Mother's Day Paean

Mater Jubilaei / Mother of Joyful Things

This was originally posted on Mother's Day, 2021. I happened upon it either accidentally or providentially, your pick, on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-R8TefGH_4 It's a mystery to me as to who wrote the words. Is it Tosca Donati, the Italian singer and actress featured on the YouTube linked here? Is it an old hymn? After all, it's in Latin, is it not? I fake-translated the Latin words below (I can't remember how I found them) into this poem, from a memory of Latin, undictionaried, laden with a memory of my mother, who died in 2018, at 102. Happy Mother's Day, Mom. I love you. 

 

I look for one

expecting all: sure that more is to come

why expect so little

pray it to your falcon wings

tell me what you ask of me

seeking the core of better things

Mother of joy, joy

of motherhood, Mother of eternity . . . 

Eternal Mother

of all things Everlasting Motherness

circumspicio una
Omnes expectant : certe aliquis veniet
Cur exspectetis mini
dicite vos peregrini.
Quem quaeras mihi dic,
cor meliora petens.
Mater jubilaei, jubilum
matris, Mater aeternitatis...
Aeternitatis mater,
Aeternitas omnium Matrum

the end of fragrance?

Is it the end of fragrance? Does social distancing stretch the molecular cone of influence that perfumes and allied fragrances emanate? Will future fragrantial formulas need more potency to pierce, ever so gently and invisibly, the social distance bubble? And will new, stronger fragrantical formulations disturb the infinitely delicate harmony that fragrance chords thrive on?

Weighty questions, on International Fragrance Day no less.

And indeed what are the ends of fragrance? Why do we adorn ourselves in such evocative olfactory raiment? To what ends, what purposes?

The coronavirus moment gives us a perfumed pause to ponder answers to these unanswerable questions.

The bride throws the bouquet. The bouquet is caught. The bouquet is portentous, a sign suggesting love and marriage, says the tradition. And what of our personal bouquets, tossed by any one of us at any point on the gender spectrum? What are we to make of our fragrance bouquet?

What do I expect from wearing my signature chords, my inimitable and idiosyncratic bouquet of arranged self scent, sprayed-on or rolled-on eau de parfum or cologne or eau de toilette (typically Tom Ford, if you must know)? Do I expect a compliment, a stranger's jolt of je ne sais quoi, a passport to Dallianceville or amorous abandon? Whatever I have expected or will expect is nuanced by the strictures of social distancing, at least for now.

Picture this: a terminally ill patient in hospice. Her matted hair. His swarthy face, beard growth of five days. Her chipped, unpainted nails. He petitions the volunteer to comb his hair, to shave him. She asks for a perm, gets her nails done. Why? They ain't going nowhere, as Bob Dylan put it. 

It's for dignity. Aesthetics. Pride of ownership. Something incalculable, more solemn or sacred, having no word in our vernacular.

And the same with fragrance.

She puts it on. Wears her favorite, most alluring fragrance. She is quarantined, lives alone, will not leave the house today.

He does the same. He is running low on his favorite fragrance. He applies it anyway, judiciously and jubilantly. Self-isolation permits this. Demands it.

In fragrante delicto.

problems without passports

Space rocks of this size [460 feet or larger] are so-called 'problems without passports' because they are expected to affect whole regions if they collide with Earth.  18 March 2019 BBC News website

