#when in truth it's a single idiom used at the very beginning

[the-cantina]

The art of having thirty SW wiki tabs open, just so I can be sure that chickens indeed exist in the galaxy, because of course it's very important to get all in-universe details right when writing smut, of all things.

#i mean. SOMEONE has to care about canon #and it clearly isn't the star wars writing team #but you think. of course chickens must be a crucial info to the plot of the fic #when in truth it's a single idiom used at the very beginning #but damn it if i'm not make all my fauna canon compliant. hm. #the cantina.txt #writing woes

[softgrungeprophet]

i write obviously, i took a lot of language and linguistics classes in college. it's a mix of art, science, it's deeply intertwined with anthropology and culture

anyway

it's rare (but possible; there are no universals in language) that a word is brought into the world bad. a word is a tool. it can be used to describe, to free, to find community and like minds (whether going on the adhd subreddit or being like, wow i'm gay too, let's chat) and of course it can also be used cruelly or twisted, to hurt people and confine them. words old and new can be used for all kinds of purposes of varying shittiness, varying goodness, varying neutralities...

but it's the people behind the words, not the words themselves making them tools/weapons/beauty etc.

on the one hand this means there are always new ways to use words and new words to exist, for better and for worse, and on the other hand this means that the problem is rarely the word itself (though obviously slurs are a bit more complicated in that regard) (and rarely straightforward among the people they are applied to) and rarely is a cultural or social problem addressed by something as black and white as "stop making words, stop using words, stop labeling experiences"--etc etc, take your pick of argument

the thing is, with words... is that stuff like that (restriction of any and all descriptions) is never going to happen (and if it did, that would be bad, imo), that's what words are and what language is

i think the most key thing i've ever kept in mind both during and beyond my language studies (and my general passion for linguistics, even as very much a low level non-professional--a hobbyist with a BA, if you will) is that words, grammar, intonation, all of it--language is context.

that might legitimately be the only universal in language now that i think about it lol. context. it's key--KEY--to meaning, to intention, to metaphor and color and poetry and all these other things. What language are you speaking? that's context. the fact that i'm writing this in english is context. it tells you how the letters and words i'm using should be interpreted.

context is the way language joins with culture (in all interpretations of the word: community, sexuality, ethnicity, class, etc.), with humanity and so on. they're linked so closely imo. this why any language class that's even halfway decent will generally have small mini-lessons, side paragraphs, tangents, about the culture in which they're spoken. Why IS this idiom? What DOES this word's use need? (though of course at a certain point you get into etymology there and ime most classes won't go too deep into that lol. it's essentially an entire field.)

now, listen, I don't buy into the sapir whorf stuff. for the most part, i think they were full of shit. at least when the hypothesis is taken to its most strict reaches. its highest concreteness. (not that there isn't sooome aspect of truth; i don't necessarily discount the hypothesis entirely and linguistic censorship and control 100% is a real, fashy thing, it's just... what i said. people make new words and find ways to talk about things they don't have words for. i don't think the nonexistence of a single or a few words necessarily prevents the entirety of a concept from existing, personally, though i won't argue that it can't mold perception or anything like that. what is propaganda after all...)

i'm rambling.

you know, last year around 8 months ago, a year or so after i first got diagnosed with adhd (was almost 28 at the time, am now 29 (and a half), took me... 5 years to find someone who would do anything) i was looking around, because i was physically allowed to begin stimulant medications after a couple of years of some serious health issues that prevented me from being prescribed anything other than non stimulants (probably reasonable at the time but still frustrating)--i went on reddit (i know 😂 but it's not that kind of story) to see what others' experiences were like.

the recurring thing people would say most often, of course, is that everyone on the board is different, that everyone's experiences will be (have been, are) different. not just medication but holistically. ADHD may have many commonalities but nonetheless, everyone's brain is different.

the other thing was me looking at threads of people saying, "am i the only one who does this?" and "no one i've ever met irl has this thing" and then seeing dozens of people say, yes i do this too, i also have not been able to meet other people doing this, i also thought i was alone,

and so on. little struggles and strangenesses that often felt like a pressure from everyone around them (us) irl asking why can't you just do X? (if you just cared more/tried harder) and you get a bunch of people saying, you're not actually alone, we're all here and not all of us do that but here are six or twelve or twenty or two hundred people who do.

it's funny because until my mid twenties (around senior year of college i think is when i began to look into it, thanks to posts i had seen online describing various aspects of adult adhd, adhd in girls, etc (not that i necessarily go with "girl" atm)) i had no word for describing what i was.

but the thing is i could tell there was something. so without the word to actually find other people like me or to learn about ADHD in a practical way, what i ended up with was not a lack of boxing myself in or of confining myself to a label. lol. lmao. prior, without "ADHD" as a reference point, what i had for myself was instead, "lazy" and "stupid" and "broken."

i don't trust any post that declares a cure to a cultural issue being to remove a word or words. rarely if ever will that solve anything. what it almost definitely will do, however, is deprive. when you do not have a word you can share with anyone else, it is very hard to find people who are like you (bisexual, ADHD, possibly a "drop of autism" as one of my therapists said) but people, including yourself, will still notice the things that make you yourself. that's the context, so where are the words?

(you know something funny? in either 6th or 8th grade (i only remember it was not 7th because we were in a different building in 7th grade) a friend of mine, in the gym, named Sadie, asked me "are you autistic?" Because she noted that i almost never make eye contact. i told her no. now, of course, with an unquestionably autistic younger brother (and me finally w an ADHD diagnosis like... 10 years later) all of us have begun to wonder about for example me and my sister but also about others in our family. we are a strange bunch. for some of us it's definitely ADHD, though some of my uncles are dyslexic, and for others... well you know how it is lol)

anyway what the fuck was i saying (how the fuck do i get my gboard to recognize context and stop suggesting "duck" no matter how many times i delete it?)

i just think it's always key to remember that the thing about words is that it's how you use them.

("born this way" is not innately a confinement; it was made that way out of a phrase intended to mean "this is who i am and there is nothing wrong with me"--not to restrict oneself to being only one immutable thing but to say I Was Born Me. Who "me" is doesn't have to be set in stone) (that's how i feel at least)

#i will leave reblogs on for now but this is not really a debate post it is a musing post #so please don't try to debate me. i am not here to make logic arguments. i'm just chillin. #nadia rambles #long post

[chanoyu-to-wa]

Nampō Roku, Book 7 (70):  Rikyū Said, the Two Mat Room with a Mukō-ro is the Place Where the Sō-an Lives.

70) [Ri]kyū continuously declared, “the two-mat〚room〛with mukō-ro, this was the first place where the sō-an [草菴] took up its abode¹.  When the [naka-]bashira was erected, and the ro was relocated onto a different mat to the right [of the utensil mat], this was regrettable².

    “From that [early two-mat room] -- this was [done] so that the guests would not feel so constrained -- [the room] increased to three mats, and then four mats³.  Year after year, month by month, we have gotten used to doing various things [that were previously unknown]⁴.

    “Then, because the size of the room [beside] the daime-tatami could be [manipulated] freely, many kinds of [new] arrangements also became possible⁵.  And once various sorts of utensils [that had never been used before in the sō-an] came to be brought out, the effort [to realize the chanoyu of the sō-an] became futile⁶.

    “If only things had [remained] as they were in the beginning, with nothing but the mukō-ro! -- since, despite how wonderful [these various innovations and modifications] might seem to be, they never should have been allowed to come into being. 〚[And] if things had remained just as they were, with but a single way to use the mukō-ro, no matter how delightful we might think [the different ways of doing] things are, having a great number of ways to do [the same thing] is wrong⁷.”

   〚Time and again, we must reflect on our errors [and strive to do better], so it has been asserted⁸.  We have to recognize [Ri]kyū’s unrelenting care and attention to [the realization of] a tea focused on sincerity and truth⁹ -- [because] such conscientiousness has [actually] been the norm since the earliest days¹⁰.  It is through words such as these that we also may come to an understanding [of such things]¹¹ -- because a truly considerate chajin is someone who is worthy of praise!  How very unfortunate [that such chajin are so few and far between today]¹²!〛

_________________________

◎ Like many of the preceding entries, the toku-shu shahon and genpon versions include comments that are absent from the Enkaku-ji manuscript -- and in the same manner as we have seen heretofore:  the first sentence features certain (relatively minor) additions, with several new sentences (in this case, those covered by footnotes 8 to 12) added to the end of the passage.  While the existence of different versions suggests that we are probably dealing with a kernel of truth that dates from Nambō Sōkei’s day in this entry, the idiom used by the authors in the present versions of the text also agrees with what we have seen in the similar instances earlier in Book Seven where multiple versions are found that parallel this one, suggesting that all of these sections were written (or edited*) and added to the collection of documents cached in the Shū-un-an by the same person, at the same time.

    In the same way that I structured the earlier translations, the additional material from the toku-shu shahon has been incorporated into the above translation (enclosed in doubled brackets, in order to distinguish the additions from the original text).  Variations found in the genpon version of the text have been largely dealt with in the footnotes. ___________ *All of the sections that exhibit this same pattern of sequential modification (all of which are restricted to Book Seven) appear to be based on material that had been preserved by Nambō Sōkei.  Nevertheless, these passages seem to have been edited (most likely, to bring them into conformity with the teachings of the Sen family -- which is suggested by the Edo idiom that was used by their author) before being returned to Sōkei’s archive.

¹Kyū tsune ni no tamau, ni-jō mukō-ro, kore sō-an dai-ichi no sumai naru-beshi　[休常ニノ玉フ、二疊向爐、コレ草菴第一ノスマヰナルベシ].

    Kyū tsune ni no tamau [休常にの給う] means (this was) Rikyū’s constant way of speaking*.

    Ni-jō mukō-ro, kore sō-an dai-ichi no sumai naru-beshi [二疊向爐、これ草庵第一の住居なるべし]:  ni-jō mukō-ro [二疊向爐] means a two mat room with mukō-ro; kore sō-an dai-ichi no sumai [これ草庵第一の住居] means this is the primary† place where the sō-an lives; naru-beshi [なるべし] means (it) should be (like this).

    Two versions of Rikyū’s two-mat room with mukō-ro are shown below.

    Shibayama’s toku-shu shahon has “Kyū tsune ni no tamau, ni-jō shiki kyaku-tsuke no mukō-ro, kore sō-an dai-ichi no sumai narubeshi“ [休常ニノ玉フ、二疊敷客附ノ向爐、是レ草菴第一ノ住居ナルベシ].  

    Ni-jō-shiki kyaku-tsuke no mukō-ro [二疊敷客附の向爐]:  ni-jo-shiki [二疊敷] means a two-mat room‡; kyaku-tsuke no mukō-ro [客附の向爐] means the mukō-ro is cut on the side of the utensil mat closest to the guests.  This is certainly more specific than what is found in the Enkaku-ji manuscript, but the Enkaku-ji manuscript uses forms with which we are already perfectly familiar (after progressing this far in the Nampō Roku), so the lack of specificity is not an issue (and so unnecessary).

    The genpon abbreviates the first phrase to “Kyu no iu” [休ノ云], which means (what follows) was (something) Rikyū said.  The rest of the sentence is the same as what was said in the toku-shu shahon version. __________ *More literally, Rikyū constantly bestowed (or pronounced) this (teaching) on (everyone with whom he came into contact).

    This is an intentional exaggeration, one that was intended to suggest to the reader that Rikyū made an effort to promote the idea that the two-mat room was the origin of the sō-an.  This is because, if we look at the documented history of chanoyu in Japan, the first rooms smaller than 4.5-mats were built in the spring of 1555 -- both of which were ni-jō daime [二疊臺目] rooms.  The 2-mat room with mukō-ro is not mentioned until years after Jōō’s death (which occurred at the end of 1555).

    Apparently Rikyū was looking back to an earlier time -- referring to chanoyu and the concept of the sō-an as these had existed outside of Japan (and probably to alluding to ideas that he encountered during his prolonged stay on the continent) for his precedent.

†Dai-ichi [第一] could also mean foremost or principal here.

    It could even be interpreted to literally mean the first (place) -- as in that the two-mat room was the first place where the (idea of the) sō-an took up its abode:  that is, the idea of the sō-an began with the guests moving into the 2-mat anteroom where the o-chanoyu-dana [御茶湯棚] was installed, and drinking their tea there (rather than waiting for it to be conveyed to them in the shoin).

‡Literally, ni-jō [二疊], which is what is found in the Enkaku-ji manuscript, means two tatami-mats.  However, it is correctly assumed that this is referring to a room of that size.  In Shibayama’s text, however, this fact is specified literally.

²Hashira wo tate, migi no betsu-tatami ni ro wo naoshitaru-koto kō-kai nari　[柱ヲ立、右ノ別タヽミニ爐ヲナヲシタルコト後悔也].

    Hashira wo tate, migi no betsu-tatami ni ro wo naoshitaru-koto [柱を立て、右の別疊に爐を直したること]:  hashira wo tate [柱を立て] is referring to erecting a naka-bashira [中柱]; migi no betsu-tatami ni ro wo naoshitaru [右の別疊に爐を直したる] means to decide to relocate the ro onto the mat to the right (of the utensil mat); and -koto [こと] means the case or situation where these things were done -- that is, this is referring to the creation of the 2-mat daime room.

    This sketch shows Jōō’s Yamazato-no-iori [山里ノ庵] (left) and Rikyū’s Jissō-an [實相庵] (right), the first two “small rooms” ever seen in Japan*, both of which were built in the spring of 1555.  Note that in these rooms, while the fukuro-dana was still used (at least at first), it was completely hidden by the sode-kabe (which extended from floor to ceiling, making everything within the kamae invisible to the guests)

    Kō-kai nari [後悔なり] means (the establishment of the 2-mat daime room) was regrettable.  In other words, Rikyū is being quoted as having regretted, or been remorseful, that he and Jōō had decided (probably for the convenience of the guests†) to create the 2-mat daime room.

    The other two versions agree with the text of this sentence. __________ *At least in so far as what we might call dedicated tearooms was concerned.

    Shukō’s original Shukō-an [珠光庵] is said to have been a 2-mat room (with a walled-off, wood-floored recess -- originally a place to store things like bedding during the daytime -- that he used as if it were an o-chanoyu-dana when serving tea); but this was a monk’s residential cell, so its use for serving tea was occasional and temporary.

†Prior to that time, the only kind of room that had been used for wabi-chanoyu was the 4.5-mat room.  If a group of guests had suddenly been invited into a two-mat room at that point in time, they would have been completely unprepared regarding where to sit and how to conduct themselves.  The 2-mat daime room allows the guests to basically conduct themselves as usual, while reducing the overall space -- in particular, the space used by the host for the display and arrangement of the utensils.

³Sore-yori kyaku-seki no tsumanu-yō ni tote, san-jō ni nari, shi-jō ni nari　[ソレヨリ客席ノツマラヌヤウニトテ、三疊ニ成、四疊ニ成].

    Sore-yori kyaku-seki no tsumanu-yō ni tote [それより客席の詰まらぬようにとて] means from the early room, in order that the area used by the guests for their seats was not constrained (or useless)... -- that is, so that the guests did not feel boxed in.

    San-jō ni nari, shi-jō ni nari [三疊になり、四疊になり] means (the room) became three-mats, four mats.  This is referring to rooms of the following sorts.

    Because the original two-mat room would seem to confine the guests to too small an area, the room was increased to three mats, and then four mats.  The details of these expansions have been discussed elsewhere in the Nampō Roku (both in Book One, and again in Book Seven).

