i'll grab my light and go with you

But when you’re not using it? When you have cleaned it and put it back in the cupboard? What is it then? That’s right. It reverts to being a gravy boat. Because that’s what it’s, as they say, “for.”

And when you take it out again and fill it with, idk, salsa verde, what will people say? They’ll say, “Oh, that’s a good use for a gravy boat.” No one ever says “how clever of you to use a salsa boat to serve gravy.” Because the boat defaults to gravy. That is the problem.

If I go to the store and ask for a raita boat, I get funny looks. If I ask for a gravy boat, they know exactly what I’m talking about. Fair? No. Fact? Yes.

Over time we’ve arbitrarily added an “a” and an “e” in there to get YaHWeH, presumably because we have a preference for vowels.

But scholars and Rabi’s have noted that the letters YHWH represent breathing sounds, or aspirated consonants. When pronounced without intervening vowels, it actually sounds like breathing.

YH (inhale): WH (exhale).

So a baby’s first cry, his first breath, speaks the name of God.

A deep sigh calls His name – or a groan or gasp that is too heavy for mere words.

Even an atheist would speak His name, unaware that their very breath is giving constant acknowledgment to God.

Likewise, a person leaves this earth with their last breath, when God’s name is no longer filing their lungs.

So when I can’t utter anything else, is my cry calling out His name?

Being alive means I speak His name constantly.

So, is it heard the loudest when I’m the quietest?

In sadness, we breathe heavy sighs.

In joy, our lungs feel almost like they will burst.

In fear we hold our breath and have to be told to breathe slowly to help us calm down.

When we’re about to do something hard, we take a deep breath to find our courage.

When I think about it, breathing is giving him praise. Even in the hardest moments!

This is so beautiful and fills me with emotion every time I grasp the thought. God chose to give himself a name that we can’t help but speak every moment we’re alive.

All of us, always, everywhere.

Waking, sleeping, breathing, with the name of God on our lips. *unknown*

Ooh hard questions! Thank you! 

Fine literature I think I would define as telling the Truth; not just telling the little truths of individual experience, but doing so in a way that opens up the resonances between those tiny concrete, individual moments and the vast, undefinable patterns of Reality. How in good literature a single kiss, a letter, a word, a confrontation, a bloody dagger, a whale, can be completely and fully itself, while somehow revealing itself as the carrier of meaning to us here and now, and to readers in any time or place! This is what we would essentially consider the “sacramental” nature of reality, that it partakes in the reality that it signifies, and to my mind great literature imitates reality in this way and allows us to see that reality IS this way.

Good music: I have much less structured thoughts on this, honestly. I think good music also needs to be true - but it is true to an emotional resonance that is entirely without words and beyond words. As a singer, I find that music is capable of imitating the most subtle and minute emotional shifts, that it requires great honesty and openness in order to perform well. I don’t necessarily think that good music needs to be incredibly complex. I think what makes it great is the refusal to use emotional shortcuts from previous works or the overarching style, and instead the commitment to discover a truly particular and honest expression of whatever emotion is being portrayed. 

No, they have Westron names and English names.

What you’ve got to understand is that everything Tolkien wrote was him pretending to merely translate ancient documents. He was writing as if the Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings were actually been written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam (or Bilba, Maura, and Ban) and he was just some random contemporary academic translating it all into English for us. 

There are many languages in his books, but generally speaking, everything written in English in the books is a translation of the language “Westron.” Therefore any names that come from Westron, he translated. Names coming from other languages, like Sindarin, he left as they were. Why? IDK. Maybe because the stories are from a hobbit perspective and hobbits speak Westron, so he wanted the Westron parts to sound familiar and the other languages/names to remain foreign? 

“But Mirkwoodest!” you cry, “The word ‘hobbit’ isn’t an English word! And the names Bilbo Baggins, Frodo Baggins, Samwise Gamgee, Peregrin Took, and Meriadoc Brandybuck” all sounds super weird and not like English at all!”

Psych! They are in English! (Or Old English, German, or Norse.) Once again you underestimate what a nerd Tolkien was. Let me break it down: 

In Westron, hobbits are actually called “kuduk,” which means “hole-dweller,” so for an English translation, Tolkien called them “hobbits” which is a modernization of the Old English word “holbytla” which comes from “Hol” (hole) and “Bytla”(builder). 

“Maura” is a Westron name which means “Wise.” Weirdly enough, “Frodo” is an actual Proto-Germanic name that actual people used to have and it means the same thing. 

“Banazîr” is Westron for “half-wise, or simple.” In Proto Germanic, the prefix “Sam” means half, and wise is obviously a word we still use. 

“Razanur” means “Traveler” or “Stranger” which is also the meaning of the word “Peregrin(e)” This one is a twofer because  “Razar” means “a small red apple” and in English so does “Pippin.”

“Kalimac” apparently is a meaningless name in Westron, but the shortened form “Kali” means “happy,” so Jirt decided his nickname would be “Merry” and chose the really obscure ancient Celtic name “Meriodoc” to match. 

Jirt chose to leave “Bilba” almost exactly the same in English, but he changed the ending to an “O” because in Westron names ending in “a” are masculine. 

I’m not going to go on and talk about the last names but those all have special meanings too (except Tûk, which is too iconic to change more than the spelling of, apparently). 

The Rohirrim were also Westron speakers first and foremost, so their names are also “translations” into Old English and Proto-Germanic words, i.e. “Eowyn”  is a combination of “Eoh” (horse) and “Wynn” (joy/bliss). 

“Rohirrim/Rohan” are Sindarin words, but in the books, they call themselves the “Éothéod” which is an Old English/Norse combo that means “horse people.” Tolkien tells us in the “Peoples of Middle Earth” that the actual Westron for “Éothéod” is Lohtûr, which means that Eowyn and Eomer’s names, which come from the same root word, must also start with the letter L. 

The names of all the elves, dwarves, Dunedain, and men from Gondor are not English translations, since they come from root words other than Westron. 

The takeaway from this is that when a guy whose first real job was researching the history and etymology of words of Germanic origin beginning with the letter “W” writes a book, you can expect this kind of tomfoolery.

Notes: Sorry I said “Razal” instead of “Razar” in my original post I’m a fraud. 

Further Reading: 

You are a daughter of kings, a shieldmaiden of Rohan. I do not think that would be your fate.

That ain’t how it works – like, at all. A first draft isn’t something you edit into a finished product. A first draft is something you set aside and use as inspirational source material for the second draft, which is where the real process of working toward a finished product begins.

31 Days of Narnia - Day 17: Favourite song from the soundtrack

1. Writing a story about a girl who wants something. Plot driven by a woman’s (non-vilified) desire. Truly dreadful execution but still a good idea, sort of a literary incarnation of the “he a little confused but he got the spirit” meme.

2. The fact that when Bella becomes a vampire she can still breathe but “there’s no relief tied to the action” which I remember verbatim because it fucking slapped. The idea of human physical sensations being partially defined by our mortality and the sensations still exist after you become undead but your experience of them is fundamentally different because you no longer need any of it? Extremely cool. The closest Meyer came to taking an interesting stance on vampires being dead.

3. Werewolves are immortal but they can literally stop whenever they want. That shit’s hilarious. Curse of immortality who.