I wish someone had told me my problems needed passports -- at least some of them apparently do. I simply could have refused to apply for my problem passport and left the problem in outer space, or wherever passport-required problems are stored. Granted, even a problem with a properly issued passport can be kept at bay via visa restrictions. Everybody knows that. I don't dare ask how one applies for a problem passport, who issues it, which metaphysical countries require it, and what the expiration date is. Let me be frank: why would anyone want to apply for a problem passport? To what good, or cui bono as we were taught in our high school Latin classes. I suppose in accord with some sort of Freudian-Jungian psychology theory, one should face one's problems, not bury or "stuff" them. And this isn't just the advice touted in the realm of psychology or psychiatry. Many religious and spiritual belief systems teach that awareness leads to enlightenment. If so, can't we merely say, "Okay, I'm aware of Problem X. Got it. Next!" Oh, you say, we have to face and work through our problems? If you say so. But why go out of one's way? Don't we have enough nonpassportable problems without having to sign up for more? And one could safely assume that the passport problems are heftier, more intricate, and more ominous. Who needs that? Who's to say we don't have something big at work here, such as World Peace? If governments stopped issuing passports for problems, such unsettling matters would be confined. Consider how nations agree on travel quarantines to stem the spread of terrible sicknesses like the Ebola virus. Yes, the host country, so to speak, still has to manage the crisis, but it's contained. A moratorium on the issuance of problem passports might conceivably isolate the world's problems so that they can be "domesticated," if not solved or cured. Having said all that, I suggest that we aren't talking about problems on such a grand scale. I submit that problems requiring passports exist on a much more personal level. I can't verify this, but I imagine that passport problems, or more accurately problems with passports, are vexing, tense, dramatic, daunting, and life-changing. Nevertheless, they are phrased and formulated with stark simplicity: Why? Why not? Yes or no? When? Should I? Shouldn't I? Oops! I just realized I unintentionally tipped my hand. I accidentally allowed you a glimpse of my own problems without passports because I mistakenly equated simple and challenging questions with problems. Since when did a question become a problem? Hunh? But back to the beginning of this meandering maze of speculation: who issues these passports for problems? Since when? And just who do they think they are? What do they get out of it? (That's easy: control. That's what all passport issuers seek.) Back when I was in junior high (before they were called middle schools), we used to read "The Man Without a Country," a short story by Edward Everett Hale, published in 1863. (Go ahead, Google it. Or Duckduckgo it.) The protagonist renounces his country and is left to spend his days at sea, countryless, adrift and unwelcome everywhere. You can see where I'm going with this. Would it be so bad to be similarly cast at sea never permitted to enter a country with problems, navigating the world's waters without a passport for problems?

stet stat stet

Stet. "Let it stand," in Latin, meaning: one makes an edit and then has second or third thoughts and concludes, "Disregard the change; let it stay as it was originally. I erred in judgment. My bad. Proceed as you were proceeding." A nifty do-over tool. Would that we could shout it out after the wrong word has been spoken to the wrong person at the wrong time with the wrong tone. Stet! Perhaps we'd even be able to add a "stat," a call for immediate action, just before they place the paddles on the chest to try to revive the human heart. Stat! [short for statim, in Latin, the adverb for "immediately"] You hear it on TV medical dramas all the time. Oh yeah. Stat stet. Or stet stat! 

If only.

blank look

I made a comment, one that was intended as a compliment, if you will. In return, he gave me what I would call "a blank look." He returned a look without comment, seemingly indifferent. Note to thin-skinned, oversensitive, "attached" self: you truly do not know what his response or reaction is or was. So, before you get all pouty and resentful, consider that the recipient of your remark may have been puzzled, perplexed, in agreement, in disagreement, either/or, both/and, neither/nor, thinking about his great aunt, suffering constipation, calculating an equation that could lead to a cancer cure, meditating on Descartes, have a hearing problem, not like me, like me, formulating a diplomatic response for another time, processing other data, undergoing a TIA or stroke, entertaining erotic and lurid thoughts about Marilyn Monroe (or Marilyn Manson), forgotten what I said immediately after I spoke it, ad infinitum, ad nauseam. And nausea is the point here. It is nauseating, what paces we put ourselves through when we are all up in our heads. The sickness unto self, as Kierkegaard put it. Cui bono? To what good?

what is a blog?

Blog. What is a blog? Yes, it is a blend of the words web and log. For a coined term of relatively youthful status, it seems venerable, as if it has been around more than its dozen-plus years.