    While Shibayama’s toku-shu shahon reproduces the sentence as given in the Enkaku-ji manuscript, Tanaka’s genpon changes the ending, so that it reads san-jō ni mo, shi-jō ni mo nari [三疊ニモ、四疊ニモナリ] meaning that (in addition to the two mat room), rooms of three mats also, and rooms of four mats also, came into being.  The basic meaning -- that the size of the room was increased in relatively short order -- is the same. ___________ *The reader may refer to the following posts for further information:

￮ Nampō Roku, Book 1 (16):  Regarding the Boards that are Inserted at the Far End of the Utensil Mat.

http://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/175652104074/namp%C5%8D-roku-book-1-16-concerning-the-boards

￮ Nampō Roku, Book 7 (40):  the Deep Three-mat Room.

https://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/702653075106742272/namp%C5%8D-roku-book-7-40-the-deep-three-mat

￮ Nampō Roku, Book 7 (41):  the Naga-yojō [長四疊] Room.

https://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/703015465673441280/namp%C5%8D-roku-book-7-41-the-long-four-mat-room%C2%B9

￮ Nampō Roku, Book 7 (42, 43, 44):  the Sketches for Entries 39, 40, and 41.

https://chanoyu-to-wa.tumblr.com/post/703287276430655488/namp%C5%8D-roku-book-7-42-43-44-the-sketches-for

⁴Nen-nen tsuki-zuki iro-iro no koto ni nareri　[年〻月〻色〻ノコトニナレリ].

    Nen-nen [年々] means year after year.

    Tsuki-zuki [月々] means monthly, every month, month by month.

    Iro-iro no koto ni nareri [色々] means we get used to doing various things (that move farther and farther away from the tradition established by Rikyū).

    In other words the push away from Rikyū’s chanoyu was insidious*; it overwhelmed every trace of what had been there before.

    While this sentence is the same in Shibayama’s toku-shu shahon, it is completely missing from the genpon version of the text. __________ *While this statement is very true, we must remember that this is not really talking about Rikyū’s actual style of chanoyu (which had already been all but forgotten), but the machi-shū tea (derived from the teachings of Imai Sōkyū) that was being championed by the Sen family.  The second half of the seventeenth century was when the opposition to the Sen family (ironically, by the daimyō whose ancestors had been trained personally by Rikyū, and whose movement was technically intent upon repudiating Sōtan’s changes and restoring Rikyū’s chanoyu) began to reach fever pitch.

    Unfortunately, this fledgling back-to-Rikyū movement was damned to failure on account of the fact that Rikyū’s densho (which were the only bridge between Rikyū and the chajin of the second half of the seventeenth century) were always written for a specific person, to answer that individual’s specific questions; and his answers were always predicated on the understanding that his correspondent already possessed.  Thus, when the bakufu finally permitted the daimyō to restore the Rikyū-derived traditions that had been passed down within their families, their basic approach to the practice of temae had already been irreparably corrupted by their having been forced to imitate the manner of Sen no Sōtan for two generations, as much as by the fact that Rikyū’s densho are notoriously incomplete when viewed individually.  (It was only possible to collate and summarize Rikyū’s actual teachings only after Suzuki Keiichi published his Sen no Rikyū zen-shū [千利休全集] -- in 1941 -- because that was the first time that all of the densho had been collected together, allowing them to be compared, and the blanks in one filled in with information that had been disclosed in one of the others.)  The result was that, though the original idea had been to restore Rikyu’s chanoyu, this concatenation of circumstances meant that every daimyō moved off on his own tangent, as a consequence of the coloring of their pre-existing Sōtan-style chanoyu with a patina of only those Rikyū-based teachings that had been imparted specifically to their ancestor (while remaining largely, or wholly, ignorant of everything that had not been communicated, in writing, to that person -- since only the written word remained, while everything that had already been known by their ancestor, and so not mentioned by Rikyū in the densho that he wrote for that person, was long forgotten, suffocated under the unprecedented weight of Sōtan’s machi-shū tea).

⁵Mata daime-datami hiroku jiyū naru-yue, shu-ju no oki-awase mo dekiru　[又臺目ダヽミ廣ク自由ナルユヘ、種〻ノ置合モ出來].

    Mata daime-datami hiroku jiyū naru-yue [又臺目疊廣く自由なるゆえ] means because the largeness (of the room) of the daime (setting) could be (manipulated) freely....

    In other words, because the number of mats that could be added to the right of the daime was free and unrestricted*....

    Shu-ju no oki-awase mo dekiru [種々の置き合わせも出來る] means various kinds of arrangements were possible.

    The toku-shu shahon and genpon texts add the word kazari [飾 or カザリ] before oki-awase [置合].  Oki-awase means the arrangement (the way the objects are placed out together on the mat); kazari oki-awase [カザリ置合] means the arrangement of the kazari.  This has no impact on the English meaning (since the fact that it is the kazari that is being “arranged” is already understood from the context). __________ *This experimentation began with Sōtan's original room, which had just one mat to the right of the daime.  As a result, the original Fushin-an [不審庵] was not a sukiya [数奇屋] because it failed to give the guests an unobstructed mat for their own use.

    This is why, once the family became the prominent force in the world of contemporary chanoyu, Sōtan's son Kōshin Sōsa [江岑宗左; 1613 ~ 1671] added not just one, but two additional mats beside the mat in which the ro had been cut, making it an early example of the three-mat daime room.

    Jōō’s Yamazato-no-iori and Rikyū’s Jissō-an, the first two daime chaseki, were, of course, two-mat daime rooms.  They are illustrated under footnote 2, above.

    Later on, even larger numbers of mats were added next to a daime utensil mat -- sometimes making the daime utensil part of a shoin-style room.  These rooms are part of the corrupt trend that was discussed in the previous two footnotes.

⁶Sama-zama no dōgu wo tori-dashi, mu-yaku no koto ni narinu　[サマ〰ノ道具ヲモ取出シ、無益ノコトニナリヌ].

    Sama-zama no dōgu wo tori-dashi [様々の道具をも取り出し] means various sorts of utensils* were brought out (in these expanded versions of the daime setting).

    Mu-yaku no koto ni narinu [無益のことになりぬ] means these reckless (variations) will not be of any use.

    The reason for this being futile or useless is that the goal was to realize the chanoyu of the sō-an, and the introduction of the utensils and arrangements that had been created for the daisu-shoin setting is counterproductive†.

    The second phrase of Shibayama's version is mu-eki no koto nari [サマ〻〻ノ道具ヲモ取出シ、無益ノコトナリ].  This means (bringing out various utensils) is futile.

    There is no real difference between what these two variants are trying to say.

    This sentence is completely missing from the genpon version of the text. __________ *The implication is that these various utensil combinations were never sanctioned for use on the daime, and are only being attempted because the rest of the room has expanded to the point where it is now for all intents and purposes a shoin.

†As this was the direction that chanoyu had taken during the Edo period, this entry is, at least in part, a protest against this trend.

⁷Hajime no gotoku mukō-ro bakari naraba, ika-hodo mezurashiki-koto wo subeki to omotte mo, naru-bekarazu to iu-iu　[始ノゴトク向爐バカリナラバ、イカホドメヅラシキコトヲスベキト思テモ、ナルベカラズト云〻].

    Hajime no gotoku mukō-ro bakari naraba [始の如く向爐ばかりならば] means “if, as in the beginning, only the mukō-ro was being used....”

    In other words, if none of the other variants (such as the daime) had ever been proposed -- if the sō-an had been strictly limited to rooms where tea was made with a mukō-ro*....

    Ika-hodo mezurashiki-koto wo subeki to omotte mo [如何ほど珍しいことをすべきと思っても] means “no matter how wonderful (diverging from the tea of the mukō-ro) might be considered to be....”

    Naru-bekarazu to iu-iu [なるべからずト云々] means “it should never have been done.”

    This is the end of the passage, as it is found in the Enkaku-ji manuscript.

    The toku-shu shahon text, on the other hand, has hatsu no mama mukō-ro to hito-dōri naraba, ika-hodo mezurashiku-sen to omōte mo, amata no koto ha naru-majiki nari [初ノマヽ向爐一通ナラバ、イカ程珍ラシクセント思フテモ、アマタノコトハナルマジキナリ].

    Hatsu no mama [初のまま] means just as in the beginning.

    Mukō-ro hito-dōri naraba [向爐一通りならば] means even if there had only been one way (to use) the mukō-ro....

    Ika-hodo mezurashiku-sen to omote mo [如何程珍らしく爲んと思うても] means even if you think (the variations are) extremely wonderful to do....

    Amata no koto ha [數多のことは] means a great number of ways to do (something)....

    Naru-majiki nari [成る間敷きなり] means (this) should not be done.

    In other words, “even if, just as in the beginning, the mukō-ro had (always) been used in only the one (original) way, even if (the variations) seem wonderful, having many options is not appropriate.”

    The argument here is not that it is the deviations from the mukō-ro setting that were problematic, but that numerous variations on the way to do things (with the mukō-ro), the various forms of the mukō-ro temae (each with its own secret rules, connected with specific utensils), is what is uncalled for.  Rather than trying to come up with different ways to do things in order to “spice up” the gathering (as is often the rationale behind the many modern variations), people should content themselves with using the mukō-ro as it was originally intended to be used† -- since the purpose of chanoyu in the sō-an is to prepare and share a good bowl of koicha, so the most expedient way of doing that is best.

    For this reason, I decided to include this version at the end of the paragraph, even though it, to a large extent, repeats what has just been said in slightly different words (that produce a different meaning), with the text enclosed in doubled brackets.

    The genpon text includes this version of the sentence. __________ *When the ro was first introduced (in the 4.5-mat room setting), Jōō’s intention was that it should have been used all year round.

    The same idea appears to have been in the back of Rikyū’s mind, regarding the two-mat room with mukō-ro.

    That is why rooms with a ro were considered sō-an -- because they did away with the elaborate trappings (the costly metal furo, or even one made of clay, and the various ways of arranging the room that this utensil demanded).

    The first time a furo was used in the small room (in 1586) was when Rikyū created the Yamazato-dana [山里棚] for Hideyoshi to use when serving tea in his Yamazato-maru [山里丸] -- the two-mat room in the boathouse on the moat within Hideyoshi’s Ōsaka castle compound.  The purpose was, like with the daisu, to have everything already ready in the room, so that Hideyoshi could enter, simply serve tea (without having to go back and forth from the temae-za to the katte bringing things out) while talking with his guests, and then leave with them (without having to empty the utensil mat afterward).

    The first time a furo was used in the small room in a public setting (the guests visiting the Yamazato-maru were, of course, Hideyoshi’s intimates) was when Rikyū did so in the two-mat room he constructed within the tea village in the pine-barren that surrounded the Hakozaki-gū in 1587.  That room featured a mukō-ro; but when Rikyū wanted to use the small unryū-gama in that setting (perhaps as a way to keep the heat to a minimum), he did so by placing the large Temmyō kimen-buro (that had been Nobunaga's treasure) on top of the closed lid of the mukō-ro -- causing the guests to comment that Rikyū had placed the furo directly on the floor.  While Rikyū seems to have done this as a subtle way to reinforce the continuity between Nobunaga’s reign and that of Hideyoshi (a point that was still being doubted by some of the influential citizens of Hakata), both of these details were initially unnerving to the chain of that area, because they violated the recognized conventions.  (Though, after thinking things through, they also opened up possibilities that had never been considered before -- and thus were imitated in quick order by the chajin of Hakata.)

†This accords with the criticism of the chanoyu of the capital mentioned at the end of the previous entry (in the genpon version of the text), that the chajin of the capital had become so caught up in the idea of doing things differently for the sake of making the gathering more interesting (and challenging -- since only the members of a small group would understand exactly what to do, while those who had studied with a different teacher might find themselves stymied) -- that they had completely lost touch with Rikyū’s (or, rather, the Sen family’s) teachings on the correct way to practice chanoyu.

    The reader will notice a certain continuity of idiom between that entry (in the genpon) and the present one (as found in the same source) that confirms this interpretation of the relationship between these two passages.

⁸Kaesu-gaesu ayamachi to koso oboyuru to mōsare-shi　[返ス〻〻過チトコソ覺ユルト被申シ].

    From this sentence on to the end of the entry, we are considering ideas* only found in the toku-shu shahon and genpon texts.  All of this material is missing from the Enkaku-ji manuscript.

    Kaesu-gaesu [返す返す] means repeatedly, time and time again, again and again, over and over.

    Ayamachi to koso [過ちとこそ] means precisely those mistakes (that you have fallen into repeatedly).

    Oboeru to mōsare-shi [覺えると申されし] means it is said that (it is just those mistakes) on which you should focus your efforts (to eliminate them from your practice).

    Tanaka’s genpon text has kaesu-gaesu ayamachi to koso oboere to mosare-shi [カヘス〰アヤマチトコソ覺レト被申シ].  The change means “(you) are urged to remember (i.e., look into) the mistakes to which you return again and again.”

    While the wording is slightly different, the essential meaning -- that one should actively criticize one’s own temae, and take whatever steps are necessary to correct one’s mistakes -- is the same. __________ *Perhaps “admonitions” would be a better word for these dicta.  The pedantic neo-Confucian tone that became more and more a feature of chanoyu instruction in the late Edo period (and beyond -- including in the modern day) is increasingly apparent in these added sentences.

⁹Kyū no kokoro-ire ha kure-gure magokoro-makoto no cha wo omoi-torite　[休ノ心入ハ呉〻眞心眞實ノ茶ヲ思ヒ取リテ].

    Kyū no kokoro-ire [休の心入] means Rikyū’s care and attention (to every aspect of the practice of chanoyu).

    Kure-gure [呉々] means repeatedly, again and again, over and over.

    Magokoro-makoto no cha [眞心眞實の茶] means that Rikyū’s tea was truehearted (absolutely sincere) and genuine (revelatory of the truth).

    Omoi-toru [思い取る] means to realize, to understand, to be considerate of (something), to decide (upon), to make up one’s mind.

    In other words, Rikyū was always careful that chanoyu be always and deeply concerned with sincerity and truth*.

    The identical sentence is found in Tanaka’s genpon text. __________ *These remarks can be considered part of what we might call the apotheosis of Rikyū -- turning him from a devoted and dedicated practitioner of chanoyu into a superhuman tea kami whose purpose was to guide the tea community toward truth and sincerity.  The remainder of the entry is intended to glorify him in the eyes of the reader.

¹⁰Kokoro-zukai arishi-koto　[心遣アリシコト].

    Kokoro-zukai [心遣い] means things like consideration, thoughtfulness, attentiveness, solicitude (being solicitous toward some principal).

    Arishi-koto [在りしこと] means (this attitude of attentiveness) has existed since the early days.

    The criticism seems to be that the mindless and formalistic way of practicing chanoyu is a recent aberration.

    Once again, the genpon text includes the same sentence.

¹¹Kayō no kotoba ni te mo shiraruru nari　[ケ様ノ言ニテモ知ラルヽナリ].

    Kayō no kotoba ni te mo [斯様の言葉にても] means (it is) also through words of that sort (i.e., the ideas discussed in the previous footnotes).

    Shirareru [知られるなり] means (this concept) is made known.

    In other words, a chajin’s greatness can be known not only through descriptions of his doings, but also by contrasting him with the usual ways of the world.

    Here again, Tanaka’s genpon source agrees* with the toku-shu shahon text. __________ *That said, the kanji used in Tanaka’s version are less ambiguous:  kayō no kotoba ni te mo shiraruru nari [カヤウノ辞ニテモシラルヽ也].

    Kayō [カヤウ] is a phonetic representation of the expression, while kayō [ケ様] is one of those weird written mannerisms that were so popular around the middle of the Edo period.

    Likewise, kotoba [辞], which means language, words, expressions, etc., is clearer than kotoba [言] -- which, as a kanji, is more commonly used to refer to speaking or speech.  Today the classical kotoba [言葉] (“the leaves of speech”) is, of course, preferred over these other two.

