars with these swords. I couldn't even lift it enough to stab myself if I wanted
Extra names. People called شهد honey (shahd), جمال beauty (jamal), زهرة flower (zahra), ليلى night (laila), سماء sky (samaa), مهند/سيف sword (mohanad/saif) and صفاء purity (safaa) like it's the most normal thing in the world (which it should be, along with names of ancient gods)
Poetry from the abbasid era describing palaces and fountains and music so eloquently your heart skips several beats and you wonder how it is still beating at all and if, after all, you have been born in the wrong era.
Classic poetry from the school of Apollo brimming with romance and yearning you have never seen matched.
Poems that tear at your heart and stitch it whole with every bayt (verse? The equivalent for it) and you keep coming back for more.
Stories so well told that you swear you can see the princes and charmers and musicians and dancers all flicker to life in the flames before you
Historical masjids and churches.
Going to the palaces and shrines and towers from the ancient days of yore
Not exclusively (as neither is anything on this list) arabic but BRAIDS and braid jewellery that clinks when you shake your head
The unwavering belief that poetry is meant to be sung.
Singing poetry because it is meant to be sung
Thick eyebrows
Lining already lash lined eyes with kohl.
Beautiful brown eyes. Honey eyes. Chocolate eyes. Freshly turned earth eyes. Eyes that hold all the ethereal beauty of the world.
Hair styled in dark, thick curls or braids
Savouring the way the words move around from your throat to your chest to the tip of your tongue, like liquid gold,
The sweet music from the strings of a qitharah (string instrument)
Scented candles are cute, but have you ever heard of oud (perfume infused wood)? Anyhow one of my Sudanese friends make it AND IT IS BEAUTIFUL.
Wanting to study with the scholars of baghdad and azhar so bad
Recognizing that for all your culture, some of it is inspired by others and that's okay.
Please add what you can to this list. It is far from complete.
Anatomy is so fun I wish I could just spend hours studying only anatomy.
It takes that long, anyway.
Quick time lapse of me studying the femoral triangle ^
STEM DARK ACADEMIA
I'm a little upset at the lack of stem in dark academia, so here's my list of aesthetic science things, STEM ACADEMIA (dark edition)
• relating a little too much to the mad scientist trope (and telling everyone "no, no I would never do anything like that, I just want to help people" but like imagine if we could resurrect people)
• rereading Frankenstein every year, specifically in the month of october
• "why is STEAM a thing?? Art? who that?"
• minoring in classics because you still like mythology and history and reading
• finding the science in art (why things make you feel a certain way, how they do that, what effect they've had on health and medicine) and finding the art in science (isn't it incredible that dna knows how to tell plant cells to break down chlorophyll and this makes the gorgeous fall colors)
• reading every book that mentions at all a scientist or has a character who is interested in stem (they are few and far between)
• enjoying the structure of math and engineering but thriving off the chaos that is science
• where are the mad scientist women? I need this
• people being surprised when you tell them you're majoring in something "really science-y" after being an absolute bookworm and musician all throughout your childhood and having to defend what your heart desires (no? just me?)
• CARDIGANS are peak stem culture
• "why aren't you a doctor? why aren't you going to med school? why are you doing insert reasonable science degree here and not becoming a doctor? don't you want to help people?"
• wanting to go into genetics but wanting to go into botany but wanting to go into theoretical physics but wanting to go into astronomy but wanting to go into geology but wanting to go into chemical engineering but wanting to go into astrophysics but wanting to go into wildlife biology
• for some reason having a huge obsession with morals, ethics, and philosophy
• watching true crime just for the forensic bits
• watching mythbusters as a kid
• LISTENING TO TCHAIKOVSKY, BEETHOVEN, BACH, AND MOZART those are the stem classical musicians change my mind
• doing all your homework and frying your brain then getting to read a simple book that really refreshes you
• you had the astronomy and archaeology obsession as a kid
• listening to synth wave instrumentals
• MITOCHONDRIA IS THE POWERHOUSE OF THE CELL
• when people tell you that one cool science fact they learned and you try your hardest to encourage them but girl that wasn't even close to being correct
• ScienceDirect and PubMed are your go-to databases
• having lots of intrusive, existential thoughts that sometimes suffocate you, because you know better than most how much dark dna there is or how small we really are in the universe or knowing how much math explains and how little room there is for free will or thinking about how we are made up of mostly four types of atoms
• reading science or math textbooks for fun
• reading the fountainhead by ayn rand when you were way too young and didn't understand it but now parts of it emerge from the depths of your memory and you are struck by the power
• watching marvel and x-men and jurassic park just because
• reading sci-fi because it's the closest thing to real science in literature
• knowing a little too much about radiation poisoning and how to really dissolve a body in chemicals
• wearing white to make up for how little your professors make you wear lab coats
(sorry, I don't know that much about technology and I'm a literal grandpa when it comes to using it myself)
i’m fasting for 15 hours
How long are you guys fasting for?
I’m interested in seeing who’s suffering (i.e., me) and who got it easy lol
Reblog with how long your fasts are
I’m fasting for 17 hours
i used to be such a skeptic whenever i came across any mental health advice asking you to “move your body” or “drink more water” or “eat nutritious food and get sunlight” because how can you narrow down my psyche to these physical constraints?
to me, these seemed like empty words ringing across a hallowed hall devoid of any warmth or feeling. only once i started implementing these have i realised what a power the state of your body and biological functions hold over you. i don’t feel that heavy burden of feelings dragging behind me like a phantom, choking me and consuming me and binding me in an inescapable vortex inside my head. physical liberation from that dictator of malaise and despondency has turned me into a changed woman.
i no longer recognise myself and i couldn’t be happier about it. i should learn to forgive those past versions of myself, i really know i should but perhaps i shall need more time. i don’t think it is in my nature to be forgiving yet. does god not require penance in order to unshackle you from the manacles of your sins? perhaps more atonement from my end is required to appease my grieved subconscious. or maybe im just meant to linger in the shades of what could’ve been. either way, i think im liking who im becoming.
Some dark academia things
textbooks filled with highlighted texts, doodles, annotations and coffee/tea stains from late night study sessions
dry roses on your desks, bookshelves and in random books which you open and discover several pressed flowers
using old cracked teacups as candle stick holders
textbooks being the only books you're not afraid to dogear
dozens of messy to-do lists, scratching the finished tasks and choosing to ignore the remaining ones because you're too busy celebrating your accomplishments
panic because you still have to do the remaining ones
finally taking a breath cuz ur to do list is completely scratched out and you can sleep peacefully
nvm you stayed up all night reading
i feel like a person again. i feel real as i taste the salt on my skin after a run. i feel the bitter winter current seeping through my bones. i feel the soft kiss of my quilt at every point it touches on my body as it embraces me in the cold, i see the cranberry and amber hues of the sunrise every morning as i wake to chase the sun, and i smell the fragrant aroma of the garlic cloves as they sizzle in olive oil in my pan while i cook dinner for my family. winter i love you.
