fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2011-06-07 06:05 pm
some_stars) wrote2011-06-07 06:05 pm
to them the night seems long
Tattoo: achieved! That's the photo with the best overall view and lighting, but it's a bit out of focus on the right side; the letters are actually much sharper and cleaner than they appear there. If you see anything wrong with it (either the work or the Hebrew) that can't be fixed by adding more tattoo, do NOT tell me.
The pain was pretty bad, not because it was so great in quantity but because it's the specific kind of pain I have a hard time with. I have a very high tolerance for internal pain, especially if it's more aching than sharp, especially if it comes from being hit with something blunt/thuddy. (As you might guess from my choice of terminology, I actually quite like that in certain controlled contexts.) Anything that pierces the skin is much harder for me to cope with and sends my CNS into EMERGENCY WE ARE DYING mode, while actually cutting the skin like with a blade = instant panic attack. There are further gradations along this scale and detailed descriptions of what the various kinds of needlework hurt like, but they're really gross so: moving on.
So yeah, it hurt a lot, to the point where after fifteen seconds I started thinking, fuck, I can't do this, I need to stop, but I didn't. And then after another minute I turned my ipod on and put my Mike Doughty playlist on shuffle and then it was all okay. Like, I'm pretty sure I got zero endorphins from the pain--I was slightly hoping I could trick myself into getting off on it a little, but no luck--but listening to rhythmic music that I can sing or in this case mouth along to apparently drastically inhibits my production of panic hormones. I already knew I can work out three times harder without feeling tired if I listen to music during; good to know it transfers to other kinds of "body totally freaking the fuck out" situations as well. And actually, my strategy for how not to lose my shit when getting blood taken is to recite a poem--rhyme and meter, free verse would not help--that I memorized a long time ago and know I won't forget. Suddenly losing the thread of my distracting rhythmic whatever is much worse than not having it, like when I'd hit a song on this playlist that I didn't know the words to and press skip, and get another one i didn't know and press skip, and the pain instantly switched back on and it was very very stressful. But ultimately okay. Mike Doughty heals all.
So: letters! In Hebrew! What are they? It's the third and fourth words from Psalm 130:6. Here's the NRSV translation of the whole thing. The literal gloss of 130:6 is, "My soul for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, watchmen for the morning." Things like "for" and "more than" attach to words rather than being separate, so the whole thing is only six words. My two words say--using an extremely half-assed transliteration scheme of my own patchwork devising--mi-shomrim la-boker, and incidentally I learned all my grammar over five years ago and immediately began to forget it, so a really reliable and detailed translation is beyond me. Mainly I can't remember all the various meanings of mi- or whether shomrim is a noun or a nounified verb or whatever. ...I think it's a participle...something? Maybe? NOT THE POINT.
At any rate, the important thing and the best thing to me is how the verb is left up to the reader, to a degree (obviously 'shomer' has an actual meaning, participlified or whatever)--is it "patiently wait for," "anxiously watch for," "long for without expecting," "hope for," "anticipate"--it can mean all of that without limiting itself to one set of nuances. (Similarly, the paralleling of "the Lord" and "morning" allows all the possible connotations of the latter to be reflected back onto the former.) Hence my choice of "watchmen for the morning," because it highlights the "missing" parallel verb.
While poking around different translations of this line, I discovered this commentary from what is apparently a vast set of wildly-popular-at-the-time 19th century Bible commentaries by this guy. Obviously they're all really Christian, and actually the very beginning of the commentary on 130 where he takes pains to establish that it doesn't HAVE to be about the Jews is kind of...creepy. (Though I love the last two sentences--I know of no reason why it may not be so regarded.) But his notes on 130:6 really grabbed me, although I don't quite understand why he suddenly changes "more than" to "like", or how the Septuagint version happens--I vaguely sense that there's something occurring with the genitive that I would have understood in 2006 but no longer. Anyway--I am so weak for that type of language and sentiment, overblown but entirely genuine. And also, when you run it through a de-Jesus-ing cycle or two, and maybe also secularize it, sort of--I have a complicated relationship to the Bible--and swapping wrath/mercy for absence/presence, sort of, partly, maybe--you get a decent if florid explanation of exactly how I feel. Therefore here is the relevant segment:
Which is why, despite the letters being much prettier and also sounding nicer, I couldn't get shir hama'aloth--"a song of ascents," god only knows what atrocities I just committed upon the transliteration--because the point of this tattoo is that it's not something I got to celebrate finally making it out. I'm probably never going to make it all the way out, and probably never for more than a while. I wanted the part about waiting through the night, even when it doesn't end. Or, as I've been telling people when I don't want to bother explaining my complicated mixed-up Schroedinger's Judaism: it's about hope. Which is a simplification, of course; it's really (though no less melodramatically) about surviving, and the ongoing process thereof. Waiting as hard as you can.
(Also, "a song of ascents" is pre-appended to a whole bunch of psalms, none of which I love as much as this one. But that's just a practical issue.)
The pain was pretty bad, not because it was so great in quantity but because it's the specific kind of pain I have a hard time with. I have a very high tolerance for internal pain, especially if it's more aching than sharp, especially if it comes from being hit with something blunt/thuddy. (As you might guess from my choice of terminology, I actually quite like that in certain controlled contexts.) Anything that pierces the skin is much harder for me to cope with and sends my CNS into EMERGENCY WE ARE DYING mode, while actually cutting the skin like with a blade = instant panic attack. There are further gradations along this scale and detailed descriptions of what the various kinds of needlework hurt like, but they're really gross so: moving on.