¹²Shinsetsu kidoku no chajin oshimu-beshi oshimu-beshi　[深切奇��ノ茶人可惜〻〻].

    Shinsetsu kidoku no chajin [深切奇特の茶人]:  shinsetsu [深切] means things like kind, gentle, considerate, generous, and so forth; kidoku* [奇特] means to be worthy of praise.

    Thus, someone who embodies the virtues that we have been discussing in the past several footnotes is a chajin who is worthy of praise.

    Oshimu-beshi oshimu-beshi [惜しむべし惜しむべし] is a lament (the repetition gives added emphasis) -- that chajin of this sort are all but unknown in the contemporary world of tea.  It would be translated by expressions like “how sad,” “such a loss,” “how unfortunate,” “how regrettable,” and so on.

    This can also be interpreted as a specific lament over the loss of Rikyū -- since he clearly has been drawn as the personification of the ideal chajin.

    Though the genpon text spells out the second phrase (oshimu-beshi oshimu-beshi [惜ムベシ〰], as opposed to oshimu-beshi oshimu-beshi [可惜〻〻] as found in Shibayama’s toku-shu shahon), the sentences are actually identical. __________ *Today, kitoku [きとく = 奇特] seems to be the preferred pronunciation.

[chocolatewinnerenemy]

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#fake bags online

[fandom-space-princess]

Sleight of Hand

midam week prompt 7: Magical - related to, using, or resembling magic

Rating: Teen [1.1k words. genre: weird little introspective bit of character study]

Keep your eyes on the mirror, and watch closely for the trick: which face is looking back?

read below the cut, or on AO3

Now you see me:

-----

They're on especially friendly terms with Adam's bathroom mirror.

Post-resurrection, they practice and practice and practice, hours spent studying the face once again shared between them. Michael manifests at his side, watching their doubled expressions so intently in the glass: an angel and a man, each engaged in a determined attempt to perfectly mimic the other. Adam, gaze high and jaw firm, trying on Michael's imperious indifference like an ill-fitting jacket. Michael, softening his eyes and twitching his lips upward into Adam's dimpled smile. Matching posture to mood: he demonstrates how to roll their shoulders, shake out the tension Michael habitually carries (trailing soothing fingers across his back, laughing at the absurdity of teaching an angel to slouch). Michael straightens Adam's spine in turn, gentle nudges to broaden his stance, hold his head up higher (letting him get a feel for the extraplanar pull of wings at their back, how the phantom weight alters Michael's center of gravity).

Speaking in the other's voice comes less naturally. Not simply the differing way they use their shared vocal chords — although Michael's baritone growl scratches at his throat and Adam's mellower pitch rings alien in Michael's mouth (they end up settling somewhere in the middle). They also parrot vocabulary back and forth, fit cadence to idiom until Adam's curiosity and snark fall past Michael's lips with ease, until Michael's measured and decisive tones roll off Adam's tongue.

Practice, practice, practice. Command of their body switched back and forth. He yields control to Michael, retakes it, then gives it up again; sliding past each other and pushing to the surface, eyes locked on the mirror. Until it's as natural as breathing,

(remember to breathe, Adam murmurs, breathe and fidget and let our heart beat. Human things. Remember?)

as natural as flying,

(they're your wings too, Michael whispers back, feel the connection to them. They're a part of you, like your feet, like your eyes. Remember?)

and they can do it without flinching, without tipping their hand. No one would be any the wiser.

Until, little by little, they can pull it off.

Keep your eyes on the mirror, and watch closely for the trick: which face is looking back?

-----

When it comes, it is — very pointedly — an invitation, and not a summons. So different from the Heaven of old.

His return is not greeted with ceremony, but Castiel does meet him at the front gate.

Much has changed in ten short years. Jack has made quick work of his intentions: the structure of the place is altered on a fundamental level, human heavens broken wide, open space where once walls had subdivided. The continuity of the landscape has a malleable, dreamlike quality, and as he watches it reshapes itself in gentle sighing acquiescence around the whims of its inhabitants.

Many angels have been resurrected. Some, Jack has created anew. Their work keeps them busy, a constant background hum of activity. The familiar and unfamiliar alike afford them a wide berth. He follows Castiel where he leads, and allows the air between them to fill with stoic silence.

By and by, Castiel breaks it. "Thank you for coming," he rumbles, picking his way along what for the moment appears as a forest path. "We didn't know if you would. I know we didn't part on the best of terms—"

"That's one way to put it," he replies mildly.

"—but I was hopeful we might be able to move past that."

The path blends seamlessly, with the logic of dreams, into a set of marble steps. Ascending, they find themselves in front of a vast plate-glass window, overlooking what would, on Earth, be a park. Human souls loiter in the warm sunlight, laying back in the grass or sharing quiet conversation. Some stroll idly. One family, atop a hill, picnic in companionable silence.

Castiel continues. "You led us, once. We've done our best with this place, but we're still rebuilding." His eyes follow a young couple, ambling past below. "There is so much to be done. To be frank, we could use any assistance you're willing to give. And..." he glances sideways at Michael, before continuing. "This place was your home, too. If you wanted it to be again, you'd be welcomed."

"This place has a new God, taking considerably better care of it than the old one ever did. It doesn't need a leader."

"True enough," Castiel replies, after a moment. The unacknowledged invitation hangs in the air, but Castiel doesn't press the issue, and for that he feels a small flicker of gratitude.

"If that's all." He takes a single step back, away from the window. "We'll be going. If you want to contact us again, you know how to find us."

Castiel turns to him, then, and furrows his brow. He looks, really looks, at him for the first time since his arrival, gaze searching over his features.

"Am I..." he begins, slowly, comprehension dawning on his face. "... which one of you am I speaking with?"

He tilts his head, fixes Castiel with a gaze that is piercing, but not unkind. "Ask yourself why it matters to you," he replies, and vanishes with a thought.

-----

Now you don't:

-----

There are facets of Michael that no one else will ever see.

The Sword of Heaven had been forged of steely, unyielding certainty. But in learning to don that mask for Michael's sake, Adam has come to realize exactly how little Michael likes wearing it, either. Alone in the dark of their apartment and sheltered by the canopy of massive wings, he finds the truth written in the contours of Michael's face under his tracing fingertips.

"What are you thinking?" he whispers, although he is certain he knows.

That I love you, comes the reply, and Adam murmurs it back across his lips.

"Are you ok?"

Not really. As vulnerable in that moment as he had once been unassailable. But I think... I think I will be. Thank you. For... you know.

What a privilege, to be allowed behind that mask. To touch the gentle spirit underneath.

Adam curls around him, twining long limbs around his own. Presses close into Michael's space, resting their foreheads together. "Thank you for trusting me. With all of it. I know it isn't easy." A soft kiss, barely a whisper across his mouth. He idles fingers along the curve of Michael's cheekbone, the gentle sweep of his shoulder, the column of his throat.

I could say the same to you. Michael catches his hand, draws it back to his face. Presses a kiss to his palm.

"Better together, huh?" Adam smiles, and Michael breathes out a laugh.

Better together. Always.

#how do i even tag this #odd little slice of life/introspective thing #they are the anthropomorphic personification of a magic trick and no I will not be taking questions #michael spn #adam milligan #midam #midam week #spn #fanfic #mine #my fanfic

[onceuponanaromantic]

The End is Where (we begin again)

(Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial​‘s prompt: FFF114 Fleeting Hearts. Can be read on its own! Enjoy. Translations of the Haelendian below the cut.)

She marked down another symbol, flicking the tip of her fountain pen hard. Without looking up, she wiped away the ink clot stain, running her thumb over the scarred surface of the lecture theatre table.

             “You could just come down and sit here, if you want to hang out.” She said, continuing her puzzling through the reaction sequence.

             There was a mostly imperceptible rustling in the darkness above her, and then a quiet thud of something landing on the staircase. She hummed, frowning as she scratched out a careless mistake.

             “koras sig no haie. (1)” A voice behind her said. She merely hummed again in response.

           “miya no kaieri.(2)” She twirled her pen. “Also, speak English while I’m doing chem. Turns out speaking multiple languages is fucking with my grammar.”

           “kon rikyo sami.(3)” The demon said, a smile in her voice. “But okay.”

           “I speak Hael all the time when I talk to you over the mirror. The least you can do is speak English when you’re on this plane.”

           “You like speaking Haelendian.” The demon’s accent got slightly thicker, the musical cadence of her voice dancing.

           “Well yes, but I have prelims soon. And there’s three different registers I have to use in my writing. Can’t have my grammar messing up because of Haelendian on top of everything else.” She paused. “Or four different registers, I suppose if you count my research paper.”

           The demon laughed, balancing herself across the backs of three separate seats and resting her heels on a table a row behind the girl.

             “Of course, that’s why you’re hiding in a lecture theatre with no magical influence whatsoever and doing chemistry.”

           The girl shrugged, writing down another line of reasoning alongside her original one.       “I wanted privacy. It’s the seventh month. No reason why I shouldn’t leverage my relationships with ghosts to get what I want.”

           She frowned, biting her tongue between her teeth, and sticking it out of the corner of her mouth as she scribbled down a few more lines. Then, something seemed to click. She grinned, her eyes lighting up. She drew five separate structures quickly and then put down her pen, turning to the demon lounging behind her.

             The demon looked down at her, her braids hanging down.

             “Humans get a bit picky about how you sit when you present as a girl, you know.” The girl said, raising an eyebrow.

             “I’m not even wearing a skirt.” The demon complained, twisting herself into a complicated position that seemed to balance her body weight on a single seat and its accompanying table while still dangling upside down.

             “You don’t need to complain to me of all people.” The girl muttered, throwing her head back to look up and kicking her own shoes off to rest her feet on the seat in front of her. A single paper slid off her table.

             She looked at it, and then ignored it.

             “I hate electrochem.” She muttered. “Not that I’m doing it now, but I don’t like it.”

           “Anything else you want to complain about?”

           “If I started, I wouldn’t finish in time for the end of break.”

             The demon shrugged. “We have a month.”

           “Only.”

           “Miyako kyonaris mi raiyo.” The demon quoted an idiom. The night comes to both those who rise and those who fall.

                       The girl closed her eyes. “Of course I want to run away. But I have duty here.” She opened her eyes. “I did say I was sorry.”

           The demon sighed, twisting to slide down into the seat she was perched on, reaching out.

           “As you said, we have a month.”

           “Twenty-two days.” The girl said. “I am sorry, Nyx.”

           The demon waved her hand away. “A human lifetime is more than enough for grief and happiness both. And I did agree to wait. I don’t renege just because it’s inconvenient for me.”

           “Still.” The girl capped her pen. “My life is not the easiest.”

             The demon laughed. “Someone with an easy life would not have sought out friendships with beings of malice and darkness. Or agreed to date a Night demon for fun.”

           “I’ll have you know there are a lot of other people in this school who would also seek out ghosts for fun.” The girl said mildly. “And you’re my best friend.”

           “But none who would wander alone into the dark and be comfortable enough with pain to draw the ghosts to them.”

           “Flatterer.” The girl snorted. “And don’t think I didn’t notice you didn’t refute the bit about you being my best friend.”

           “Truth.” The demon shrugged again. “And as your best friend, I suppose you might want to study because I suspect you wanted to actually finish your work during your break.”

           The girl groaned and opened her eyes, uncapping her pen again. “Why do you know me so well.”

           The demon grinned. “Finish your work, marako. I’ll be here later.”

             She groaned again, reading the next question and picking up the piece of paper from earlier. The demon hummed, and leaned back, lounging down along the various parts of the empty lecture theatre.

             Above, someone rattled the door.

  ��        The girl cursed. The door rattled again, but failed to open. The girl turned to the lounging demon, who suddenly looked very smug.

             “Did you… lock the door? Of a lecture theatre? That I snuck into?”

           “Of course.” The demon bared her teeth. “Did you think I would let anyone interrupt our time together?”

(1): You look worried.

(2): It’s just something I’m working on.

(3): Thought you preferred (a language that you don’t speak with humans) (sami can be interpreted multiple ways but in Nyx’s particular dialect and in this context, sami roughly means ‘a language not spoken with the people you’re usually around’)

#flash fiction friday #fff14: fleeting hearts #syl's writing

[scarlettrose0]

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The Sanctity of Unborn Life –Biblical Fetology: "For You formed my inward parts; You covered me in my mother's womb… My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, When I was made in secret, And skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth [womb; see below]. Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed. And in Your book they all were written, The days fashioned for me, When as yet there were none of them." –Psalm 139:13-16 "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you; before you were born I sanctified you..." –Jeremiah 1:5

God wrote the book of fetology, that is, the development of the baby in the womb which is described in the human genome and the gametes of the parents. That book documents the course of a child's fetal development and birth. In verse 16, David is bragging about God's extraordinary design of the development of the baby in the womb. The embryo goes through the trimesters of development not haphazardly but by direction from God. The child forms in the womb by God's intricate plan of fetal development, which we now know He recorded in the written instructions of our DNA and in the cells of the ovum and sperm which unite to form the single-celled brand new human child (organism). That single cell contains step-by-step, day-by-day directions of the 280 days of gestation which the Spirit inspired David to write about, the days of the child's development in the womb. "You formed my inward parts; you covered me in my mother’s womb," explains that God designed the process by which the baby is formed, protecting the little one (Latin, fetus) within his mom. "My frame [skeleton] was not hidden from You, when I was made in secret, and skillfully wrought in the lowest parts of the earth." David praised God, for even as he developed in the womb, God could see his frame (Hebrew, skeleton, lit. bones) being knit together, "skillfully wrought," in "my mother's womb." The Hebrew idiom, "the lowest parts of the earth" was a common expression for "the womb" as one can see from the reverse use of the idiom in Job 1:21, "Naked I came from my mother's womb, and naked shall I return there." No one returns to their mother's womb at death, but rather, goes into the grave, i.e., the lowest parts of the earth, which phrase came to be a Hebrew figure representing the womb, even as Man was made from the earth, the dust of the ground. The genetic code written by God describes the development of the baby in the womb, so God reveals, "Your eyes saw my substance, being yet unformed (as the baby travels down the fallopian tube, even before he is formed in the womb, Jer. 1:5) and in Your book they all were written, the days fashioned for me, when as yet there were none of them." God sees the child, who he or she really is, the baby's substance, all through the extraordinary DNA code which God wrote (which David of course had no concept of, but which as the author, God knew all about). So, from the moment of conception, "being yet unformed," that is, as just a single cell in my mother's fallopian tube, God saw me, and knit me together, and in His book of instructions for the baby's awesome development in the womb, all "the days fashioned for me," that is, all the days which God decreed for the fashioning of a fetus, they were written and set from the very beginning, before a single day's growth unfolded, even before the first cell divided into two, all 280 days of gestation, beginning with that moment of fertilization. So regardless of one's theology about predestination and free will, or a settled or open future, Psalm 139 does not teach that if a child is aborted, that moment of death was written in God's book. Rather, the book and its pages describe the development of the fetus, not his lifetime and ultimate death. Psalm 139:16 presents a couplet, a simple Hebrew parallelism. The two sentences of Psalm 139:16 both speak of the same topic, with each further explaining the other. Thus "the days fashioned for me" were not the days of my childhood, or my marriage, nor do they describe the child's death certificate, for these were the days when only God could see "my substance, being yet unformed." For He knows what each human being is like, in the most extraordinary detail, at the moment of conception. And the wonderful passage at Jeremiah 1:5 is another Hebrew couplet, where both parts describe aspects of the same unformed single-celled child in the womb. "Before I formed you in the womb... before you were born" (Jer. 1:5). Both halves of the couplet are describing the same time of when the baby was in his mother's womb. Likewise, God created the Earth yet

calls it unformed (Gen. 1:1-2) because the dry land hadn't yet appeared until the third day when it was then ready to support life. So God didn't have to wait for Jeremiah to graduate from high school, so to speak, or even for him to be born, before He could know him. God knew him from the moment of conception, that is, from the moment he was conceived in his mother's womb!