People blog, but who admits to keeping a journal? Or a diary? As for the word's sound, its onomatopoeia, it sounds so blah. Ergo, blahgging is what I do on an off day.

Web, with its notion of weaving, reminding me of one of the world's best book titles, Caught in the Web of Words, a biography of the Oxford English Dictionary and its makers. Interwoven connections, in digital thoughts as well as the surprise of you who came here, now reading this or hearing it, if you use such software.

Log, with its notion of solidity, woodenness; the concept of a ship's log book; logs because, we are told, wooden floats measured the ship's speed. Log: grounded, rooted in the earth. Fecund and possibly crawling with worms or moss or overshadowed by saplings, metaphorical and otherwise.

So, to blend these disparate visions (and not end up too cross-eyed or star-crossed):

Words and images and musings wandering or dancing or strolling along the spidered reality of incarnate bits and bytes, testing the pliancy or durability of imagination; both partitioning and elongating threads of meaning or nonsense; registered and recorded and cast into a faux eternity made up of seemingly infinite particles of ephemera, yearning for venerable SEO ranking, for immediate, pop-up Googled status: the canonization of the quotidian.

Blog, blogged, blogging. To blog. Cf. loc. cit. Ibid. Op. cit. Ad infinitum. Into aeternitas.

Age quod agis.

thinking and doing

Zen calendar quote today: "We never do anything well till we cease to think about the manner of doing it." I disagree. I get the Zen point, but in practical terms, isn't it precisely the opposite? I understand getting lost in the full reality of something. Well, I don't "understand" that, but I admit the validity of the viewpoint, the total immersion of lived experience. And yet, think of ballet classes, batting coaches, pitching coaches, mechanics, tutors, writing teachers, et cetera ad infinitum. speaking of Latin, here's where "age quod agis" comes into play: "do what you are doing."

walky talky

and if there is a silence presumably it must have its opposite so here is a walky talky outburst of today's footsteps and missteps from the sand at Verona Beach (were as many as two gentlemen from Verona? spying bikini-clad beachgoers?) to the shores of Oneida Lake, from the windswept groves of Sunday, to the not-yet memories of Monday memorialized et cetera et cetera blah blah either or this or that before or after age quod agis

aural borealis non erat

Much of blogging is verbal. Or visual. Little of it is aural, though I can't back this up by any data. But neither do I care to back this up with data. I merely care to share some of my urban aural experience, with words, not with recordings of the sounds themselves. Why? I'm a wordsmith, and I paint with words. What's it to you?

Walking on Thursday under Route 690, known as 690, in Syracuse, I walked in the cold but glinting light, backpack heavy on my shoulder, under a highway bridge. The whooshing sound of vehicular tires was almost ominous. A planetary zip, echoing under the bridge. A cosmic skid. (Is that what this life is? A cosmic skid lasting less than a second?) I wondered to myself what sound effect in a movie these tire-on-pavement-above slices of life would evoke. Intergalactic ray gun bullets? Internal thought pulses? Erotic temptations? (In all honesty, that did cross my mnd one iota, for once.) Traffic would not be the listener's first thought. I don't think so.

Then I thought of a sparklingly exuberant blind woman I know. H. smiles frequently. This is the world she encounters. She displays a visage of delight. Not that she walks under this particular bridge. Of course not. But this is her world, isn't it? Wasn't I blessed with a tiny insight into her aural borealis, her light show of sounds, her spectral wonder encountered radically from her perspective, not ours of the sighted world?

Plus, deciding to get off my high horse of pedestrian profundity, I realized that walkers like my former colleague M. walk all the time. This is their world too.

Blessings on our quotidian, pedestrian world, its mundane marvels.

Including its Latin phrases, its sentence fragments.

Twenty Verbs

Hey, you've all heard of Twenty Questions, why not Twenty Answers [which is an answer enveloped within a question]? Better yet, since verbs are more cogent than nouns, why not Twenty Verbs?

This may already be an Internet sensation I am unaware of. Maybe it will become a FW:FW:FW:FW ad infinitum Internet sensation.

