"Psalm 88" by Troy's Work Table.
Sidewalk chalk wash, sidewalk chalk, chalk pastels, and charcoal pencil on 12" x 12" concrete board.
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"I am as those who've run out of time / Without vigor, afloat among the dead" and "My eyes burn with acid sufferings / And every day I call out to you / Every day I reach out my hands toward you" —from "Psalm 88" by Norman Fischer, as found in Opening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms
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I didn't intend on being in Psalm 88 today, but here I am.
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These translations of the Psalms are written by a Zen priest and poet who was raised Jewish. There is a meeting of different religious faiths in these renderings of the Psalms. Yet, they still sing and sorrow, whether of a Buddhist flavor or of their original Jewish sources.
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Originally, I was planning on Psalm 90, which has more of a Lenten feel to me (and feels better balanced between lamentation and celebration than Psalm 88), but then death set in. My cockatiel, a long-time family companion, died. Then I had to work a funeral, which I knew was coming. But both were bookended by other deaths. Death everywhere. Dismal weather. Rain and gloom. The sorrow of watching a nation and its people crushed by those who worship wealth and greed at the expense of that same nation and its people.
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Psalm 88 is a cry for help to a God who seems absent. And the cry in this psalm is never answered. It just hangs there.
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The language, both familiar and unfamiliar, due to the difference that lives in the lines of these translations, causes me to approach these psalms with caution and quiet. The difference makes me see things that it becomes easy to not see when I read them in a "normal" translation. The difference allows me to hear the pain and suffering of the psalmist in this particular lament.
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Sometimes one is "Pulled down to the bottom / Gasping for breath". If that is the case, then how can one still scream?
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