Victory Over Death

י״ז בתמוז תשע"א
Faunus 19

In follow-up to my earilier post Confronting Demons Starting Years Ago, a friend of mine informed me that in traditional sources, Keteb is spelled in Hebrew using the Hebrew letters קטב instead of the Hebrew letters כתב (the letters I had chosen to use to describe my connection with Keteb Meriri in my post). Though the two spellings sound alike, they do not mean the same thing.

The shoresh קטב means to die an unexpected death, while the shoresh כתב pertains to writing, reporting, and engraving. Both sets of Hebrew letters can be pronounced keteb, but the latter set כתב describes my experience while the former set קטב does not.

In my poem, I am concerned with rewriting my story to a good, indeed a very good, outcome. This fact is described by the shoresh כתב. Moreover, following this preincarnate experience, though death was trying to reach me (as clearly evident in the words of the poem), I was nevertheless born, alive - in other words, I became a Living Breathing Being. Consequently, the very act of being born transformed the Keteb name root from being קטב to כתב, making my victory over Keteb Meriri a double victory - a victory over both bitterness and death. My first victory occurred even before I was born.