No matter.

Here goes.

Twenty Verbs to describe my day, not necessarily in order or proper tense or mode or mood or voice:

1. awoke
2. ate
3. drove
4. talked
   
5. prayed
6. thanked
7. listened
8. watched
9. heard
10. walked
11. touched
12. washed
13. brushed
14. communed
15. sang
16. napped
17. meditated
    
18. saw
19. learned
20. read

You?

The Whether Report

Søren Kierkegaard is known for his work Either/Or. (After clicking on the link at Wikipedia, I discover that Either/Or is nothing like I had expected. [Obviously, I have not read it.] And, hey, the great Danish philosopher wrote Either/Or in Berlin, after a lecture he attended there proved to be "unbearable nonsense." Interestingly, grammatical purists might quibble over the use of the virgule, the so-called slash in the title, because of the type of relationship it tries to show. The original title, in Danish, Enten - Eller, we are told, used a hyphen.) But I digress.

"I get all the news I need on the weather report. I can gather all the news I need on the weather report." -- Paul Simon

Hmmmmmm.

"You don't need a weather man / To know which way the wind blows." -- Bob Dylan

So, which is it?

As for me, I find I benefit immeasurably from whethermen and other spiritual meteorologists in my life.

One such seer, known variously as Warren, Joe, or Mirthful Sage, is moving from these parts.

He will be sorely missed, but alas he will still be a personal whetherman.

And we will stay connected.

Deo volente.

Operation ElimComm

I hear that parents who wish to eschew the environmental pile-up (P-U) of diapers embrace elimination communication, or EC.

Elimination communication, which The Laughorist hereby paraphrases as "phew you," relies on parental discernment of various cues and signals of the infant or child to discover that an elimination of bodily waste is imminent, threatening, or -- oops! too late!

I guess it works. I can understand the theory. Maggie, our dog, walks and sniffs in identifiable patterns before peeing or pooping. not that my observation changes location, frequency, or tidiness. (That's two sentences now where I have applied use of my friendly little serial comma.)

Part of me applauds this elimination communication thing. (Environmental stewardship, etc.)

Part of me scoffs at the whiff of Operation ElimComm. (Elitist, naive sentimentality toward all things "natural.")

Then again, to each his own. To each her own.

Sui generis.

Speaking of phrases, in Latin or other lingua franca, elimination communication as a term offers rich possibilities:

"All due respect, get used to these concrete underwater hiking boots, pal." (The Sopranos version)

"This casket will cost you $12,999." (Unctuous funeral director version)

"Children, seven minus seven equals zero." (Elementary-school teacher version)

"And with that loss our playoff hopes were dashed like so many broken bulbs on a Times Square marquee." (Sportscaster cliche version)

Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

After having counted thousands (more like thousandths) of votes, I can share this:

I say, "I have a pebble in my shoe" to describe an objet d'art, or object de natura, bothering my step.

Others report saying "stone" or "rock," both of which strike me as akin to saying "boulder."

Sui generis.

Age quod agis.

(What would Kierkegaard say?) (WWKS)

Editore, Prego!

Without an editor, the headline of this post might read, "Editore, Play-Doh!"

Or "Editor, Legos!"

Or "Editore Cacciatore."

Perhaps I exaggerate.

Nevertheless, on a more serious note, Peter Steinfels, in a recent New York Times column, makes a good case for a papal editor. Steinfels argues that Pope Benedict XVI's most recent encyclical, "Caritas in Veritate," or "Charity in Truth," makes for ponderous reading. Not that encyclicals are typically knee-slappers or potboilers or beach reading.

But Steinfels laments some of the "molasses-like text" and other elements that make for "hard going." (Of course, the Vatican only approves of "hard going" if used in the service of procreation...HAHAHAHAHAHAHA...as long as you don't take pleasure in it.)