Science, Morality and Philosophy: [God gave to mankind] "…the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness…" –Romans 2:15

God put a conscience within man. Though he will deny this, an atheistic scientist, say like Richard Dawkins, will not remain neutral but instinctively object if someone else violates God's commands and tries to steal from him, or bears false witness against him, or attempts to take his wife, or kills someone he cares about. A lesbian "wedding" with one in a suit and the other in a dress testifies to the truth even in their rebellion. Likewise even Dawkins affirms the biblical truth he despises. Some atheists would prefer that society develop ethical notions scientifically. However the physical laws don't use the words right and wrong and have no notion of morality. That is why those pro-lifers including National RTL who say we will win this based on the laws of science are shortsighted, because science can't even tell you that the Beslan School terrorists were wrong to murder 156 children. And that exposes leftists who manipulate the willfully ignorant by claiming the mantel of "science" when they legislate morality, for their immoral purposes. Thus, as Albert Einstein, in his book Out of My Later Years, wrote, "[S]cience can only ascertain what is, but not what should be," necessarily excluding from its domain "value judgments of all kinds." Thus science could not even prove that the Holocaust or slavery were wrong.

Just as moral law is not physical, the laws of logic, justice and reason are not physical either. They have no mass, no temperature, no volume, polarity, etc. So of course there is a non-physical reality. And that non-physical reality is the domain of justice and reason. Humanist and atheist clichésare easily rebutted.

- There is no truth! Rebuttal: Is that true? - There are no absolutes! Rebuttal: Absolutely? - Only your five senses provide real knowledge. Rebuttal: Says which of the five?

Using a philosophical argument called Euthyphro's Dilemma, skeptics from Socrates till today claim that goodness does not flow from God. As atheist Bertrand Russell wrote, "If the only basis for morality is God's decrees, it follows that they might just as well have been the opposite of what they are…" Thus even the devil could be judged righteous if he gets to define what it means to be good. Basing its reasoning upon the Trinity, the Christian Answer to Euthyphro's Dilemma (as linked to also at Creation.com) fully rebuts the atheist argument that morality must be arbitrary. Scripture describes "the Lord God [as] abounding in goodness and truth" (Ex. 34:6) with "righteousness and justice [as] the foundation of Your throne" (Ps. 89:14), which means might does not make right, so that just because the abortionist is stronger than the fetus does not mean that he is right to tear apart that delicate child. Unlike the arbitrary and capricious Zeus of the Greeks, the triune God of Scripture acts deliberately and justifiably "according to the counsel of His will" (Eph. 1:11) and so He does not affirm prejudice but rather, "God shows personal favoritism to no man" (Lk. 20:21) as also God the Son does "not show personal favoritism, but teach[es] the way of God in truth" (Gal. 2:6). He declared, "you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" (John 8:32) and He teaches of "the Spirit of truth," and says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life" (Jn. 14:6). Therefore those who are killed unjustly, in heaven, describe Him as the one who will "judge and avenge our blood on those who dwell on the earth” (Rev. 6:10).

States Rights and Abortion: "'Now therefore, deliver up the men... that we may put them to death and remove the evil from Israel!' But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brethren, the children of Israel." -Judges 20:13

Some God-fearing pro-lifers claim that abortion is a "states' rights" matter. The claim is that the very principles of justice (i.e., God Himself) would have federal governments tolerate a state's decriminalization of murder generally, or decriminalization of murder for any particular group of victims (whether the victims would be Jews, Christians, or children). However, the Book of Judges teaches that God does not recognize a local right to decide whether or not to prosecute murder. Rather, when one of the twelve tribes of Israel refused to prosecute the murder of a concubine, for that lawlessness, the rest of the nation was justly outraged and moved to action, and with God's endorsement, they lawfully used force to punish Benjamin including of course any local authorities and magistrates who would not listen.

"So all the men of Israel were gathered... united together as one man. Then the tribes of Israel sent men through all the tribe of Benjamin, saying, 'What is this wickedness that has occurred among you? Now therefore, deliver up the men... that we may put them to death and remove the evil from Israel!' But the children of Benjamin would not listen to the voice of their brethren, the children of Israel. ... [So] The LORD defeated Benjamin before Israel. And the children of Israel destroyed that day twenty-five thousand one hundred Benjamites; all these drew the sword." Jud. 20:11-13, 35 (See also AmericanRTL.org/states-rights.)

Vigilante Behavior Condemned: "...all who take the sword will perish by the sword." -Jesus Mat. 26:52

However the Scriptures also state, "He who kills with the sword must be killed with the sword," which command is described as "the faith of the saints" (Rev. 13:10). Lethal force in a park to save a child is just. Why is it wrong against an abortionist? American RTL produced a worksheet that puts into perspective the biblical principle regarding the right of self defense (which includes defense of your neighbor) with the restrictions of immanency and escalation of force that God placed on that authority. By those restrictions this ARTL Abortion Vigilante Worksheetteaches that everyone should condemn the vigilante killing of abortionists. Dr. Ronda Chervinwrote: "Dear American RTL, I just read your Abortion Vigilante Worksheet. I am a pro-life professor of ethics. I plan to use this in class. It is the best thing on this subject I have ever read. I just want to thank you profusely for devising it." See that worksheet for lessons from: - Genesis from before God delegated governmental authority to punish murderers, and from - Exodus differentiating between justifiable self defense and defensive actions that themselves become criminal, and from - First Samuel and David's response to those trying to kill him, and from - Matthew and Romans regarding the general principle of submission to governing leaders. This worksheet recognizes also that many heroes of the faith disobeyed the governing authorities and now appear in the Hall of Faith in the book of Hebrews!

#abortion #prochoice #prolife #part 4 #christianity #part 5

[cherry3point14]

Stranger Than Fanfiction: Ch 1

Series Masterlist

Pairing: Dean x Reader Warnings: No actual boys in this chapter. Other than that... confusion? Word count: 2,350. Chapter Summary: What happens when a mild mannered insurance adjuster becomes her own main character? A/N: I honestly. I don’t know.

Ao3 if you prefer

Routine is something that occurs so easily it would be impossible to conduct meaningful studies on the subject. The scientists would fall into their own patterns of routine while researching. A particular coffee drunk on certain mornings, a favorite seat on the evening bus or even a preferred font the research. Even the one team member resisting any sort of routine would become predictable in their attempts to be unexpected.

But this is not a story about scientists studying human nature.

This is a story about Y/N Y/L/N.

In the deepest recesses of her mind, Y/N dared to think she was unpredictable—from her mismatched socks to her affinity for spicy foods—and thus not subject to the weaknesses of mundane routine. Of course, she was wrong.

Every morning she woke up at the same time to the same incessant beeping of her alarm clock. A sound that once silenced she replaced with a sigh because her day began with not wanting to get out of bed. Where others might have drunk coffee she made herself green tea, which she sipped while listening to the news for exactly ten minutes. Enough time to catch the highlights in case some catastrophe was happening in the world, but not so long that she would get distracted.

Each night Y/N would drive home the same route and park on the driveway of her slightly too-large house. On Thursday’s her ageing neighbour would be watering his rose bushes and she’d wave, as good neighbours do.

That is, she followed this routine without question, until the last Friday in May.

There was nothing immediately extraordinary about this day as it started. As usual, she tapped a wordless tune while waiting for her kettle to sing—since she had not heard the idiom about watched pots and their tendency not to boil. Once the steam had finished rising she poured the hot water over the tea and watched the paper bag contort under the pressure of the liquid. Others might walk away and leave their drink to brew without care but not Y/N. She watched the water deepen to a soft green because the perfect tea had a perfect hue. Only by watching it with a keen eye could she properly measure the removal of the bag, once it looked like something akin to the grass in spring.

Again, how she made her tea was not out of the ordinary. Neither was the way she would sit with her mug in one hand and her phone in the other. Focusing half her attention on the news, half on her emails, and leaving no capacity left to appreciate the drink she had so carefully slaved over. After all her tea was it’s usual perfection and did not need much thought. These things were-

“Hello?”

Your thumb hovers over an email that assured you that you had, in fact, won a free iPhone. At the moment you were about to swipe and delete the spam cluttering your inbox you’d heard it. A voice. A woman. She’d been talking about... no. It was your imagination.

These things were puzzle pieces, a mess that Y/N would have to-

“Who’s there?”

Your eyes dart around looking for an intruder without moving your head. You’re not supposed to move your head if there’s someone trying to murder you, probably, that might tip them off that you know they’re there. But no one is there. No shadowy figures in the corner of the room and no burglars in striped shirts carrying burlap sacks. Your question falls on deaf ears. It bounces around your empty living room destined to go unanswered. Except there should be someone, right? As your thumb had moved the voice continued. But from where? From who?

This time you move your thumb slower, agile and waiting. As you do it happens again and you’re determined to find them this time.

These things were puzzle pieces, a mess that Y/N would have to organise before she could see the bigger picture. Except they did not feel like a mess to her, they felt like any other motion on any other day. She continued to wonder if she should buy some bread on the way home and the world continued to turn, unaware of the significance of this particular Friday.

You drop the phone from your hand as if it has given you an electric shock. Your mind flashes to standing in your kitchen minutes ago, craving toast but not having the necessary ingredients. The mental note you’d made was completely internal. You’d thought about getting bread knowing you would definitely forget.

There’s a beat. An actual pause in time where even your heart stops as you’re caught staring at the phone on the sofa cushion next to you.

You pick it up again and turn the device over in your hands. Maybe the sound came from the phone, although that seems impossible. How would your phone know you are out of bread when that’s not something you’ve said out loud? Everyone is so sure that Facebook listens to us all but it seemed unlikely they had jumped to mind reading so soon.

The screen of your phone darkens in warning that it will go to sleep and tapping it reveals the time. You've now sat there, speaking to no-one, longer than you normally would. Now everything else will be rushed. You choke a mouthful of tea and it’s somehow still too hot, so you decide against finishing the cup. Instead, you leap up and continue getting ready, happy to hear, well, nothing. No voice following you, revealing the contents of your kitchen cupboards, or anything else.

And then you finally rush out of your house to your waiting car.

The engine of Y/N’s car made an almost worrying clunking sound as she turned the key in the ignition, a sound that-

Your hand pulls away from the key in an instant as if it’s the key’s fault that the voice has returned. It’s either upset or fear on your face as you look around the inside of your trusty vehicle that’s always got you from A-Z, but now might have betrayed you.

“And it’s eight twenty-five folks, we’ll have traffic coming up in five but before that…”

“Shit.” You respond to the radio, or more specifically the time, realising that you’re now, still, running late.

The engine of Y/N’s car made an almost worrying clunking sound as she turned the key in the ignition. A sound that she would have been worried about were it the first time she’d heard it. The truth was she had been abhorrently ignoring the noise for many months now. By now it was as familiar as the rest of her morning and only solidified that today was so very achingly normal. Today was not the first, nor the last day that she would be running late for work yet it was the most important. Not that Y/N knew.

It’s a struggle to ignore the voice and keep driving. Your foot almost stumbles over the gas a few times and there’s one stop sign that you barely stop for. To be fair it’s not the first time you’ve almost missed this particular stop sign. Although when you start hearing a voice talking about your day, you can pretty much blame everything that goes wrong on that.

The thing you work out quickly, worryingly, is that this voice comes and goes. When she, whoever it is, finishes her little tribute to your crappy car there’s silence. You almost feel sane again. And so you let yourself fall right back into that false sense of security that it was some fluke of your imagination. You finish the journey and make it with five minutes to spare because you always drive a little faster than you should. Even if today you’re running from something unexplainable, you still find your shoulders relaxing as you step out of the car. Regardless of everything you’re on time for work.

Y/N breathed a sigh of relief as her work heels clacked against the tarmac of the underground parking garage. Against all the setbacks and stops signs that had tried to thwart her best-laid plans, she had made it. To Y/N this was the most extraordinary thing about her day. She was certain her journey time would set such a high standard that everything could only go downhill from here.

“Oh my god. Shut up.”

When in fact today would be a day that she would never forget. Today would thrust her into a life so exempt from ten-minute mugs of tea and almost tardiness, that she would look back upon days like this with a skewed sense of nostalgia. Today Y/N pressed the button for the elevator like she had a thousand times before. Whereas tomorrow would be entirely different.

“Obviously,” you huff an annoyed breath, “tomorrow’s Saturday.”

The woman was beginning to annoy you. Both her failure to get to the point and the fact that most of what she was saying was stating the obvious. The frustration bubbling inside your belly gets translated into pressing the button for the elevator more times than you need to, until the doors finally open in front of you.

The harsh fluorescent light of the elevator makes no one look good so you're not worried when you see tired lines on your face in the large mirror. It had been a long week and now to top things off you were going crazy, the things take their toll. At least in eight short hours, you’d be free for the weekend.

“Morning Y/N!” Instead of coming from where you would expect, the chipper voice was about three feet too low and completely out of sight.

“Laura?”

She pops up violently from underneath her desk holding a single post-it note flapping in her hand, “found it!”

“I’m proud of you?” you question, cocking your head to the side and wondering how much coffee she's drunk already.

Y/N was far too distracted to tease her coworker about her overly sunny disposition, as she usually would first thing in the morning. Once again she found her harmless routine interrupted by what she thought to be a series of meaningless accidents. When her preoccupation was down to the larger, irrefutable hands of fate.

“It’s not fate distracting me, it's you!” you whisper with the severity of a shout. By now it was easy to figure out that whoever or whatever the voice was couldn’t hear you. That didn’t stop you voicing your frustration at the new personality stalking you.

“Y/N honey, you ok?”

You look up at Laura to find a mixture of confusion and concern, only to remember that she is there at all.

“Laura! Did you hear that?” The excitement in your voice teeters on paranoia. Maybe it wasn’t you. Maybe you weren’t alone in this.

“Did I hear what?”

“That voice,” you gesture with your hands upwards figuring that it was coming from up high. Despite being on the top floor of the building. “The one drivelling on about fate and-and the fact that I need to buy bread!”

Your chest is heaving underneath your white shirt but only enough that someone close to you, like Laura, might notice your distress.

“Erm. Are you feeling ok?”

Her tone, along with the way she leans over her desk to whisper the question, is enough to snap you out of it. You’re being insane, out loud. It’s one thing to think you’re going crazy but another thing entirely to let other people know that you are.

“Yeah sorry, I erm… I watched a weird film last night.”

Laura laughs at that explanation, somewhat nervously but still, she laughs. She takes the opportunity for an explanation that doesn’t end up with you in a straight jacket. Did they even put people in straight jackets anymore?

“See you at lunch?” She asks the same as ever, ignoring whatever is wrong with you like any workplace friend would.

“Yeah, sure.” The smile on your face is thin while you wave a hand aimlessly to agree to lunch. You start walking to your desk in the quieter corner of the office before she gets truly suspicious.

Colleagues waved and greeted her as she walked through the stuffy yet open plan room. The usual sea of politeness was only personalised with her name here and there. Most of them hardly glanced away from their screens as they spoke to her. So wrapped up in their work that they merely greeted whatever figure it was that moved past them. Y/N was one of these mindless zombies on occasion. Throwing herself into work so deeply that she too would forget common courtesies such as eye contact.

“This isn’t happening,” you mutter when you finally slink into your chair.

