War is months of boredom
punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
No, it’s sailing.
Sailing is 90% boredom
punctuated by 10% sheer terror.
No, it’s baseball.
It’s like life in that there are prolonged periods
of boredom and monotony,
punctuated by intense moments
of excitement and sometimes terror.
a) belonging to the Emperor
b) embalmed
c) tame
d) sucking pigs
For those of you who’ve studied Foucault (Yes, I see you back there, in the sadder-but-wiser section of the bleachers), you’ll recognize this as the first four of fourteen entries for a Chinese encyclopedia presenting the taxonomy of living things. Well, maybe just the taxonomy of animals.
e) sirens
f) fabulous
g) stray dogs
h) included in the present classification
Me, I have not studied (or even read) Foucault, but I’ve seen this list referenced a few times over the years.
Is it like Christmas? No, it’s more like archaeology.
“It” is the act of cleaning out old file folders. The reason it’s not Yule-like is because of the nature of the things found, which are not remotely like gifts. Here, for example, is what I found in one folder.
The Adderley Quilt Rack-AM (ante meridiem?), for which this is a parts-and-hardware-supposed-to-be-in-the-box list, is long gone, who knows where, but the list lived on in my file folders. Why it didn’t go with the Adderley Quilt Rack-AM (adventure mode?) to its next mysterious stop is not itself a mystery: I forgot I had it. Out of sight . . .
Home for good? Hard to say.
Home for now? Yes.
In a world where none of us are promised tomorrow, maybe it’s enough to enjoy the moment.
May you, too, be home. For now.
How it started . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .How it’s going
Bunny jumped ship this week.
Did he really? That is, did he mean to do it or was it a mistake: a moment, perhaps, of inattention? I can’t speak to his mental state, but what should have been a flawlessly executed one-night layover at our house with an on-time departure the next morning, instead degenerated into a mad scramble to the post office, to reunite Bunny ASAP with his already departed two-year-old BFF.
Bunny jumped ship this week.
Did he really? That is, did he mean to do it or was it a mistake: a moment, perhaps, of inattention? I can’t speak to his mental state, but what should have been a flawlessly executed one-night layover at our house with an on-time departure the next morning, instead degenerated into a mad scramble to the post office, to reunite Bunny ASAP with his already departed two-year-old BFF.
. . . in the semi-darkness? What? Well, with apologies to the unknown author of the Gospel of John, yeah. You may remember the pertinent bit, or you may not, so here it is.
The light shines in the darkness,
and the darkness has not overcome
(or, maybe, understood) it.
– John 1:5
As a complete aside, this is what happens when I wander around innocently looking to check/attribute a quotation: I can get something altogether new. It looks as if the well-known and much-loved form of this famous quotation might be, um, misinformation/misinterpretation. If only the Gospel writers had written in English, we wouldn’t have these translation issues.
I was almost this many days old when I learned about adieu and adios, the fare-thee-well words in French and Spanish, respectively. Learned what, exactly? That they are both concatenations of the word for to and the word for God in their respective languages–a dieu and a dios. It’s an ellipsis, I think.
As we part,
I commend you to God’s care.
Now, I know French and Spanish well enough to know their words for God independently, but somehow–Mon Dieu! Ay Dios!–I never made the connection. I never saw the last four letters of adieu and adios as absorbed words, which says something about how I learn other languages. Not. Very. Well.
Anyway, I learned English pretty good but I didn’t know why English speakers don’t do the same as French and Spanish speakers. (To speak a language is not necessarily to know anything about it.) So, why *don’t* we use togod when we want to say adios?
I mention this as a public-service announcement in case you, like me, almost missed this one. Monday (tomorrow, for most of you who are reading this) is a holiday.
Now, I know more than I want to about the various forms of the Civic Holiday in August (which definitely could use some rebranding work akin to what the May Long has achieved), but at least in Ontario the darn thing has nothing to announce it. No festival of dancing and tasty food. No once-annual horse races. No big turkey dinners with family from out of town. No relentless advertising to buy chocolate.
As a result, for those of us who are no longer employed outside the home, the AugLong (whaddya think?) can sneak up on you. Stay alert!
Posted: 2024 Oct 012