In effect, according to Steinfels and many otherwise-admiring critics, the encyclical could have used an editor. (I have not read the text [don't you love that deconstructionist word, text? No, I don't.] Nor have I perused the picturebook edition of the encyclical.) The work tackles important issues, such as the rights of workers, wealth, poverty, and markets, and undoubtedly makes statements worth debating and discussing. But the letter's "ungainliness" makes for "hard going" (I'm getting like David Letterman, working on a theme here).

Well, I'm an editor! I'm an editor! [Picture a kid in the back row waving his hand like someone in peril flagging down a police car.]

But I doubt if His Holiness would employ the services of an Episcopalian. . . . even if he promises: no papal bull jokes.

Come to think of it, this is a real hard job. I mean, a difficult challenge.

"Your Holiness, this phrase? Cut it in half. It's ponderous and ungainly. Too turgid a sentence."

"Pardon me?"

"Well, no, Your Holiness, I leave the pardoning, the absolution, to you. I don't do any pardoning. But let's talk about that sentence again, shall we?"

"Pardon me?"

"All due respect, Your Holiness, but we just went over that."

"What about the issue of infallibility, son? Do you dare to edit, redact, modify, or otherwise alter the text of an infallible piece of work?"

"All due respect again, Your Holiness, but infallibility only applies to ex cathedra statements. I don't believe, if I may say so, that it pertains to grammar, syntax [sin tax?! -- stifled laughoristic Laughorist laughter], diction, rhetoric, or style."

Of course, if the pope were American-born, he would possibly say, "Stop with the 'all due respect' already, will you? You sound like a character in 'The Sopranos'!"

Speaking of American-born popes, I nominate Greg Tobin for this position of papal editor, if he is so inclined and interested. (Did that last sentence have a dangling participle? And is that sinful?) His credentials are better than mine, plus last I heard he's in New Jersey.

All due respect.

Kinesthetic Melody

Ran across this term in a story in the NY Times, about a woman who used to get seizures, never got them while running, but through a brain operation loses track of place and time. Her neuropsychologist says she runs according to a

kinesthetic melody.

I like that.

Good name for a band.

Or a religion, or afterlife, or this life, or intuitiveness, or synchronicity in work or play, or harmony (not the dot com one), or art, or music, et cetera, ad infinitum.

"Age quod agis," as Father Birge so wisely intoned when we were seminarians (and we hooted and hollered until he closed the door to our classroom). Little did we know.

I added "kinesthetic melody" to my list at Wordie.org.

The English Major, Edited

In the last several years I've become an ardent fan of the novelist and poet Jim Harrison. For lack of a better description, he's a man's writer. And there are not many of those. But he also can be described as a nature writer and a philosophical explorer. His characters, and his prose, are down-to-earth inventions: accessible and reachable.

I find Jim Harrison's writing humorous, tragic, reflective, original, authentic.

You hear real voices.

I enjoyed his recent The English Major so much that I practically read it in one sitting.

I have a habit of dog-earing (dog-earring?) pages for later reference, mining for Laughorisms, aphorisms, maxims, and epigrams.

This work gave me these tidbits (neither endorsed nor opposed by The Laughorist):

-- "Time tricks us into thinking we're part of her and then leaves us behind."

-- "Weather-wise was it autumn or early winter in my life?"

-- ". . . I drove off with the unprofound thought of the hopelessness of sex to improve the human condition. Perhaps I should drive to New York City and announce this to the United Nations."

-- "I suddenly felt like I had as a boy on my first descending elevator down in Grand Rapids. Who and where was the driver?"

-- " 'Birds are holes in heaven through which a man may pass.' "

-- "Given the right tools men will always murder each other."

-- "What I missed was no longer there or on the verge of disappearing."

-- "Fuimus fumus, or something like that, said Thomas Wolfe, my hero when I was in senior high school. I think it meant that our life goes up in smoke." [actually "we were smoke"]

-- ". . . my frizzy-haired assistant professor would wear his bell-bottoms at a student cafe and say 'All power to the people.' I was never sure what people he meant."