It was then, on this Friday, this cloudy and uncertain day, that reprieve came to Y/N in the form of work. A Manila folder floating through the office as if on a cloud. A file atop a pile of files, each as indistinctive as the last. And yet, the file destined for Y/N’s desk would prove to hold the most important paperwork she would ever read. Each distinctive typed letter on each fresh white sheet would be more important than the last. And even Y/N, who had no idea of the significance of what she was about to receive…

“Well, kind of do now.” You grumble watching Hillary wander through the office with a stack of assignments. She arrives at your desk wearing a smile that doesn’t reach her eyes and hands you the topmost one.

…would feel goosebumps prickle her skin as she receives the folder. Almost as if somehow she could perceive the importance of this assignment, without ever having opened it. Little did she know that this seemingly innocuous file would set about her new life, as well as her imminent death.

“Wait. My what?”

Continue to Chapter 2.

5eva tags: @divadinag @darthdeziewok @fluentinfiction @witch-of-letters @supernatural-teamfreewillpage @magnitude101999 @alexwinchester23 Dean babes: @thewinchesterchronicles @akshi8278​ @bloodydaydreamer

#dean x reader #supernatural fanfiction #spn x reader #dean winchester x reader #spn fanfiction #supernatural #spn #spn fanfic #supernatural fanfic #dean winchester #dean winchester x you #dean x you #dean x y/n #dean dean the soft lil bean

[bloody-cute-yandere]

Hello I have written a dissertation about a phrase I hate

Two Wrongs Don’t Make a Right?

 So I guess to start off this train of thought, I should explain what started it. I love listening to commentary channels on YouTube. They ARE my reality TV, except they seem to cover more important topics. One of the commentary channels I follow is CreepShow Art. I have listened to her videos for quite some time, and while she doesn’t show as much by way of scientific or empirical evidence in her videos, I do feel she is a pretty credible source because she does reference public posts as evidence for her claims, and a lot of what she talks about is readily fact-checkable. Over the past few weeks Creepshow has made a few videos about another youtuber Without A Crystal Ball (who I will abbreviate to WACB for brevity), who is another commentary channel that allegedly has questionable research tactics and reporting skills. She also is prone to being defensive and seems to have the mindset of “any criticism is hate”. Creepshow made a video first about how WACB had dug around in an inappropriate way to gain information about Tati Westbrook and then reported her findings in a more skewed way, which ended up painting Tati in potentially an unfairly negative light. WACB responded….. badly to the criticism she received from Creepshow and other channels that criticized her. She, among other things, went onto a livestream of another channel and doxed Creepshow in the chat. Also, potentially unrelated but someone has allegedly been repeatedly attempting to hack Creepshow’s social media platforms, along with several others that criticized WACB’s behavior. WACB also sent an email to Creepshow where she insinuated that Youtube itself was pushing the entire conflict between the two of them to be handled privately, but were watching the issue at hand. Creepshow responded by showing the email to her audience, which did include showing the email WACB used to reach out to Creepshow. WACB became upset that she had been “doxed” by Creepshow (though it is worth noting that the exposed email address in question happens to be attached to all of her social medias, and not any private information).

               During WACB’s most recent response to being “doxed” she used the idiom “Two wrongs don’t make a right”, and I have been stewing on that particular idiom ever since. I’m sure that isn’t an unfamiliar phrase for most people reading this, but for those that haven’t heard it before, it runs akin to the idea of not stooping to someone else’s level when in an argument. The idea is that if someone hurts you then you should be the bigger person and not react in a bad way, because that won’t help the situation become resolved. To a certain extent I believe this idea is absolutely correct; if you want to resolve a situation with another person, you don’t want to make the situation worse by lashing out if they’ve done something to you that is hurtful, because then you just have more hurt feelings you have to resolve in the process of moving forward. However, this idea also hinges upon two crucial truths that must exist in order for it to apply. One: that the two people involved in a disagreement must or want to resolve the conflict at all, and two: that the first offense is not an act done with malicious or cold-hearted intent. It also depends on a moral compass that is entirely determined by outside influences as opposed to an internal value system.

               The first assumption “two wrongs don’t make a right” depends on is the idea that both party members do actually want to resolve their current disagreement. If the two people in the middle of an argument are emotionally close (or tied together in other ways) and no one in the situation wants to (or can’t) cut ties with the other person, I would say that this assumption is valid. In the case of Creepshow and WACB, however, this is not the case. According to Creepshow they don’t know eachother. Speaking frankly, this means that there is no relationship that needs to be protected. One could argue a necessity for professional courtesy seeing as how they share the same platform and roughly the same content ideas, however the Youtube platform is so vast already that two single small to moderately sized channels having a feud shouldn’t in any real sense have any effect on the other’s job. In a more general sense, if person A cases a fight with a person they don’t know very well or don’t interact with much, there is no social consequence if person B stoops down to person A’s level (whether or not there are legal repercussions is a separate issue). Neither person A nor person B will have any sort of ripples in their own separate circles as a direct result of the negative exchange because their individual social groups will be biased to agree with their persons’ interpretation of the events. The social distance will also save person A and person B from any future unpleasantness through the mere virtue of anonymity.

A similar argument can be made for people who have no interest in maintaining a relationship they had previously had with each other; even people who had been previously close to eachother can decide to break contact with each other over egregious offenses. In these cases, there is less care about whether you’re behaving in a “good” way because you have no investment in the relationship progressing. In either scenario, it doesn’t matter if you stoop low in an argument if you’re willing to accept the consequences of that behavior, or if there won’t be any appreciable consequences for that behavior.

               The second truth that “two wrongs don’t make a right” depends on is that the first offense is not a heinous vindictive one. For example, Doxing. Doxing is the illegal spread of personal information to the public. The act of doxing can leave the victim severely vulnerable to more violent crimes such as stalking, theft/ mugging, rape and murder because their location or other personal information is now known to people that may be willing to cause them physical harm. It’s a dangerous and illegal act. Other potential heinous actions from person A include any other illegal activity (such as assault or other forms of violence, theft) or can be something that technically isn’t illegal but is a severe breaching of boundaries or someone’s own comfort level. If you know someone personally you probably know things that would really upset them, and the act of going through and performing those actions KNOWING that they will be upsetting to your victim is cold-hearted and cruel. At that point in a disagreement, person A isn’t trying to resolve a problem, they are simply lashing out with the sole purpose of destruction. That is not constructive, nor is it ok. In these cases such as these there’s a high likelihood that person B will no longer want to associate with person A if they originally did. example: I knew a person a long time ago that was TERRIFIED of gnomes. They hated them. So, what would happen if at some point this person and I got into a disagreement and I decided to give her a garden gnome as a present? It wouldn’t be illegal by any stretch; it’s a gift. However, it’s a gift that the person would have HATED, and I would have known that. Between them and I it would have been a declaration of war, not a peace-making offer. Furthermore, it would have been proof that I was willing to use this person’s personal deep fears that they confided in me out of trust against them; even if our relationship survived the original disagreement it would probably never be the same. Who, in that case, could really blame this person if they responded in kind? It would be a human response and, in a way, I would absolutely have deserved it because I had breached her trust in an unforgivable way.

               At risk of this becoming a dissertation, I happen to especially dislike the idea of the person who committed sleight A being the person to scream “two wrongs don’t make a right” after person B responds to them in the way that WACB responded to Creepshow. To me, that seems like person A is trying to put themselves on a pedestal of superiority, despite the fact that they hurt person B first. “I know what I did was wrong, but you’re not supposed to hurt me back! Two wrongs don’t make a right!” Person A is just trying to avoid consequences for their actions at that point. Because really, what happened to “treat others the way you want to be treated?” I know this begins to sound victim-blamey, but what right does a person have to be upset for (not really) being doxed after they knowingly decided to dox someone else? They’ve already shown that doxing is definitely something they’re ok with, so if they’re going to argue that the original doxing wasn’t a big deal, why is it suddenly a big enough deal to them now that they are the victim of it? I hate hypocrisy like that.

My final note on “two wrongs don’t make a right” is that the entire phrase depends on each person in the disagreement depending on an external source for their moral compass as opposed to having their own internal value system. Morality is, overall, an incredibly gray concept in any society. It is informed by each person’s individual moral ideals which can come from religion, family values, upbringing, influences from social idols and more. Even universal truths like “murder is wrong” become smudged quickly when ideas about self-defense are considered (which becomes even murkier when you begin to question what sorts of actions require “self-defense”). This means that there can be vastly different views about what is and is not ok about any particular topic within one society. There will also be some people that have a very strong internal moral compass within that society, and some people that depend more on the community to act as their compass. If a person who uses an internal moral compass to guide themselves, then they will behave in a manner that falls in line with that compass regardless of how their peers may respond. If, however, a person does not have a strong internal moral compass, their behavior will be largely influenced by those around them because they depend on that social structure to guide their behavior. For someone that has a strong internal compass that they rely on, the idea that “two wrongs don’t make a right” probably won’t have much value to them, because their morality is already determined regardless of what the people around them may say. If person A does x to them, then person B’s moral sense will determine what is and is not ok to respond with, and whether others say that response is right or wrong is irrelevant because they already believed they are justified in whatever response they had. For a person that relies more heavily on their peers for their moral compass, however, “two wrongs don’t make a right” might sort of work as an appropriate guide because it comes from an external place to encourage what socially would be considered “good” behavior, though that itself then depends on what is considered “right” and “wrong” by the surrounding populace, which has already been established to be a bit of a crap shoot.

Overall (and I cannot stress this enough), I don’t believe that a disagreement of any sort should come with responses like doxing or assault or theft or a breach of trust like the examples I gave above. I believe that all people should strive to be better and act with dignity. I always try to act as though everything I do will be posted online for the world to see, and if I wouldn’t want to receive the backlash I could get for a particular action then I tend to not do that thing in the first place. I also believe that hypocrisy is one of the more disgusting personality traits someone can have. If someone doxes another person, clearly they believe that doxing is a justifiable action, and to then have that person be upset when someone behaved in the same “correct” way (As far as person A has shown of their moral values), that is just plain gross. Don’t do to other people what you wouldn’t want done to you, and also don’t be surprised if you’re not the only person willing and capable of lashing out at your level if you decide to stoop low. If you don’t want to give someone else a pass, then don’t deign to believe that you deserve some kind of special allowance to stomp all over others.

[eliteprepsat]

For college admission essays, it is very important to write clearly and concisely, using as few words as you need. Most readers on admission committees are overworked, tired, and need to get to a range of other tasks that their jobs demand.

But how short is too short? And what if you’re so concise that you don’t come close to the maximum word length?

The Common App essay requires you write between 250 and 650 words. Hitting the maximum is great, but make sure not to settle at the minimum. For all college admission essays, it’s best to come as close to the maximum as you can, as long as you’re not filling space with meaningless sentences. For the Common App, I would recommend a bare minimum of 500 words, about 75 percent of the maximum.

If you’ve written your essay and there is room for more, share it with readers you trust—friends, parents, and especially teachers—and ask if there are moments that could be clearer or that seem underdeveloped. As you reread your own work, ask yourself these questions:

1. Could you be more specific and more detailed?

The best essays are both detailed and storied. If there is one thing we can safely say about most human beings, it’s that we are hard-wired for stories. Good stories “show” more than they “tell.”

Instead of telling your readers that a difficult time in your life was stressful, show your reader how that stress manifested in your life. Maybe you lost sleep. Maybe you had trouble eating. Maybe there was a specific day or a specific hour or moment when that stress reached a climax. Get your readers into the details. Let them see and feel what you experienced before zooming out to tell us about it.

Don’t just tell your readers about the prom; bring them there.

2. Could your introduction make a stronger first impression?

Consider this introduction from a sample application essay:

From the time I was able to realize what a university was, all I heard from my mother's side of the family was about the University of Michigan and the great heritage it has. Many a Saturday afternoon my grandfather would devote to me, by sitting me down in front of the television and reminiscing about the University of Michigan while halftime occurred during a Michigan Wolverines football game. Later, as I grew older and universities took on greater meaning, my mother and uncle, both alumni of the University of Michigan, took me to see their old stamping grounds. From first sight, the university looked frightening because of its size, but with such a large school comes diversity of people and of academic and non-academic events.

This introduction does a fairly good job of placing us in a specific context, explaining the reader’s deep ties to the University of Michigan.

It suffers, however, from some imprecise phrasing and vague thinking. Michigan and its heritage surely was not literally all this writer ever heard from his mother’s side of the family. “While halftime occurred” is a wordier and more awkward version of of just “at halftime.” The size of a place does necessarily make it look “frightening.” And the last phrase—”academic and non-academic events”—is far too abstract. (One more thing: the idiom is “stomping grounds.”)

Though the introduction may seem long, its lack of precision sets the stage for an essay that is likely to be short on details. If you read the entire essay, you can see that this writer drifts frequently into generalizations.

It is important to be detailed and storied from the outset so that you set a tone for the entire essay. Consider this revision of the introduction:

It is a Saturday afternoon in early October. At halftime, the Michigan Wolverines are tied with the Ohio State Buckeyes. My grandfather sits in his favorite chair, its arms threadbare from decades of cheering, swearing, hoping, mourning, and rejoicing over Michigan football. His voice is already hoarse from yelling at the TV. He turns to me to share another story about Anthony Carter or Rick Leach or Jim Harbaugh, names that he’s instilled in me as far back as I can remember, names that my grandpa uses to prove again and again that Michigan means not just perseverance and toughness but the height of individual and community achievement. Often, I only half listen to these repeated stories. But today, as I plan my visit to Michigan to see if I want to attend the university that my mother, uncle, and grandfather attended, I’m all ears.

Now, I have no idea if some of these details are true to this student’s life. Surely, some of the facts are wrong, so this writer would have to adjust this revision to fit the truth. But the point here is to stay focused on a single story rather than a laundry list of vague statements.

This revision is very detailed, placing readers in the scene of the conversation and leading into a moment of truth: what will happen when this writer visits Michigan? The visit could be just as detailed and could more effectively include some of those “academic and non-academic” opportunities. This revised paragraph is focused on less but includes so much more.

3. Have you created a clear picture of who you are?

The revised introduction above tells us a few things about this writer: he comes from a long line of Michigan alumni, he seems to have close ties to his family, and he is curious about what is uniquely great about the university. That threadbare couch provides a concrete image that embodies the longstanding passion his family has for the University of Michigan. The statement needs more—the most important details are surely to come—but this is a solid start.

Some students wonder whether football or other “low-brow” activities are worthwhile contexts to introduce in a personal statement. Shouldn’t I place myself in the Folger Shakespeare Library reading the First Quarto of Hamlet?

No. You should write about the scenes and contexts that will give the clearest and deepest picture of who you are and what you will bring to the universities and colleges to which you’re applying.

At age 6, I remember the light filled openness of the house, how the whir of my mother’s vacuum floated from room to room. At 9, I remember how I used to lounge on the couch and watch Disney cartoons on the sideways refrigerator of a TV implanted in a small cave in the wall. At 12, I remember family photographs of the Spanish countryside hanging in every room. At 14, I remember vacuuming each foot of carpet in the massive house and folding pastel shirts fresh out of the dryer.

This scene, we soon learn, is a home in which the writer’s mother worked as a housekeeper. The home is owned by two professors. His mother’s access to this home allows Ababiy to imagine an expansive other world, a world perhaps accessible with the right education.

This is a meaningful setting in that it allows the writer to create a bridge from his humble beginnings to an ambitious, unwritten future, the future that he hopes to write at his university of choice. We learn early on that Ababiy is the son of working-class immigrants and that he’s a dreamer capable of locating portals to new worlds in the most mundane objects.

I encourage you to read the entire essay—it’s brilliant.

The best essays are detailed and storied. If your own essay is coming up a bit short, turn to essays like the one above as a model. Populate your writing with rich and meaningful scenery, and plunge deeply into what that setting reveals about you and your dreams.

