Comments on Do you cut down down blossoming trees in the spring for firewood?

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I love how you've captured the essence of Númenor in two short drabbles -- their love of their land, their longing for a longer life, their destruction of what they loved in the pursuit of more. Tolkien sure did see our human failures and encapsulate them into myth... the sorrow and regret are so hard to read sometimes. You've done this lightly, though. Excellent work.

Aren't blossoming trees always a bit sad, since they are a metaphor for the impermanence of things? Anyway, that sort of association seems to dovetail very well with the story of this double-drabble. Blossoms/the experience of blossoms disrupted by war/politics.

Yes, very true! Even in Tolkien's work, elsewhere, they are often a bit sad. And of course all that exuberant description of the Nisimaldar was written after he had already decided that Numenor was drowned eventually.

Good to hear you feel that it dovetails well with the politics, here. Thank you!

(The idea of regular visits hinted at in the first drabble was inspired by Japanese blossom-viewing, which is very much about both beauty and impermanence. I think they are not the only ones, though, just the ones who have made it a more ritualized practice than most.)