beyond the harmed circle

Who doesn't want to escape a circle of harm? For that matter, who is not from a circle of harm? Freudians, perhaps Jungians, too, as well as anthropologists, sociologists, historians, biologists, theologians, philosophers, pornographers, and poets would note that the circle of harm we all experience is birth, the trauma of passage through the dark and narrow avenue of the womb to the rude light of day in the fresh and brutal but necessary air. (Some theologians would hearken farther back, all the way to the birth of the human race and its rupture from Paradise.) 

Harm might be the wrong word. How "harmful" could it be if we're all in the same boat (or ark)?

And why a harmed circle? Why not a harmed square, rectangle, oval, or triangle? That's easy. I hardly need to type it. Who hasn't at one moment or another (maybe many or most moments) felt like a hamster on a wheel of frustration, pain, or madness, in an inescapable loop? The circular treadmill might even be jubilant, pleasurable, or poignant. Good or bad, it's hard (impossible? barely possible?) to extract oneself from that furiously spinning circle.

It might not be harm at all! You might be in a circle of charm. You might be hamster-running under a spell, on an intravenous-magical-mystery drenching of espresso, sex, drugs, religion, righteousness, reason, anger, angst, success, failure, danger, or drama. 

Can the circle be unbroken?

Maybe.

Maybe not.

Aha! I got it. Eureka. I have found out how to wed harm and charm (lucky or not), quirk and quark (charm, it turns out, is an elemental particle; don't ask me why they chose that word; channel Stephen Hawking). The enchantment of charm can dispel harm, singing an aria (that's right, charm circles back to song, incantation, chant, verse) of freedom and release.  

Before we get too excited about the charm bracelet of etymology, before we decide it always works like a charm, bear in mind that a charm can be a curse or a blessing. No less than Jakob Grimm, of the Brothers Grimm and their grim fairy tales, reminds us of this in 1883. To be effective, Grimm says, a charm "must be a choice." He claims it can't be a blessing and a curse. It's got to be one or the other, "either/or" (which is the title of a work by the philosopher-theologian Sören Kierkegaard). 

Take your pick.

Or flip a coin.

Charm or harm.

Give or take a letter.

Who said "spelling" wasn't important? 

 

merry merry merry

If I say "merry" and ask you what immediately comes to mind, I'd bet good money that "Christmas" would be your reply. Right? I can't think of many other constructions in English that are so consistently paired. (Paired. There's a term used ad nauseam.) Yeah, "happy" followed by "birthday." No others come to mind. Help me out. Is it the same with "joyeux noel" in French?

Why "merry"? It could have gone myriad other ways: happy, joyous, pleasing, blessed, fine, cheerful, glad, sweet, exciting, holy. Okay, not quite myriad. But you get the point.

"Merry" itself has a fascinating history and evolution. The wonderful ("wonderful" instead of "merry"; there's another one) Online Etymology Dictionary traces merry to "short duration," as in "time passes quickly; enjoy it now while it lasts." I like that Zen element thrown in there. Impermanence. Transitory. Have you ever heard a Christmas sermon focus on that angle? Neither have I. It'd be a rewarding hybrid of notions and traditions. (No, not me. I'll spare you my attempt at such a homily.)

Not surprisingly, "merry" also has seedier (see below for the innuendo) senses. The Online Etymology Dictionary cites "merry-bout -- an incident of sexual intercourse." Fun! Following the same line of carnal logic, or passion, "merry-begot" was a way of describing "illegitimate" or "bastard."

Merry, merry, merry Christmas, or anything else.

dis-ease

Consider: disease

dis-, as in lack of, not, opposite of, apart, away, asunder, in a different direction, as in two, twice, two different ways, twain, between.

ease, as in mitigate, alleviate, relieve from pain or care, render less difficult, relax one's efforts (including 1863 to 1907, a more specific sense in sailing), to content a woman sexually (slang, 1861), physical comfort, undisturbed state of the body, tranquility, peace of mind, pleasure, well-being, opportunity. Compare adagio. Cf. at ease as a military order denoting freedom from stiffness or formality.

These from the Online Etymology Dictionary. 

Put the two together.

Dis-ease.

Read the above all over again. 

No, I'm not going to walk you through it. I'm not going to sermonize on what breaking down the two word parts means separately or together, or what marrying them conjures up and gives birth to. You can do that yourself.

It's revealing, isn't it?

But, still, add to the mix not at home in the world, nor in your skin, your psyche, nor in your bones.

The etymological and existential tension (infinitely tender and fragile; unspeakably personal) between cling and let go, grasp and avert, indulge and refrain, partake and repel, pause and pirouette, explore and perish.

