tapas epitome of incomprehensibility When I google you I see a website for publishing stories. I see, as I expected to see, snacks. But I was thinking of the Sanskrit word for suffering, which can also mean being hot: a combination that makes sense to me. ("Summer-hater," my imagined adversaries mutter.) But it's cold and I'm suffering, because I can't find what the word after you is. In your "tap" form you're a verb root (the taproot, the spring of action) but I can turn you into a noun, as stated in the chapter before. But the word after you requires some creative translating, turning another noun into a verb. It means body or self, so embodied? I'm not sure. Tears pour out; my mind doesn't work like this, I wail. I can't do this fast. But I want to do this. I don't want to do this now, because it's making me suffer, but I want to enjoy this. Why isn't my mind letting me? Dad listens, mostly silent. I wonder what he's thinking. Mom comes in. "Don't think about yourself so much. Think about the task." And she's right, but I don't have the right frame of mind. I find a frame that's rough, the rectangle skewed. You can see the nails poking out of the wood. But I try it on and I'm able to provide an equally rough translation of the first Sanskrit verse while Mom and Dad are out on their walk. It's something about Prajapati, Lord of Creatures, and snakes and birds and sacrifice. His human offspring are suffering because of snakes and birds, or maybe they're suffering for some other reason. He loves them, anyway. Maybe he loves the snakes and birds too. It's unclear. Anyway, I'm playing "Christian_Martyr" on the piano, solemnly enough, thinking it's the fifth anniversary of the Quebec City shooting (that's Saturday) when my parents come in. I quickly explain I've finished a thing, lest they think I've been goofing off this whole time. Suffering. Escape. The notes are calming, the alternation between 5/4 and 6/4 something that requires concentration without overwhelming my thoughts and feelings. But this isn't really an escape from tapas because using the suffering of others to distract from my own is selfish. Even if it's more complicated than that. Even if it's like "I need to find something bigger to care about because my problems are all I'm focusing on" by thinking I need to be solemn, need to think about miserable things, I'll just heap misery on misery - plates of tapas, a story to tell on a website - because I'm not insensible. Just less than sensible. (Selfish: I go on Discord later, which is not strife but a website where people in the class chat, and feel relieved that others are struggling with the same issues I am. "I'm glad," I write. "I thought I was the only one having problems with that." And then I clarify, "I mean, I'm not glad you're having a hard time..." Am I? You say tapami, I say tapati. Let's...stop being silly and try to get the rest of the verses on that page at least semi-translated. 220127 ... e_o_i You say "I suffer," I say "He/she suffers," and that is because the brackets have not been closed.) 220127 ... e_o_i Ha, I got that completely wrong. It was that Prajapati desires to create offspring. He created snakes, wasn't satisfied; created birds, wasn't satisfied; then finally got to humans. Anyway, something funny in class this morning. The prof was explaining why the verb for "to be hot" was the same as "to suffer" (in India, it's already hot, so it's uncomfortable to be too hot), and someone posted in the chat in a fake-ditzy register, "To be hot is to suffer, riiiight ladies?" With an emoji. And I burst out laughing (at least the sound's off and it's online). (Ladies is accurate, too - all the students in this one are women. I'm the oldest, probably, but also one of the newbies. It seems two people at least already took another course in it. I just had the a basic Intro to Classical Sanskrit one.) 220128 ... e_o_i Also, in these Brahmanas, suffering is a good thing. As in self-induced suffering, asceticism. The idea is that it brings rewards, grants spiritual powers. So when I was translating something as "keep suffering away from me," it should have been "do not take away (the results of) my suffering." And that makes more sense, syntactically. But I didn't think it'd be that, because it didn't make sense to me. I didn't have the cultural context (and even if I learn more, it will still be far from complete). 220219 what's it to you? who go blather from