-- ". . . no creature in nature jogs."

-- ". . . alcohol was the writer's black lung disease."

-- " . . . he told me that self-pity was a ruinous emotion. 'Look at the world, not up your ass.' It took me a while to figure this out."

-- "When you don't have much to do, why rush?"

-- " 'I won every argument and I was always wrong.' "

-- " 'Some men will climb the same mountain hundreds of times while other men need to climb hundreds of mountains.' "

-- ". . . I recalled James Joyce's motto 'Silence, exile, cunning,' . . . "

Being a persnickety wordsmith guy, though, I can't resist pointing out something that the author, his editor, or a copy editor should have caught, especially because the protagonist was, after all, an English major:

"Tragedy struck little Lothar a scant week after I brought she and her mother home from the dog pound."

She?

Shame!

Solipsism, Exposed.

Today, Father Jim B., in a teaching before the Celebration of the Eucharist, quoted a phrase attributed to Martin Luther (some say it goes back to Saint Augustine):

incurvatus in se

This lusciously descriptive Latin phrase describes a life turned so inward upon itself as to exclude God and others: sin, by any other name (solipsism, if you prefer).

Advent, the Conspiracy

Speaking of the Advent Conspiracy, does anyone in the world at large even know what Advent is any more? (Ever see those Advent calendars with all the little doors? Are the calendars a German tradition? Didn't the Advent calendars often have little pieces of chocolate behind each door?)

Then again, maybe Advent should be a secret, a subversive holiness. A conspiracy of caritas.

Nonplussed

It is easy to be nonplussed by the word "nonplussed."

It is commonly used as a substitute for "unfazed" or undaunted," although it means perplexed or bewildered.

Surprisingly, there's no entry for nonplussed in The Associated Press Stylebook.

At least not yet.

(But in my experience as a copy editor, or copyeditor, if you prefer, at a newspaper, the sports desk seemed to shun The AP Stylebook about as much as some of its prose stylists shucked modesty and moderation, especially in the Run-Away or Rampant Metaphor Department. I digress.)

Today I saw this sentence in the sports section (called "Sport" [singular] in British papers) of the local paper:

"[name of basketball player] seems nonplussed by the big time."

True, you can't tell what the sense is just by that sentence, but if you read on you understand by context that the intended sense was "unfazed."

I refer you to Charles Hodgson for an enriching and entertaining history of "nonplussed."

I don't deny that words change meaning and would not be surprised to find that perfectly acceptable dictionaries now give variant definitions for nonplussed that incorporate the "right" and the "wrong" meanings.

I don't get my Y-fronts in a knot over these things.

A pedant does reside in my bones, but I also am capable of sitting back and enjoying the etymological ride, so to speak.

(Note to true editors: yes, yes, yes, this post is a mess regarding consistent or proper use of quotation marks and italics. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa.)

Mirabile Non Dictu

Back in high school, in Latin class, we learned the phrase "mirabile dictu," o wonderful thing to say. After listening this weekend to a fine interview with Gay Talese, on PRI's "To the Best of Our Knowledge," I realized, a bit, the value of "mirabile non dictu," o wonderful thing not to say, the silences between sentences or words.


[silence]


As Talese wrote in Origins,

I learned [from my mother] ... to listen with patience and care, and never to interrupt even when people were having great difficulty in explaining themselves, for during such halting and imprecise moments ... people are very revealing--what they hesitate to talk about can tell much about them. Their pauses, their evasions, their sudden shifts in subject matter are likely indicators of what embarrasses them, or irritates them, or what they regard as too private or imprudent to be disclosed to another person at that particular time. However, I have also overheard many people discussing candidly with my mother what they had earlier avoided--a reaction that I think had less to do with her inquiring nature or sensitively posed questions than with their gradual acceptance of her as a trustworthy individual in whom they could confide.

I interrupt too much. This underscores the danger, the harm, caused by my hyperexuberant conversational reflexes. It shows the spiritual index of silence. But . . .