Stephen P. is a writer and teacher. He has taught literature and writing courses at several universities and has taught writing and reading at Elite Prep Los Angeles since 2010.

#appblr #studyblr #college essays #college application #college admissions #go to college #personal statement #Common App #writing

[helshades]

French prompt! How does one look at être and arrive at fut? (I know "verbs of being" are notoriously unruly, but this was a mystery for me, even though my own language cobbles the tenses from two separate verbs, neither of which have all tenses.) Broader prompt: what used to be the point of passé simple and how did it become "the storybook tense"?

One of my mother’s favourite puns is the following: On ne peut pas naître et avoir été (’One cannot be born and have been’), a play on an old saying, On ne peut pas être et avoir été (’One cannot be and have been’) meaning that one simply cannot live at once in the past and in the present. Grammatically speaking, this isn’t entirely true, though: the French passé composé, like its equivalent the English present perfect, is trying very hard. When you think of it, ‘I have been doing this for the last five minutes’ is telling exactly that: one is performing a continuous action that began some time in the past and is still going at the moment. Every single French pupil learning English was subjected to the example of the vase that one has broken, and is consequently still broken at present. French has one time like this, known as the ‘compound past’, which technically works in the exact same way, except it has come to be used everywhere, replacing even the French equivalent to the preterite, or past simple, to the point that no one uses the French preterite anymore aside from the only people who may get away with reading as highly literary, which isn’t a lot of people nowadays. Children’s books rarely do contain verbs conjugated in the past simple anymore; in (junior) high school, students are only taught the third person of the singular and of the plural for ‘important’ verbs, and a number of people have been pushing for the complete eradication of a tense which they deemed ‘elitist’ for being more complicated than the compound past, which only requires one to know the present-simple forms of auxiliary verb avoir, ‘to have’, plus the past participle of the verb concerned by the action.

Of course, French students used to have no particular difficulty in learning conjugations, no matter how detailed; only, for a few decades now people deeming themselves progressists have imposed new teaching methods based on a supposedly ‘intuitive’ approach to knowledge as well as a downright utilitarian idea of the language itself—what isn’t useful in everyday life will never be of use, and can therefore be dropped altogether. French isn’t taught systemically in French school anymore, grammar rules are generally glossed over and since learning by heart is strongly frowned upon conjugations are more than imperfectly mastered, not to say anything about the basic principles of syntax. Today, it is estimated (by international tests also) that about one third of students enter junior high school (at age 11) without knowing how to read, or write, their own language. Parents usually riot if teachers seek to correct children’s spelling or enunciation, and after each national exam now students take to Twitter to complain about the difficulty of the exceedingly simple tests. In this context, it is very hard to know whether or not the passé simple is meant to fall out of usage definitely—but I suspect it won’t before long, as a matter of fact, as it already serves, along with other grammatical notions, to separate those who do master their own idiom from those who don’t.

In any case, concerning the structure of the simple past and its meaning, I’m reminded of a remark that famous French linguist Émile Benveniste made about the simple past: like narration, in which it is almost exclusively employed, the simple past is non-deictic, whereas discourse as well as the tenses used in it are deictic, meaning they are anchored in the ‘situation of enunciation’, the frame of the dialogue. Being outside the deixis, the simple past operates somewhat remotely from the event which it describes, inducing an impression of temporal and/or spatial distance with it. Quite frankly, it’s hard not to make a parallel here with the postmodern obsession with immediacy and its deep-rooted hatred of the long term...

Speaking of long-term things!

How does one look at être and arrive at fut? Well, that is a splendid question, reaching far into the history of the French language, and in truth all Indo-European languages since they all have the quirky habit of mashing up the conjugations for several verbs expressing slightly different aspects of an action and deciding that they are to be only one verb now—usually, an auxiliary, and the results are just wild. But let’s get a closer look at the conjugation we’re dealing with, here:

You’ll note that I didn’t include (amongst other things) the four tenses of the subjunctive mode, to avoid being too long as I only aim to draw a few explanatory comparisons with Latin, but just in case, I’ll remind you that the present goes que je sois (sois, soit, soyons, soyez, soient) while subjunctive imperfect goes que je fusse (fusses, fût, fussions, fussiez, fussent). And now, hoping you didn’t run away screaming and flailing, I propose a little comparison with the equivalent Latin tenses:

Please fawn over my pedagogical abilities. Once that is over, please note how the conjugation of être was mostly constituted in Old French (from the 9th century onwards), bar a few interesting exceptions, such as the concurrent forms in the future: the older stem, er- or ier-, directly evolved from Latin. Linguists theorised that the stem that ended up in modern French, in ser-, is actually a syntagmatic construction taken from the Latin infinitive (es)sere to which were added special endings borrowed from the conjugation of auxiliary avoir, to have. Romance languages all form their future synthetically. For instance, ‘we will love’, nous aimerons, is literally nous aimer-(av)ons. (Compare to Spanish cantaré, ‘I will sing’, which is cantar + hé.) Where être is concerned, the ser- stem replaced the original infinitive after too many speakers dropped the beginning of infinitive essere, especially in the first person, and a full tense ended up being constituted from that model (hence the ‘syntagmatic construction’ I was mentioning earlier: it didn’t evolve so much as it was reshaped to accommodate usage).

If you know a bit of Latin, you might have frowned upon the infinitive essere, since the classical verb is esse. Esse was a pretty archaic form to begin with, although it was actually conjugated regularly; the -s had mutated to an -r between two vowels in most other verbs pretty early in the evolution of the language, and that is where the French infinitives (-er, -ir, -re) come from. But esse remained unchanged, probably because of its particular role as an auxiliary. On the other hand, in Vulgar Latin, which was Latin as it was spoken by regular people, the strange infinitive got hypercorrected, ‘regularised’, into essere, after getting mistaken for a stem. And since Romance languages are mostly stemming from popular, late-era Latin, rather than the literary language... In Italian, the infinitive is still essere. In Spanish, it evolved into ser. In Occitan, into èser. The t of estre is, as you can see, a French particularity; it’s purely epenthetic, meaning it was only added to ease the pronunciation of the word, in this case after one of the vowels dropped: esre > estre.

The participles of être, however, both in the present (étant) and the past (été, ayant été) don’t come from any version of esse, any more than the imperfect tense, since its Latin equivalent was eram. They come, instead, from an entirely different verb: stare, which evolved into Vulgar Latin estare, which in turn became Old French ester, and which meant ‘to stand, to stay’. Well, it’s actually the origin of verb ‘stay’ in English, which was borrowed from the Old French. In modern French, you’ll find its descendant as rester, ‘to stay, to remain’.

And this is where we come to our strange Latin stem in fui-, and its French equivalence in the simple past. Now where does that come from?! Well, my dear Tatty, it is the last remnant on an archaic verb issued from an Indo-European root °bheu- meaning ‘to grow’, ‘to become’. It’s why the auxiliary in English is ‘to be’, actually! (Proto-Germanic °beuną > Old English bēon > Middle English been). In most languages this Indo-European root gave words beginning in b-. The exceptions are Sanskrit (bh-, with a strong aspiration), Hellenic languages (Ancient Greek φύω, phúô) and Italic languages, where it ended up being pronounced as an f, hence fui. In passing, the original meaning of the Indo-European root, ‘to grow’, has been preserved only in Greek φύσις, phúsis, ‘nature’—hence ‘physics’. Morphologically, though, the root is present everywhere in Indo-European languages, starting with the word ‘future’ itself.

A major difference between Latin (and Greek) and Germanic languages, however, is that fu- in Latin possessed in its meaning the idea of veering towards the completion of an action, but that was expressed differently in the future (participle) and in past-tense narration; eventually, the future aspect was dropped from the language altogether, and all that remained was the stem’s perfective value (the idea of accomplishment, of a done and over thing), which serves to explain how the fu- root came to be specialised in Romance languages as a form destined for the simple past/preterite/perfect tense. (In Germanic languages, the past is defined by the idea of staying in one place, whereas the enunciation is characterised by a general idea of ‘aiming towards’.)

In guise of a conclusion, I heartily recommend the Wikipedia article on the Indo-European copula, which is long and bountiful and makes a few salient points on the topic of this fixture in all Indo-European languages that is a weird, weird little verb corresponding to the English to be, and it tells a lot on the way languages get shaped.

#i had to revise #i thought it'd be short and fun and then i got lost in the meanders of philology #and it was beautiful #and then i proceeded to write #since it's now 2 in the morning i'm not entirely sure all of it makes sense #believe it or not i wasn't that giving on the details #so it could have been way brainier #i'll have you know #la linguistique c'est chic #french language #etymology #grammar is fun #answers #thatiswhy

[dangerouslyfantasticwizard]

How am I feeling?

My relationship with mental health.

I wanted to pen a little something to help shine a light on the big messy swirl that is my mind.

I have been depressed for a number of years, clinically diagnosed in around 2009 but I can’t tell you when it really started, and I agree with the idiom “It never gets better, it just gets easier".

I have struggled on and off for as far back as I can remember, my parents divorce being a pivotal moment but only a small cog in the machine that ultimately lead me to here and now, sitting on the bathroom floor crying into some toilet roll because of the latest brick that was pulled out of the fresh mind-set that I was trying to build in my mind.

The second notable incident began in 2011, but he didn’t show himself until 2012.

Becoming a teenage parent is hard, and keeping another real life human alive is tough. Especially when you have a complicated relationship with the mother. We didn’t stay together for long after he was born, but we stayed close. It was a tough time for both of us and she was building on top of her own series of poor experiences that made her the person that she was. Neither of us had had it particularly easy, but she was dealt a hand worse than mine from the start.

This took its toll on my studies, as you can imagine, and I didn’t grade particularly highly at A Level. The combination of young child, my age and my poor grades formed a clear path for me. I was to go straight into work.

I juggled through various jobs, some much better than others, and did some pretty wonderful things. I was never truly happy in any one job and my home life never got any easier. The relationship that my sons mum and I had became increasingly difficult as we both tried to see other people and raise a child together as closely as we could. There were arguments, fights, slanging matches, I was banned from my sons 2nd birthday party, I collapsed in tears on multiple occasions and overall my life didn’t feel particularly worth it. I lost my friends, I rarely saw my family.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my son more than anything, but the situations I often found myself in because of the circumstances were not healthy places to be in.

I continued to jump through jobs building my skills and eventually settled into an industry I thought I liked. Until the stress made me ill.

My old friends reached out to me and I began being sociable again. That was quite an important thing for me as it helped me bounce back and had sounding boards to discuss my life with. Regaining my best friend from school was a real blessing. And then I gained a whole new group of friends scattered across the globe growing year on year, the Lost Legion. They have always been by my side in times of need and they are so precious to me.

So, I jump again from a job that makes me ill to a job that makes me regret waking up in the morning. I’ve never clock watched so much in my life. Thankfully it wasn’t long lived but during those 6 months there were many, many dramas involving my son and the circumstances around it.

Coparenting is hard and I believe that even people that praise us for our parenting style don’t quite understand what we go through. The relationships that have suffered because we try to do what’s best for our son are numerous. Coparenting for us is all about sharing parental responsibilities and acting as a family unit to show that our love for him overcomes any personal feelings we may have. This means that, ultimately, we have minor influences over each other’s lives. If we believe something is best for him we will work together to achieve it and sometimes that means making sacrifices and supporting each other. Two people with very poor mental health can lead to an element of “chipping in" when required to alleviate the pain that the person is dealing with. We both require parental getaways from time to time and we work to make it work.

This sometimes makes it difficult to hold down effective relationships as our partners feel they are being treated as second best to my ex. This couldn’t be further from the truth and maybe one day I will find a way to make them see. It's also something that I know will get easier as my son gets older. He's not far off 8 years old and it won't be too long before he can choose as and when he wants to see me and he can have jnout on how it all works.

Anyway, I jump around a bit further. At this particular point in the story I had remained single since the birth of my son. The loneliness wasn't easy at all. No matter how many friends or family members I surrounded myself with I still felt alone. Many questionable decisions were made including some that I am certainly not proud of. As you can probably imagine, this did not help the state of my mental health. Being alone is a dangerous feeling.

One thing I haven't covered is my confidence. As a natural born introvert I always struggled to make friends and express myself. This went hand in hand with the struggle that is being bisexual (biphobia is real and awful). I also enjoy make up, traditionally-female clothing and generally being a big queer. I was raised in a liberal family in a rather neglected bigotted environment so this was very very difficult to develop with and thus expressing myself was hard. Feelings had to be repressed from an early age and only recently have I felt more free to express them.

Skipping forwards to mid-2019. I had a job that I enjoy, a girlfriend that I adored that made me so unbelievably comfortable in my own skin. Everything was looking up. Until I received news that multiple very close members of my family had been diagnosed with cancer. Some of them are fine now, but there is a goodbye that I will have to bring myself to make in the very near future.

This caused my world to yet again come crashing down and begin a snowball that was only going to get bigger and bigger. My work studies are suffering, my social life is always hit and miss, my regular depression has moved out and the joy of SADs has moved in.

I am now single, facing a big family goodbye and so far behind in my work that I called my boss to apologise and broke down on the phone to her. All while doing my best to keep a smile for my son.

I don't want him to know that his daddy is falling apart.

Now, of course, I've skipped over many details and avoided particular mental breakdowns. Of course I still love my son and of course I utterly, desperately want my girlfriend back, and my finances are a horrific shambles for somebody that works in finance. But this isn't about any of that.

This post is about something else. Something that many people have done for me.

Checked in.

They've messaged me at night, and in the morning and at regular intervals to make sure that I don't make any foolish decisions.

I know what decision they're trying to avoid me taking, and I'd by lying if I said I hadn't thought about it, but that's not what I really want.

I've thought about taking my own life a few times since 2009, all for very different reasons. But I don't just want the pain to stop.

I want to live.

I want to grow old with somebody and watch my son live his dreams. I want to finish reading my books. I want to see how The Good Place ends. I want to see the people I love thrive.

Suicide isn't an option I have given myself. It's a locked door with no key. I'm far too curious as to what next year will bring to just end it all. Too many people I know have tried or have succeeded and I know the pain it causes.

So basically, I'll be fine, but I appreciate the concern.

I might update this post as I continue to explore my feelings, but here it is for now.

Things I haven't mentioned: Holding hands through miscarriages, other breakups, abuse, anorexia, anxiety attacks, other family issues etc.

[micahammon]

On Chinese

I didn’t learn to speak Chinese. In the West we usually differentiate between Mandarin and Cantonese languages, but in China they just refer to it as one language. Perhaps because the government likes to unify and emphasize sameness rather than difference--at least when it comes to ruling. Probably not a bad idea, considering that areas where Cantonese is spoken are not currently completely under the control of the mainland government. Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macao are special administrative zones, that were under British rule previously, and are currently in a grace period until they can be completely subsumed by the mainland government again. This will happen in the next few years, I suppose.

I have a few excuses why I didn’t learn Chinese. The main one is that China uses a character-based writing system, like hieroglyphs if you will. What’s interesting is that this is a testament to the age of this culture and their tendency to safeguard their culture. When a language is being written down for the first time, the inclination is not to create letters in order to spell the words, but rather to break the words down into syllables. So if English used the same system, the word “brother”, would be two syllables “bro-ther”, and we would use a different character to represent every single syllable that we use in our language. Those syllable pieces would come together to form all the words.

However, Chinese takes a bit of a shortcut. They prefer their words to be only one syllable. That makes it easier to write. The characters are unbelievably complex! For example, to write the character for “I” (as in: I am Micah) takes 10 strokes of the pen! Obviously in English it takes 3 to write a capital “I” like how we were taught in school. So, the fewer syllables used to form a word, means the fewer pen strokes used to write the word. Now, how do you get maximum words using as few syllables as possible? Use the same syllables but change the tone and now you have multiple words using the same syllables (each is written differently though). Chinese has 5 tones. One tone goes up, like for example how when a person asks a question their tone goes up at the end of the sentence. One tone goes down, another goes down and then back up, another tone is flat, and the last tone is no tone.

