A quiet notice V2Melody closes at midnight on , Spanish time.

Closes

A note from Richard

V2Melody will close at midnight on 20 January 2028

This site has been a retirement project in musical poetry: poems chosen with care and set to music, offered freely for as long as it felt right to keep the garden open.

The work no longer holds the place it once did in my life. I have gone as far with it as I wish to go. Like a sand mandala, it was made to be completed and then released. I am not attached to its permanence, and I do not believe any of it needs to last beyond the time it was given. The poems were already here before I arrived and began to experiment with them. They will still be here when these musical experiments, and indeed myself, have been swept away, like the sand of a mandala. Nothing has been lost.

I want a simpler end to my life, days of simple love and enjoyment with my wonderful wife of 20 years. The work of maintaining a server, the monitoring, and the residual obligations that come with keeping a site alive no longer fit that life.

From 4 November 2026 I will not be adding new poems or musical poems to the site.

The experimental music I am making now is on my Suno profile. Those pieces stay there, and are not added to this site.

Until midnight on 20 January 2028, Spanish time, everything remains available exactly as it is. That is when my VPS server contract comes to an end, and it will not be renewed. After that, the server will be switched off and the site will disappear.

The Mandala Is Finished explains this more fully.

Thank you to anyone who found a poem, a track, or a quiet moment here.

The pleasure was in the making.

Richard

Home › Glossary › Letter F

Fasting

World Religion
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

Want to hear it? Click the Listen button to hear the browser speak the word using text-to-speech!

The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

The voluntary abstinence from all or some food and drink for a period of time, as a spiritual discipline.

Detailed Definition
Fasting is a practice in most world religions (e.g., Ramadan, Yom Kippur, Lent) intended to cultivate self-discipline, focus the mind on God, express repentance, and foster empathy for the poor. In poetry, fasting is a metaphor for purification, emptiness, and longing. The physical hunger symbolizes the soul's hunger for God. The empty stomach becomes a vessel waiting to be filled with divine grace. Poets depict fasting as an act of stripping away the non-essential to create space for the sacred to enter.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Islamic poetry, Fasting (sawm) purifies body and soul: “Hunger sharpens the heart—Ramadan’s gift”; In Christian verse, Fasting prepares for revelation: “Forty days in desert—Christ met the Tempter, found the Father”; In Buddhist poetry, Fasting cultivates mindfulness: “One meal a day—space for the Dharma to grow”; Contemporary poets link Fasting to solidarity: “I fast not for piety, but to taste the hunger of others.”
Additional Notes
Fasting disciplines the body to awaken the spirit—observed in Ramadan, Lent, Yom Kippur, and Buddhist Uposatha days; beyond abstinence, it cultivates empathy and focus; in poetry, hunger becomes metaphor for spiritual longing, and the breaking of fast symbolizes grace, community, or revelation at day’s end.
Also Known As
Sawm Lent (in Christian context) Yom Kippur Fast
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