fiery words

With large loft windows facing west, the afternoon-into-evening sun, wintry rare in these climes, blares. All but shouts. A clarion charge of lambent light, never failing to lift the indoor temps a degree or two. Healthy for the orchid, bonsai ficus, and cacti on the kitchen-dining room peninsular counter, beside the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, volume 1 of 2, open to the C's, the handy reader's magnifying glass resting on the cleavage of open pages. Sprawled on the couch, I am reading The New Yorker, on the cusp of a nap, hindered by the lambent intrusion; too drowsy to get up and pull the blinds down. Eyelids fluttering, flickering: the first frames of a silent movie. Sparrows, crows across the street, distantly bickering. Alone in the hull of a huge ship, flooding, like the Titanic but battleship steel, and yet the aristocratic balustrades and chandeliers of opulence. That dream again. No one but me. The Atlantic cascading down the stairs. My shouts, my cries. To whom? To what? My chattering teeth. The molten ice enveloping my veins. Please. Can you hear me? Can someone hear me? I can't swim. Too late. Sinking. No one. What is that? What. Where. What. Wisp of warmth. Dust. Rescue? Smoke? Attempt to scroll eyelids up. Turn head left, right. Scroll up. Eyes cloudy. Force open, wide-eyed. Wisps of white floating from the open OED. Vatican puffs of papal decision. Jolt. I jump. Dart to the counter. First tongues of flame. Memories of tissue paper, August heat, Sherlock Holmes magnifying glass in the backyard. Presto, no matches. Boyish danger. The word, you ask. Which word? Chagrin. The noun. Then the verb. Chagrin.  

hashtag hash

I was challenged to describe my day in a hashtag. Before you smirk and brush off this exercise, consider: Do I describe my day realistically, ironically, science-fictionally, interpersonally, solitarily, monetarily, spiritually, figuratively, or so-on-ally? You get the picture. It's not as easy as it first appears. Another factor to weigh is at what point in the day this is composed. If you it upon first awaking, that's almost cheating. Yet only a literalist would wait until the end of the day, when sleep might be intruding. And would a hashtag describing your day, say at noon, be an influencer on the day's remains?

One ridiculous, and unfair, way to accomplish this feat would be to write a hashtag consisting of many words, forming a quasi-sentence or a lengthy sentence (grammar note: most people don't realize that a run-on sentence has nothing to do with the number of words; it's a punctuation error). Why bother using a hashtag. It's phony. This made me research rules and protocols concerning such matters. I learned that the hashtag was invented by Chris Messina in 2007. But I couldn't see anything other than etiquette and common sense dictating how many characters are allowed in a hashtag.

#uneventful

As you can see, you don't want to be so generic as to leave readers in the dark. Also, from a purist standpoint, I will self-impose the rule that describing my day in a hashtag has to be a one-word affair.

#fair

Again, #fair and #uneventful couldn't be more gray, leaving you in the dark. Fair? Really. Is this a weather report? Please.

#etymological

At least that's specific. It says something. But it's a lie. I did receive my two-volume compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) today, but I can't say I plunged into it.

#introspective

Not bad. True enough but not for all portions of the day.

#solipsistic

Too harsh. Too much hyperbole.

#grateful

Can't ever go wrong with that, but it's not specific, doesn't paint a picture.

#verbose

No doubt, though that could be any day.

#curious

Clearly not the best choice, yet not the worst. I'll stop here.

#I_tried
 

thesaurus rex regina

Now you search the books in vain for a better word for lonely . . . 

 "Doesn't Lenny Live Here Anymore," Phil Ochs

adrift unmoored broken islanded hungry stranded abridged severed cut fractured vacant zeroed parched drowned halved kenneled asunder rent null quods torn unned x'ed entrailed gutted lost jonesed moitiéd wasted only yearning  

 

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.

Boss

In reading a pro's prose, a bit of writer's writing, I happened on this passage:

This Tudor Hampton Court, before Christopher Wren transformed it in the 1690s into a massive red-brick slab of power and grandeur, an attempt at an English Versailles, was a fairy palace, full of little towers and toy battlements, weathervanes that caught the light, as romantic and play-chivalric as as an illumination in a Book of Hours. Here and there, the Italian craftsmen imported by the cardinal and king had contributed a terracotta medallion or a frieze of satyrs. Plaster ceilings, in which large pendant bosses hung down over the heads of the churchmen, and whose panels were filled with papier mache roses and sculpted ostrich feathers, were painted light blue and gold. Braziers stood glowing in the rooms.

The excerpt is from Adam Nicolson's God's Secretaries: The Making of the King James Bible. The book is an erudite, well-crafted, fascinating history of England in the early 1600s. Nicolson deftly shows how the Translators worked as a committee to create a singular work of the English language. He illustrates the politicking and intrigue behind that effort, under King James I of England (James VI of Scotland), the, um, boss of the project.

Back to that word "boss." I hadn't known that meaning used above: an ornamental protuberance, an architectural embellishment.

Are all bosses merely ornaments?

The Oxford English Dictionary cites these other senses for "boss":

-- a swelling on the body of a plant or animal
-- a bump or hunch on the back
-- a bulky animal
-- a fat woman
-- a knoll or mass of rock
-- an enlarged part of a shaft
-- a water conduit

Some word!

So, on Monday morning, when you say, or think, "Good morning, boss," choose your connotations carefully.

(In the Fifties, "That's boss" meant something was very cool.)

Carry on.

As you were.

Laugh. Or else.

Bitchy 'bout Pitchy

I am neither a musicologist, nor a musician, nor a music theoretician. Nor am I a connoisseur of pop culture. However, by background and training I can lay claim to more than a passing knowledge of semantics and diction and syntax and rhetoric, which brings us of course to the topic of "American Idol."

I like Simon Cowell the most because of his acerbic wit and semblance of taste; his capacity for unflinching criticism. I don't much care for Paul Abdul's critiques, but, hey, she's foxy and a champion of the underdog; always willing to encourage. Randy Jackson is the middle ground between "good cop" Paula and "bad cop" Simon, plus he brings a wealth of music industry experience to the role.

But what is it about his use of the word "pitchy," huh, dawg?

I guess Mr. Jackson means something like "wandering away from the desired pitch" or "not adhering to perfect pitch." I don't know. As I said, I am not "the music man." Surely, he is not invoking the sense found in my trusty old Oxford English Dictionary (OED), or even in Merriam-Webster's: pitch-black or tarry.

Unfortunately, if Randy has a problem with a contestant's performance, you are pretty much guaranteed to hear him declare that the performance was "pitchy" in places.

Help me out here. Help Randy out too, okay, folks?

We need some synonyms.

I'm itchin' for some pinch-hittin' for pitchy.

(Well, I never claimed to be any kind of rhymester, buster.)