So yeah, it hurt a lot, to the point where after fifteen seconds I started thinking, fuck, I can't do this, I need to stop, but I didn't. And then after another minute I turned my ipod on and put my Mike Doughty playlist on shuffle and then it was all okay. Like, I'm pretty sure I got zero endorphins from the pain--I was slightly hoping I could trick myself into getting off on it a little, but no luck--but listening to rhythmic music that I can sing or in this case mouth along to apparently drastically inhibits my production of panic hormones. I already knew I can work out three times harder without feeling tired if I listen to music during; good to know it transfers to other kinds of "body totally freaking the fuck out" situations as well. And actually, my strategy for how not to lose my shit when getting blood taken is to recite a poem--rhyme and meter, free verse would not help--that I memorized a long time ago and know I won't forget. Suddenly losing the thread of my distracting rhythmic whatever is much worse than not having it, like when I'd hit a song on this playlist that I didn't know the words to and press skip, and get another one i didn't know and press skip, and the pain instantly switched back on and it was very very stressful. But ultimately okay. Mike Doughty heals all.
So: letters! In Hebrew! What are they? It's the third and fourth words from Psalm 130:6. Here's the NRSV translation of the whole thing. The literal gloss of 130:6 is, "My soul for the Lord more than watchmen for the morning, watchmen for the morning." Things like "for" and "more than" attach to words rather than being separate, so the whole thing is only six words. My two words say--using an extremely half-assed transliteration scheme of my own patchwork devising--mi-shomrim la-boker, and incidentally I learned all my grammar over five years ago and immediately began to forget it, so a really reliable and detailed translation is beyond me. Mainly I can't remember all the various meanings of mi- or whether shomrim is a noun or a nounified verb or whatever. ...I think it's a participle...something? Maybe? NOT THE POINT.
At any rate, the important thing and the best thing to me is how the verb is left up to the reader, to a degree (obviously 'shomer' has an actual meaning, participlified or whatever)--is it "patiently wait for," "anxiously watch for," "long for without expecting," "hope for," "anticipate"--it can mean all of that without limiting itself to one set of nuances. (Similarly, the paralleling of "the Lord" and "morning" allows all the possible connotations of the latter to be reflected back onto the former.) Hence my choice of "watchmen for the morning," because it highlights the "missing" parallel verb.
While poking around different translations of this line, I discovered this commentary from what is apparently a vast set of wildly-popular-at-the-time 19th century Bible commentaries by this guy. Obviously they're all really Christian, and actually the very beginning of the commentary on 130 where he takes pains to establish that it doesn't HAVE to be about the Jews is kind of...creepy. (Though I love the last two sentences--I know of no reason why it may not be so regarded.) But his notes on 130:6 really grabbed me, although I don't quite understand why he suddenly changes "more than" to "like", or how the Septuagint version happens--I vaguely sense that there's something occurring with the genitive that I would have understood in 2006 but no longer. Anyway--I am so weak for that type of language and sentiment, overblown but entirely genuine. And also, when you run it through a de-Jesus-ing cycle or two, and maybe also secularize it, sort of--I have a complicated relationship to the Bible--and swapping wrath/mercy for absence/presence, sort of, partly, maybe--you get a decent if florid explanation of exactly how I feel. Therefore here is the relevant segment:
My soul waiteth for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning - More intently; more anxiously. The Septuagint and Latin Vulgate render this, "My soul hopeth in the Lord from the morning watch until night." The idea is that of watchers - night guards - who look anxiously for the break of day that they may be relieved. It is not that of persons who simply look for the return of day, but of those who are on guard - or it may be who watch beside the sick or the dying - and who look out on the east to mark the first indications of returning light. To them the night seems long; they are weary, and want repose; all around is cheerless, gloomy, and still; and they long for the first signs that light will again visit the world. Thus in affliction - the long, dark, dreary, gloomy night of sorrow - the sufferer looks for the first indication, the first faint ray of comfort to the soul. Thus under deep conviction for sin, and deep apprehension of the wrath of God - that night, dark, dreary, gloomy, often long - the soul looks for some ray of comfort, some intimation that God will be merciful, and will speak peace and pardon.
I say, more than they that watch for the morning - Margin, which watch unto the morning. The translation in the text best expresses the sense. There is something exceedingly beautiful and touching in this language of repetition, though it is much enfeebled by the words which our translators have inserted, "I say, more than." The Hebrew is, "more than they that watch for the morning - watch for the morning," as if the mind dwelt upon the words as better expressing its own anxious state than any other words could do. Everyone who has been afflicted will feel the force of this; every one who has been under conviction of sin, and who has felt himself in danger of suffering the wrath of God, will remember how anxiously he longed for mercy, for light, for peace, for some indication, even the most faint, like the first ray which breaks in the east, that his soul would find mercy and peace.
Which is why, despite the letters being much prettier and also sounding nicer, I couldn't get shir hama'aloth--"a song of ascents," god only knows what atrocities I just committed upon the transliteration--because the point of this tattoo is that it's not something I got to celebrate finally making it out. I'm probably never going to make it all the way out, and probably never for more than a while. I wanted the part about waiting through the night, even when it doesn't end. Or, as I've been telling people when I don't want to bother explaining my complicated mixed-up Schroedinger's Judaism: it's about hope. Which is a simplification, of course; it's really (though no less melodramatically) about surviving, and the ongoing process thereof. Waiting as hard as you can.
(Also, "a song of ascents" is pre-appended to a whole bunch of psalms, none of which I love as much as this one. But that's just a practical issue.)
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