I was born and raised in the deep south in America, and I can tell you that I am tone deaf. I think Chinese people are a little more naturally suited to singing because they are used to keeping tone when they speak. As an English teacher, I always get a chuckle from the kids as they try to mimic my tone as I pronounce the words, because in their brain, the particular tone I use to emphasize the pronunciation of the word might be the exact tone that must always be used for that word.

There is no written alphabet using letters. This means that reading Chinese is not phonetic. You can’t look at an unfamiliar word and phonetically sound it out in your head, like “con-ster-na-tion”. If a Chinese person encounters a word (character) that they don’t recognize, it’s impossible for them to know how to pronounce the word. They would need to ask someone who knows how to pronounce the word for them. It is said that one needs to memorize 2,000 characters, at a minimum, to be able to read simple articles, but the better target is 4,000 characters to be fluent.

Now, the truth is that you don’t have to read and write Chinese characters in order to speak Chinese. I know a number of people who are fluent or who can speak pretty well, and their reading skills are below their speaking skills. And the truth is that China has adopted a Latin-based writing system, using letters like the West! It’s called Pinyin, and it is an excellent writing system. This Latin-based writing system is what Chinese kids start with when they begin school, because, among other things, it really helps them to learn the pronunciation—it clearly shows the tones using accent marks. It actually takes school children about 7 years to learn the characters in order to become fluent in traditional reading and writing.

Pinyin is absolutely critical to modern life because in order to write Chinese on the computer or phone, one must use Pinyin. Remember that there are no letters used to form words in the traditional writing system. If not for Pinyin, one would need a keyboard with 4,000 characters in order to write. Writing on the computer or phone using Pinyin works just like predictive text that we used to use on older phones. Type the first 3 letters or so of the word that you want to write, then choose the correct character from the list of associated characters that pop up. Imagine all day writing like that—letter, letter. Select word. Letter, letter, letter. Select word.

Unfortunately for me, after words get typed into the computer using Pinyin, the end result is the traditional Chinese character gets spit out onto the screen. This means that I never see the Pinyin. I can’t read the words that people type to me in Chinese. All the newspapers, menus in restaurants, signs, etc. are written in the traditional character system. And I am a person who really needs to see the word in order to get a grasp on the words being used, it really helps me to read the word and mull it over in order to learn. The truth is that I would speak Chinese today if not for this.

Aside from how it’s written, the Chinese language is really not that difficult, in my opinion. They don’t have future, or past conjugation of verbs. Roughly: I eat a sandwich yesterday. I eat a sandwich today. I eat a sandwich tomorrow. There are some oddities. It is grammatically correct to form some sentences without verbs! One doesn’t say I am very good, but rather I very good.

The language is simple, and I believe that it is in part because of the reliance on the character-based writing system. If the meaning can be derived using fewer words, the better and less cumbersome to write. I also believe that is a reason why they often speak using what amounts to idioms and metaphors. When you already have 4,000 characters that must be memorized to read and write (and there are some estimates that puts the total number of Chinese characters around 45,000) then there would be a great reluctance to invent new words as technology develops or as language evolves. So, they can combine old words and use them to connote new meanings. One example is that “hand machine” means cell phone. This makes translation very strange and difficult even for translations apps like Google Translate.

I still could’ve learned to speak Chinese, and I am embarrassed that I did not after living here so long. I will never live somewhere and not learn the local language again. However, I lacked important incentives to learn Chinese. It may sound strange, but I would rather use the brain space and future time practicing and conversing with others in other languages. If I learned Chinese, then I would owe it to myself to keep myself in Chinese circles even after I leave, in order to practice and maintain my level. My favorite thing about China is the strong reading & writing culture, there are many amazing Chinese authors (which I read in English). But sadly, these are written using characters that I really don’t want to dedicate myself to learn. That would be the one big thing that I would love to be able to do, read Chinese books in the native tongue, but that goal was too high above my ambition.

#chinese #china #language

[xmwkristian4242-blog]

Varieties Of Music

For the reason that introduction of digital devices and synthetic sound units within the early 1900s, digital music has developed into a singular style. In ancient instances, http://www.audio-transcoder.com/ corresponding to with the Historical Greeks , the aesthetics of music explored the mathematical and cosmological dimensions of rhythmic and harmonic organization. Within the 18th century, focus shifted to the experience of hearing music, and thus to questions about its beauty and human enjoyment ( plaisir and jouissance ) of music. The origin of this philosophic shift is sometimes attributed to Baumgarten in the 18th century, followed by Kant By way of their writing, the ancient term 'aesthetics', which means sensory notion, received its present-day connotation. In the 2000s, philosophers have tended to emphasize issues moreover magnificence and pleasure. For instance, music's capability to specific emotion has been a central subject. An opera may very well be defined broadly as a theatrical presentation (a play) during which the characters' strains are sung reasonably than spoken. The vocal fashion used in historic opera displays the fact that before digital amplification voices needed to be big and loud so they may very well be heard in a large live performance hall over the orchestra used to accompany them. A rock opera is simply an opera (sung play) that uses the model and devices of rock music. Examples of rock operas are Lease by Jonathan Larson, Tommy by The Who, and Jesus Christ Superstar by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice. The term 'rock opera' is usually used as a synonym for 'idea album' (equivalent to My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade, The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Membership Band, or Pink Floyd's The Wall), however only those with a transparent narrative (a storyline with characters and occasions) that is informed fully in music (no spoken traces) ought to be referred to as rock operas.

Rockabilly; what some name the original Rock & Roll. A mixture of hillbilly and rock containing a western swing and a bouncing party vibe. With parts of piano-based Leap Blues and electrical boogie woogie, it made it is mark on the music scene indelibly. Almost everyone's named contained a "Y". essays larger ranges of similarity with the Energetic and Conventional genres (e.g., pop music). wonky : Wonky is electronic music characterized by synths with unusual time signatures in summary, hip hop-type beats. Wonky takes cues in its sound from instrumental hip hop and glitch however sets itself aside primarily by its lack of the heavy quantization seen in many digital genres. Alice had her breakthrough after winning the Sanremo Music Festival with the tune Per Elisa" in 1981, followed by European hit singles like Una notte speciale", Messaggio", Chan-son Egocentrique", Prospettiva Nevski" and Nomadi" and albums like Gioielli rubati, Park Lodge, Elisir and Il sole nella pioggia charting in both Continental Europe, Scandinavia and Japan. Very good voice. If you load up the page in your browser , youвЂll be greeted with a large wall of colored text hyperlinks. Each represents a selected genre of music. ThereвЂs everything from “Taiwanese pop” to “dark psytrance” to “Danish jazz” to “vapor twitch” to “Brazilian gospel” to “funk rock” to “discofox” to good ol†usual “hip hop.” With greater than 1,500 completely different music genres mapped, itвЂs all there. 1995When the Brill constructing met Lennon-McCartney: continuity and alter within the early evolution of the mainstream pop tune. Widespread Music Soc. Another instance of sub-genres influencing one another was the punk beginnings of Queercore. A response to the societal disapproval of LGBT citizens, Queercore was one of many many music communities created in the US and UK which offered cultural alternate between members and allies. So here, for a little bit of enjoyable with information and musical exploration, are a few of the most strangely-named genres on Spotify. You may click on them to listen to what they sound like. This record is so incomplete and so pathetically inept in its order that I consider I'll pee-yook. Rush at #5??? The third top-selling band ever. Solely The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are forward of them. Gordon Lightfoot at #sixteen…just spit in his face. He is been putting out music for over SIXTY years. What about Bob Ezrin? Pink Floyd's The Wall" wouldn't exist with out him. Neither would a couple of KISS albums, Alice Cooper tunes, Pat Benatar and several other others. Gary and Dave…Ian Thomas is high 20. I don't argue against Neil Young, kraft dinner(kd) Lang in #4? Rufus Wainwright? Ron Sexsmith does loads, but has no business being on this checklist. Had been you individuals smoking herb if you thought up this muddled mess? Horrible…absolutely horrible. Battle hardened in the golf equipment of Hamburg, the fab four remodeled from squeaky-clear pop sweethearts to rock monsters in the course of the course of their career, and produced a few of the finest music ever made alongside the best way. They constantly pushed boundaries, took their sound to locations you'd by no means assume potential and along with pioneering producer George Martin used the studio as an instrument unlike ever before. Their story and their music is legendary, and you just can't look previous them as the best British rock band of all time. Fresh production work on Jay-Z's 2001 album, The Blueprint (soul nuggets clashing with Bowie and the Doorways) announced Chicagoan West's expertise, parlayed into modern solo records drawing from more and more eclectic soundworlds (folk, classical, synth-pop) and minting an over-sharing confessional blog-rap style whose overcome the lengthy-reigning gangsta idiom was symbolized when his 2007 album, Graduation, pipped 50 Cent's Curtis in a hyped-up sales race". West's genius for digital-period publicity makes him unignorable - his avidity for new musical territories makes him inimitable. Allways use the large picture and follow logic and scientific criteria. The truth is that each one those genres you hear arround you (this rock or that rock, or this jazz or that jazz) are SUB-genres, not genres, they use nearly the identical language and range only in particulars. I thought it could be useful to share a playlist featuring one music from every of the genres listed. Given the various vary of content we've got coated, it is a really combined bag — but it's sure to get you enthusiastic about all the obscure genres that you just're currently missing out on.I guess this is not a style, maybe it is only a group of bands from different metallic subgenres specializing in certain lyrical themes. Holt, Fabian (2007) Genre in Standard Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. You're in all probability already aware of at least among the music by well-known composers like Mozart and Beethoven. You could even be conversant in some of the work by composers of baroque music who preceded them, equivalent to Bach, Vivaldi, and Handel. And most people immediately have heard the work of recent composers who use elements of classical music in their scores for main Hollywood motion pictures.

[aion-rsa]

The Concert for Bangladesh Set the Standard for Benefit Concerts

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The Beatles are credited with a lot of “firsts” in rock history. They were the first band to play stadium concerts, put intentional feedback, backwards instrumentation, and faded introductions into songs. Because of their ever-experimental guitarist, they were also the first rock band to put sitar and tamboura drones in pop rock and perform the first Indian modality prog piece. George Harrison didn’t stop expanding possibilities away from his bandmates. His first solo release after The Beatles’ break up, All Things Must Pass – which will have a celebratory remix release this week, was the first triple album coming from a single act in rock. In 1971, his Concert for Bangladesh was the first rock benefit concert.

The Aug. 1, 1971 show, and subsequent record and film, set the standard for musical contributions to charity. Mistakes were made, and Harrison himself paid out to fix them, teaching a valuable lesson for rock benefits to follow. But it all began very personally. “My friend came to me, sadness in his eyes, and told me that he wanted help before his country dies,” Harrison sings on the song “Bangladesh.” It is an almost verbatim version of the truth.

The Beatles’ Apple Films were producing Raga, a documentary about the renowned sitar virtuoso Ravi Shankar. In the spring of 1971, Harrison and Shankar were in Los Angeles working on its soundtrack. Shankar, a Bengali, told Harrison about things in his country. India and Pakistan were divided into two independent nations in 1947. East Pakistan declared independence, and became the People’s Republic of Bangladesh on April 17, 1971. This prompted a massive wave of migration, with between 300,000 and 3 million relocating to the mostly-Hindu nation. The move was violent, and it was reported 400,000 women were raped by Pakistani military personnel and Islamist militias, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The crisis deepened when the 1970 Bhola cyclone, floods and famine created a humanitarian disaster.

Shankar wanted to draw attention to the situation through a benefit concert. He was hoping Harrison or actor Peter Sellers might introduce the show. Shankar believed he could raise about $25,000 for the refugees. Harrison had a better idea. 

My friend came to me

Harrison met Shankar at a dinner party for the North London Asian Music Circle in 1966, a year after the guitarist first picked up a sitar while the Beatles were filming Help!. Harrison brought the instrument into the studio to bring an exotic feel to John Lennon’s “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” from the Rubber Soul album. Upon hearing it at the time, Shankar, one of India’s most venerated musicians, told a reporter “If George Harrison wants to play the sitar, why does he not learn it properly?” Harrison took him up on it, and Shankar schooled him on melodic structure and technique, but also noted the importance of the instrument’s part in spiritual discipline.

Harrison’s spiritually infused All Things Must Pass and its lead single, “My Sweet Lord,” both spent weeks at the number one spot on the charts. He had been writing with Bob Dylan, and playing with Eric Clapton and Delaney & Bonnie. “Straightaway I thought of the John Lennon aspect of it, which was: film it, and make a record of it, and, you know, let’s make a million dollars,” Harrison said, according to George Harrison: Interviews and Encounters by Ashley Kahn.

Lennon wrote a song for breakfast, recorded it for lunch and copies were pressed shortly after dinner with the Plastic Ono single “Instant Karma.” Harrison played guitar on the song, and it was produced by the studio legend Phil Spector, who would ultimately run the sound board and record the album The Concert for Bangladesh. Spector didn’t get to see the show. He was stationed in the Record Plant truck getting the perfect mix of a full horn section, two drummers, almost half a dozen guitarists, and over a dozen background singers.

A Beatles Reunion?

Harrison’s initial idea was to recruit the other Beatles. Paul McCartney, who had just put Wings together, initially agreed, if he and Lennon also performed separate solo sets. Lennon first balked at performing because Harrison didn’t want Yoko Ono to perform, then agreed, but flew to Paris after the decision led to domestic distress. He missed the show, and it caused a rift between the two former bandmates. McCartney ultimately backed out, citing the legal problems of being in the same room as Allen Klein.

Harrison didn’t have to ask Ringo Starr. According to reports, Starr was nervous about playing in front of an audience, but if you look at the footage of the two drummers playing, mostly in tandem, while joking with each other, it is plain he just wanted Jim Keltner’s company. Harrison gets to trade guitar licks with Clapton, Davis, Don Preston, and Ham. Starr and Keltner throw their own percussive party, doubling their beats in beautiful unity. Keltner held back his hi-hat cymbal on the two and four, a technique Levon Helm of the Band used, so he’d never step on Ringo’s backbeat. Starr visibly enjoys the freedom of new sound equipment to throw in all the fills.

Awaiting on Us All

Harrison began recruiting friends to play the one-time only concert in April, and had commitments by June. All the players agreed to perform without a fee. He also arranged for a film and recording to be made of the event, to add to the proceeds which would go toward the refugees. According to Pattie Boyd Harrison, George consulted an astrologer before he finally booked August 1 at Madison Square Garden. Tickets were set at $10 or less, so the show sold out in a few hours, and a second show was added.

The musicians rehearsed in a space above Carnegie Hall for about a week, but because of the various musicians’ schedules, the first time the group played together was at the show. Clapton was invited to be the lead guitarist, but missed rehearsals because the low-grade heroin he was supplied forced him to go two days cold turkey, he admits in his book Clapton: The Autobiography. Deeming the guitar god possibly unreliable, George also recruited Taj Mahal’s guitarist Jesse Ed Davis, who could move easily through playing rhythm, lead, slide, country, and jazz. In the book Do You Feel Like I Do, Peter Frampton reveals he could, or should, have been on that stage as well. He mistook his invitation as one to be in the audience. Harrison reportedly turned down offers from Mick Jagger and David Crosby to appear.

