Pause, and Consider; Selah

Fenya has talked about getting a tattoo since her 2016 gap year in Churchill. She'd originally had plans for an image of a flag tree, a common sight up in the sub-arctic, where fierce north winds scour the north-facing branches off a tree, leaving it looking similar to a flag. It's a powerful image and great symbol or resilience and adaptation in the face of adversity, but in the end, she felt that half a year (and not even a winter) in that environment was insufficient justification for such a permanent souvenir.

This thoughtfulness is the reason I am unlikely to ever get a tattoo. Actually, my indecisiveness and capriciousness are probably more culpable - who knows where the heck my preferences will lie ten years from now? I'm a work in progress, and also only rarely walk around with my shirt off at any given time, so it also feels a bit wasteful, to be honest.

Last weekend, Fenya took the plunge and got her first ink, and for a good cause too.

The Our House Addiction Recovery Centre held a BBQ fundraiser on the weekend of the summer solstice that Fenya was made aware of through her volunteer work at UAlberta's Peer Support Centre. Our House has recently begun shifting their focus to a broader mental health awareness program, and they've borrowed some of the imagery from Project Semicolon to do this.

I love subjunctive clauses, so I already have a lot of affection for the semicolon, but this humble and elegant piece of punctuation can have an even deeper meaning as a symbol of mental health:

At the fundraiser, tattoo artists were offering to ink people up with semicolons for $65 (which I guess is a good price?), so Fenya and her boyfriend Bobby decided to go ahead and get it done.

I don't have a lot of hangups about tattoos, but when Fenya told me she wanted hers on the back of her neck, I was still concerned. It doesn't feel all that long ago that neck tattoos were the sole provenance of the hard case or career criminal, but yeah, things have changed, and her rationale made a lot of sense in terms her not wanting to hide it, but allowing her to be selective about displaying it.

She came home bandaged up, tired but proud, and later that night showed us her new permanent marking.

I think it looks simply marvelous, and I love the significance of it.

The idea of a reflective pause has merits even beyond Project Semicolon's brilliant repurposing. Within the book of Psalms, you will often come across the word "Selah," which directs the reader to pause and consider. It is probably not altogether surprising that I first became aware of this concept within the pages of a comic book. Issue #16 of J. Michael Straczynski's excellent series "Rising Stars," actually.

In the story, a woman with telekinetic powers who was co-opted at an early age to become an assassin is preparing to unite Arabs and Jews in the middle east by simultaneously destroying the Wailing Wall and Dome of the Rock. A formerly estranged but insightful colleague begs her to stop and consider an alternative.

He suggests a way that she could use her powers in a more constructive fashion, to create more arable land in the region by telekinetic liquefaction of the desert sands, which would allow fertile soil buried deep below it to rise to the surface.

The final "Selah" in the last panel makes it clear that such an effort is likely to kill her, and I love how the panel arrangement creates additional dramatic pauses in this pronouncement. But there is still something distinct and special about explicitly requesting that the listener or reader pause, and consider.

2019 has been a trying year for me in many ways, and I have only recently returned to work following some time off due to it. I never found myself standing on the edge of a bridge or anything as dramatic as that, but I'm glad I took the time to sort myself out and re-prioritize things for myself a bit, and I'm grateful for the opportunity to do so.

And every time I look at my daughter's neck, I will see a permanent reminder there of the importance of taking that time, and allowing oneself the time for a reflective pause.

Thanks, sweetheart.

Selah.