Tuesday, July 23, 2019

七転八起! (or, never say die!)

I'm thinking of writing 七転八起 (shichiten hakki)—”Fall down seven times; get up eight.” This often is heard/seen in English, but it's a long time since I've put brush to paper, so why not? (No, it doesn't exactly make sense, but, really, what is sense, anyway?)

A thing I like a lot about learning kanji is the intersections of their meanings. In this case, we have 起, which I first learned as okiru/okosu, in the sense of awakening / getting out of bed or "knocking someone up"—i.e., awakening someone. Here, it's literally to rise after falling.

I've done a lot of falling down for a long time now and am in the process of getting up, so it seems appropriate. Shichi and hachi both are relatively simple—and hachi, of course, is of particular significance to me—so they have to be really right.

Examples below—thoughts? #八Rising

(Note: Work in progress; images are coded to link through to the source, but I'll have to fix. I'll look through them all after a nap; better just to post what I have, as I have dozens of drafts never finished!)

1. Standard kaisho, 2x2 format, right to left. 2. Somewhere between kaisho and gyousho, single column, top to bottom. The sweeping righthand stroke of 八 cuts off the 已 of 起; I've had the same issue with 八 when writing it 2x2. Love the hooks (そりはね, sorihane)!
3. 4.

5. 6.
7. 8.
9. 10.

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