The 24-piece band included Klaus Voormann on bass, Pete Ham, Tom Evans, and Joey Molland on acoustic guitars, and Mike Gibbins on tambourine and maracas. Don Preston played electric guitar and Carl Radle played bass for the song “Jumpin’ Jack Flash/Young Blood.” The stage also accommodated the Hollywood Horns, which was its arranger Jim Horn, as well as Jackie Kelso, Allan Beutler on saxophones, Chuck Findley and Ollie Mitchell on trumpets and Lou McCreary on trombone. The Soul Choir included singers Claudia Lennear, Joe Greene, Jeanie Greene, Marlin Greene, Dolores Hall, and its organizer, songwriter Don Nix.

Pianist Leon Russell was the musical director, just as he had been on Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour, which Harrison and Clapton played on. Oklahoma-born legend Russell had been an essential part of The Wrecking Crew of Los Angeles studio musicians as well as an important brick in Phil Spector’s Wall of Sound. He played on thousands of recordings, including piano on “Strangers in the Night” by Frank Sinatra.

“Have we forgotten anybody,” Harrison asks the audience after introducing the band mid-show. “We’ve forgotten Billy Preston.” The Beatles history with Preston goes all the way back to their early tours, just before megastardom. Preston played organ in the ensemble which backed Little Richard, who had the Beatles as an opening act. He was also the musician Harrison called in during the Beatles’ “Get Back” recording sessions. Preston, who’d also played with Russell on the pop music series Shindig! in May, 1965, brought more than an electrifying organ to the main act’s arsenal of sound. Harrison produced several of Preston’s albums and studied the idiom of Gospel music to capture the master player’s work blending it into secular funk overdrive. The collaboration between the two musicians is evident all over All Things Must Pass, which blurred the lines between the eastern and western religions by mixing modalities. The all-star rock concert to beat all all-star rock concerts was a spiritual revival in more ways than one.

The Performance

The shows open like Hindu pujas with traditional Indian music. Before the performance Harrison introduced the players, Shankar on sitar, Ali Akbar Khan on sarod, Kamala Chakravarty on tambura, and Alla Rakha on tabla. He explained how Indian music was more serious than the rock they’d be enjoying later, and to give it respectful concentration. Shankar requested the audience not smoke during their segment, as the ragas sought to help them “feel the agony and also the pain and a lot of sad happenings in Bangladesh and also the refugees who have come to India.”

After the musicians calibrated their tones, the audience burst into applause. “Thank you, if you appreciate the tuning so much, I hope you will enjoy the playing more,” Shankar smiled from the stage, before launching into “Bangla Dhun.” It begins with an improvisation on the raga’s melodic themes before the tambura drone and tabla push the rhythms until they explode by the end of the piece. The audience wasn’t respectful. They were floored. The rock audience who went to see fingers fly got to see stringed interplay between Ravi and Ali which was every bit as good as the guitar duel between Harrison and Clapton at the end of that night’s performance of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps.”

It is Harrison’s evening and he opens it himself. The spotlight illuminates his white two-piece suit with the Om symbol, and the first sounds the audience hear is his single guitar playing the opening riff of “Wah-Wah,” before Davis doubles it and the band kicks in. The Concert for Bangladesh was the first time Harrison played songs from All Things Must Pass live, but the audience was already familiar. The live version of “My Sweet Lord” is as uplifting as the studio recording. A particularly beautiful moment catches Harrison losing himself in the mantra towards the end of the song.

George blows a line in “Awaiting on You All,” but who cares, he’s ripping it out with a positively religious fervor. Preston takes on the spirit, and lifts it further with the power of gospel in “That’s the Way God Planned It.” Not content with electrifying his congregation through organ and voice, Preston gets up on his feet in an impromptu celebratory dance, not even Harrison saw coming. It is harmonic euphoria with heavenly promise.

Ringo brings things back to the Garden, grounding the proceedings with jubilant blues. The drummer paid his dues, and is enjoying its fruits as he kids around with Keltner after scatting over forgotten lyrics. His chosen tune, “It Don’t Come Easy,” was produced by Harrison, spent time on the top five of the charts and was still riding the high hat of heavy radio rotation.

“Beware of Darkness” bridges east and west, gospel and Hindu, rock and roll and country and western. Harrison begins the song, faithful to the album version, until Leon infuses a verse with melodic possibilities in a mere tease of things to come. Harrison’s plaintive rendition of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is wrought with personal demons. He gets those behind him when he and Clapton trade improvisational riffs to close the song. They duck, they weave, punch every modal challenge with the counterpunch of blues purism.

Rhythm and blues is at its most authentic when Leon Russell invokes his trinity for a roof blowing medley of The Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” and the song Leiber and Stoller wrote for the Coasters: “Youngblood.” Russell turns Madison Square Garden into a tent revival orgy, preaching to the choir with exhilarating call and response exaltations which encapsulate the subtle motif of the day’s performances. This is where the show hits its jubilant peak, and marks the time to exhale.

“Here Comes the Sun” is George’s most intimate and assured performance of the evening. Blanketed only subtly by Don Nix’s gospel choir, George and Badfinger’s Pete Ham duet on acoustic guitars, filling their intricate unison fingerpicking with different configurations, and never missing a run on the prog time changes masquerading as seamless simplicity. The sparse arrangement takes nothing away from the majesty of the original recording, it augments it by transforming the space between notes into exultant expectation.

George was as surprised as his next guest was to be announced to the stage. As Harrison strapped on his white Fender Stratocaster, he checked the wings before bringing “on a friend of us all, Mr. Bob Dylan.” Even though the singer’s history of appearing at historic events went back to his performance at the March on Washington, no one knew if Dylan was going to make the show until he walked on the stage. It took Harrison’s cajoling to get Dylan to play the Isle of Wight in 1969, and he was happy playing Napoleon in rags, exiled in Woodstock since his motorcycle crash.

While Dylan had shown up at rehearsal, Spector got concerned when heard the musical icon had been bicycle riding all morning. Harrison had just asked if Bob would play “Blowin’ in The Wind” at the show, and Dylan hurled back “You gonna do ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand?’” But after handpicking Starr on tambourine and Russell, who strapped on Voormann’s bass, to augment his rhythm guitar and Harrison’s slide, not only did Bob blow wind through his shoulder-mounted harmonica, he strummed through his old favorite “Mr. Tambourine Man,” and dipped into folk blues with “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.” Harrison’s guitar lines slide delicately around Dylan’s vocals on “Love Minus Zero/No Limit,” while Russell and Harrison blanket his rendition of “Just Like A Woman” with harmony as well as irony. It may be the finest rendition of the song.

As beautiful and exquisitely rendered as it is, the best part of “Something” is when Harrison gets lost in his guitar playing to the detriment of his vocals and cracks himself up. It’s very visible in the film, and it lifts the performance because it almost shocks him into enjoying it and how comfortable he is performing it.

The evening show had a slightly different set list and sequence. “Hear Me Lord” was dropped. Dylan played “Mr. Tambourine Man” in place of “Love Minus Zero/No Limit.” But both ended with the song written for the event, “Bangladesh.” Anchored by Leon Russel’s propulsive and suspenseful A minor, it is a self-effacing call for bread. Harrison freely admits he couldn’t feel the pain, and suggests that’s what makes it so personal. He leaves the band and the audience alone to jam out the end of the song, as if an invisible plate were being passed by spirited hands.

The concert raised $243,418.50, which was given to UNICEF, who gave Shankar and Harrison their “Child Is the Father of Man” award for fundraising. The George Harrison Fund for UNICEF continues to this day.

But in the rush of putting the Concert for Bangladesh together, Harrison hadn’t specified a charity and lost any charitable tax breaks. A lot of money went missing, and an inordinate amount went to taxes. Harrison paid his own money to maintain the fund. The concert record, which was the second triple album in a row from Harrison, topped charts and won the Grammy for Album of the Year, but that also didn’t stop the delays in money being sent to help the Bangladeshi refugees. Years later when Bob Geldof reached out for tips for the 1985 Live Aid concert event, Harrison advised “Do your homework.” It was an important lesson. Nearly $12 million was tied up in an Internal Revenue Service escrow account for 11 years because organizers didn’t apply for tax-exempt status. Harrison’s initial attempt laid bare exactly what had to be done not only to stage a major music benefit concert for a humanitarian cause, but how to get the money where it belonged.

The Concert for Bangladesh album was released on Dec. 20, 1971. The film was released in the U.S. on March 23, 1972. They can be enjoyed together or separately. Each of the two are high marks reached for live albums or films, there is not a moment of downtime, and all the notes are in harmony.

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All Things Must Pass 50th Anniversary Edition will be available on Aug. 6.

The post The Concert for Bangladesh Set the Standard for Benefit Concerts appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[sufismandsufis]

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

“Bismillah, ar-Rahman, ar-Rahim”

meaning

In the name of Allah, the Beneficent, the Merciful.

The Arabic phrase shown above is pronounced as Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim, and is a beautifully poetic phrase which offers both deep insight and brilliant inspiration. It has often been said that the phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim contains the true essence of the entire Qur'an, as well as the true essence of all religions.

Muslims often say this phrase when embarking on any significant endeavor, and the phrase is considered by some to be a major pillar of Islam. This expression is so magnificent and so concise that all but one chapter of the Qur'an begins with the words Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim.

The common translation:

"In the name of God, most Gracious, most Compassionate".

fails to capture either the true depth of meaning or the inspirational message of this beautiful phrase. So, let's look deeper into the meaning of these wonderful words.

Origin and Spelling:

Every chapter of the Qur'an (except the ninth chapter) begins with the Arabic phrase:

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

However, there are many differing views on how this phrase should be transliterated using the English alphabet, as well as differing views on whether or not to include some of the Arabic rules of grammar. Consequently, one may encounter a variety of different transliterations of this glorious phrase, including:

bismillahi al r-rahmani al r-rahim

bismillahi al rahman al rahim

bismillah al rahman al rahim

bismi Allah al rahman al rahim

bismillahi-r rahmani-r rahim

bismillaah ir rahmaan ir raheem

bismillah ir rahman ir rahim

However, regardless of how one may choose write the English transliteration of the original Arabic, it is neither the writing of the words nor their pronunciation which is crucial, but rather we shall each be rewarded according to what is in our heart and how we act in the world.

Those who say these words with thoughts of self-aggrandizement, or selfish gains, or self-centered vain profit in any manner, will receive their just reward... suffering, pain and confusion. Likewise, those who truly dedicate every step of their life to the glory and service of the Ever-present One shall also receive their just reward... peace, love and beauty.

This phrase is truly an ideal to be expressed from the heart, an ideal to be expressed with the utmost sincerity, an ideal which leads us toward sacred purpose, the purpose for which we have been given life.

Let's look at the deeper meaning of each word of this glorious phrase:

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

bismillah

The common translation for bismillah is "In the name of Allah", which is actually an idiom, an expression that really doesn't make much sense on a literal word-by-word basis.

The phrase In the name of is an idiom having the connotation of with the blessings of, under the governance of, as an instrument of, in devotion to, in adoration of, on behalf of, with the support of, or for the glory of. In each of these cases, the idiom In the name of indicates that one is submitting to, honoring or glorifying that which is referred to.

Now, let's take a deeper look into the Arabic roots of this magnificent word bismillah.

The term bismillah, is a combination of three words:

1. The particle bi which can mean by, for, with the aid of, through or by means of and points toward that which happens next.

2. The next word in this phrase is ism, based on the root variously reported to be s-m-w or a-s-m, which indicates the means by which something is distinguished, whether by use of an identifying mark, or by being raised up high so that it may be distinguished, and would include a name, reputation, light or vibration, and points toward the very essence of something, the inherent qualities and signs of the existence of something, the underlying reality of something.

3. The ending of the term is the word Allah, which is the Arabic name of the One. The Semitic roots of the word Allah extend back several thousand years to the Canaanite Elat, Hebrew El and Elohim, and Aramaic Alaha. These roots point toward unity, oneness, the eternal power which includes all of existence and of non-existence. In modern English this would generally be translated as God (which is old English, likely based on the Sanskrit word hu, meaning that which is worshipped, honored or adored).

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Using these basic roots, the term bismillah might be translated as:

- By means of the very essence of God

- For the glory of our Creator

- With the light of the One

- With the guidance of The Divine

- As an instrument of the One

- In harmony with Divine Presence

The central idea here is that whatever we do, every step that we take, every breath that we breathe, is done for, because of, and through the essence of, the One who has created us.

It is not us that does the work, it is not us that makes opportunities appear, it is not us that produces fruits from every action. We alone are powerless. The Creator has given us life and has given us the ability to move and think and feel, yet we are totally dependent upon the Creator for the very essence of life itself.

Thus, this beautiful word bismillah is a magnificent reminder of our relationship to our Creator and our relationship to all of creation.

In one simple word bismillah expresses our wonder, awe and thankfulness while it also expresses our innermost prayer that we may have the blessing of another breath, another moment of life, and that we may walk on a path of truth and understanding.

To say bismillah is to humbly offer one's self as a vehicle for the glory and majesty of The One.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

ir rahman ir rahim

These two terms rahman and rahim refer to attributes of the One. While they are often translated simply as Merciful and Compassionate, the roots of the words point to a deeper meaning.

Both rahman and rahim are derived from the Semitic root r-h-m which indicates something of the utmost tenderness which provides protection and nourishment, and that from which all of creation is brought into being. And indeed, the root rhm has meanings of womb, kinship, relationship, loving-kindness, mercy, compassion, and nourishing-tenderness.

Thus, both rahman and rahim point toward that which emerges from the source of all creation, while also conveying a sense of tenderness, loving-kindness, protection and nourishment.

The term rahman is a very emphatic statement, and then the sentiment is echoed by being immediately followed by the use of another form of the same root-word. Such repetition is a joyful celebration of this Divine attribute, much the same as saying "The One who is the Supreme Loving-Kindness, oh such Loving-Kindness".

These two words, rahman and rahim, also express slightly different variations of meaning, as described in the following paragraphs.

rahman:

The term rahman describes that aspect of the source of all creation which is endlessly radiating, endlessly nourishing, regardless of who or what is receiving the endless flow of blessings.

Rahmān conveys the idea of fullness and extensiveness, indicating the great quality of love and mercy which engulfs all of creation without regard to any effort or request on our part.

According to Ibn Qayyum (1350 AD), rahmān describes the quality of abounding Grace which is inherent in and inseparable from the Almighty.

rahim:

On the other hand, the term rahim describes that aspect of the source which is issued forth only in response to the actions and behavior of the recipient. It is in this manner that God takes ten steps toward us when we take even a single step toward God.

Rahīm conveys the idea of constant renewal and giving liberal reward in response to the quality of our deeds and thoughts.

According to Ibn Qayyum (1350 AD), rahīm expresses the continuous manifestation of the Grace in our lives and its effect upon us as a result of our own activities.

ir rahman ir rahim:

Rahman points toward the Beneficent One whose endless outpouring of love and mercy are continually showered upon all of creation, while Rahim points toward the Merciful One whose love and mercy are manifested in that which is received as the consequence of one's deeds.

So, the phrase ir rahman ir rahim is a recognition and honoring of the very source of all existence, the source of all blessings, the source of all compassion, the source of all mercy who gives endlessly to us and who also responds according to our moral integrity, our harmony with all of creation and our love of Allah.

بسم الله الرحمن الرحيم

Poetic Renderings:

There is no way for any one translation to capture the many facets of this beautiful phrase Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Rahim. Here are some poetic renderings that attempt to capture some aspects of the meaning without being literal translations:

With every breath that we breathe, may we be act on behalf of the Divine Presence, the Source of all that we receive.

With every step that we take, may we be instruments of the One Light which guides us, the Source and Nourisher of all of creation.

Every moment of this life is filled with your eternal radiance my Beloved, You are the Beneficent One who endlessly showers all of creation with nourishment and blessings, and the One who generously rewards those who live in harmony with Your Divine Will.

Source: https://wahiduddin.net/words/bismillah.htm