Why is that?

So much depends. (William Carlos Williams, "The Red Wheelbarrow")

So if you have only a thin wire,
God does not mind.
He will enter your hands
as easily as ten cents used to
bring forth a Coke. (Anne Sexton, "Small Wire") 

skinship

She is Japanese but was in Paris. She is Japanese and speaks some French and some English. In a note to me, she used the word "skinship." We were talking about loneliness. The need for human contact. The need for human touch. When children are undernourished and underweight, not growing according to accepted benchmarks, pediatricians talk of "failure to thrive." Many factors are typically at play. Might emotional starvation via lack of touch be a candidate for causality?

How about adults and their failure to thrive? Many factors are typically at play. The presence of absence. The absence of touch. Skin on skin. Skin to skin.

Skinship.

At first, I thought she had coined this portmanteau word herself by a lovely accident owing to language hybrids and differences. I had thought she had stumbled upon it unconsciously. She said, no, it's a thing; it's a term in Japan; a mash-up of two languages that catches on. Nevertheless, I was arrested, taken by the word and what it evoked, in me. I was, and am, excited by the possibilities the word incites.

Skinship.

Is it the kinship of those who possess skin, or of those who indulge in skinness, in subtle skin-drenched tactility, ("I couldn't feel, so I learned to touch..." Leonard Cohen), or is it the kinship of those parched from touchlessness, arid and brittle, perhaps the kinship of those who ache for skin kinship but have lost the thread of emotional genealogy? Is it a skinny vessel sailing to unseen horizons, a ship with no cargo except the heavy burden of empty skinship?

We don't know.

Reports are sketchy.

Rumors abound.

The Premier President Prince of Skindinavia will be making an official statement on these matters presently.
 

by any other name

Heroin.

Is the word part of the scourge? Is it a swish of the sword?

According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, Heroin as a word was coined in 1898 in German as a "trademark registered by Friedrich Bayer & Co. for their morphine substitute. According to tradition the word was coined with chemical suffix -ine (2) (German -in) + Greek hērōs 'hero' (see hero (n.1)) because of the euphoric feeling the drug provides, but no evidence for this seems to have been found so far."

So what if the name were changed? No, no, no, we're not talking about the myriad demimonde, street, underworld, pop culture, and user-driven slang terms. Not that. Change the name. A new coinage. A coin of the realm of hypnotic transport and molten reverie.

Do words matter? In ancient times, identity was conferred by the very act of naming. There was a power to it. The Hebrew Bible is rife with examples of this.

What would the new word be?

Could such a word have such powers as to be salutary, salubrious, and beneficent?

And even if that were true, would such a move erase allure? Because after all, danger, menace, and perilous risk are part of the game, part of the ritual, yes?

What would that word be? The opposite of "hero"? Hardly.

As the Bard put it in Romeo and Juliet, “What’s in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other name would smell as sweet.” As if to say, "Call heroin by any other name, and you get the same results."

Is it so? How would we conduct a peer-reviewed study to find out?

In "Sacred Emily" in 1913 (year of my father's birth), Gertrude Stein wrote: "Rose is a rose is a rose is a rose." (Did you know that in one version of this immortal declaration Stein put it in a children's story, carved on a tree trunk, round and round?) So, does Gertrude Stein side with Shakespeare on this semantic matter, or is she saying, "It's futile; it's beyond description; it is what it is"? (Or something else entirely.)

Heroin is heroin is heroin is heroin. 

What do you think? What do you feel? Tell me more. Especially addicts. Weigh in on this. 

Do words matter?

How much?

the notable sauvage

Does etymology determine destiny? 

I have taken a liking to the new fragrance Sauvage by Dior. I sampled it at Lord & Taylor, where I've gotten friendly with Gaylord, at the men's fragrance counter. After wearing (does one truly "wear" a fragrance? Or does it wear you? Isn't more like you unwear it, one molecule at a time?) sample spritzes, I received favorable responses from strangers and familiars alike, as in: "Oh. What is that you're wearing?" Or, "You smell nice." Or, "I like it. It's you." Admittedly, my coltish impatience sometimes takes the impolitic form of forwardly inquiring, "How do you like the way I smell?" which defeats the whole notion of pheromone subtlety or sophistication. Oh well. So be it. C'est moi. Noblesse oblige.  

Sauvage is described by its makers as "[a]t once refined yet untamed," along with a lush landscape of other-wordly flowers and forests and fauna (such as wolves in the night). As with wines or coffees or teas, fragrances embrace arcane and evocative vernaculars. As a copywriter, I would love the daunting challenge of bringing a fragrance to life by a marriage of word and image. Anyway, it's too late for that. The folks at Dior have already delivered a scintillating bouquet of sensual syllables and smoldering images.

Before I go any further, allow me this disclaimer: Dior didn't put me up to this. I'm not in the habit of crafting product endorsements. Dior isn't paying me. They've never heard of me. But it's my story. I needed and wanted something to write about, and this is what popped into my head via my personal olfactory highway.

Wearing the fragrance prompted me to look up the French word "sauvage" and to meander etymologically, which I like to do, as you know, if you've ever read anything at all here.

I discovered "sauvage" is employed in the wine business. But that's not what drew me to it. I further learned that adjectives such as wild, untamed, natural, earthy, unspoiled, fierce, ferocious, indomitable, valiant, sylvan, primitive, unauthorized, and savage emanate from this word's web of wonder and enchantment. You can imagine why the copywriters and perfume artisans might applaud the allure of these words as they adhere to and then float off of the printed page or webpage -- most importantly, if these words, and unnameable others, transmit pulsing hums of desire to anyone under their invisible halo.

Would knowing the etymology of sauvage all by itself lead me to it, even absent its aromas?

I don't know. I'm not out of the woods yet on that one. 

Iceland, day 2.4: Geysir, onward upward

The sun was setting and dusk falling as we approached Geysir, just before 1700 hours. The area is a bubbling cauldron of fire and ice, just what Iceland is known for and marketed as. As one first approaches, there is a small steaming hole atop a small rise, surrounded by ice. Little signs throughout warn that the water is hot: 100 degrees Celsius or more. That means: boiling hot. Still, I wanted to reach in and just touch the water quickly, the way a WET PAINT sign counterintuitively beckons one to touch. But I did not. Some of these hot springs, which abound in Iceland, are always percolating and are not active as geysers. Our word in English borrows from the Icelandic place name of Geysir and the Icelandic word, which borrows from Old Norse: to gush, gusher, to pour. As a wordsmith, I had reverence for the place for this reason alone. How often does one experience such etymological originalism, or word-birtherism? Icelanders bake bread in the hot ground near here and other places, for 24 hours, but I neither saw nor bought any. I saw one or two other bubbling craters before seeing the large, active one, Strokkur, as in "churn," which had people shrieking and jostling some twenty yards away. The experience is oddly lunar, here and elsewhere, though how would I know, never having traversed the lunar landscape. (And there's no water shooting into the air there.) I walked up to THE geyser. It had just "gone off." some little kids were laughing; perhaps they were a tad too close and got doused with mist. Up on a slight incline, I was not worried about that. From the prior bursts, you could see which way the wind was carrying the steamy plumes. A low, chained fence kept people at a safe distance. We were told this active geysir goes off approximately, but unpredictably, every 2 to 8 minutes. A pool of water, perhaps 20 to 30 feet in diameter, percolated and rippled. Then it would start to heave, as if it were breathing, or as if it were a creature getting ready to cough. without exact warning, BOOM it bursts upward vigorously like a rocket launch with an iridescent blue at the bottom hurling skyward and turning steam white and exploding into the air. It pauses as a column, some 75 feet high, and starts dispersing downwind. I stayed to witness two or three eruptions close at hand. Having been warned about the difficulty of timing, I did not attempt to photograph or video record it. My battery was low anyway. More than that, I knew it'd be a futile attempt and I wanted to take this in and let it surprise me. Of course, that was in line with the explicit purpose of the whole trip: to reset my true north bearings by taking in new surprises, to see what would be revealed -- around me, in front of me, in me. The eruption was cleansing. And innocent fun. Erupt, release, spray, spout off, churn, release pressure, recharge: it was all there as the perfect natural metaphor machine. And onward and upward, too. As is said of the wind itself (as well as spiritual matters), one never knows exactly where it comes from or where it goes, or when. Same here. This seemingly endless geyser gives the appearance of everlastingness, though it merely happens to be "alive" now. It has not always been active and, like Geysir itself, can become dormant or more quiet.

We headed into the sunset, darkness enveloping us. Trond played some Icelandic music. It was a long and wondrous day in the Golden Circle. I drifted off to half-sleep on the way back to Reykjavik. We stopped in the cold dark to view the Northern Lights, off the highway, taking advantage of the absence of light pollution. If it were not for Trond pointing out the subtle greenish-blue wave above the horizon, which became two fairly distinct waves, I would not have discerned it as aurora borealis. I would not known where to look and would have expected (there's that word again) shimmering, Technicolor flamboyance. So, it was not postcard-dramatic, but observable and a fitting cap to the day. 

Febyouary

Don't you think it odd that February, the shortest month in duration, has an extra letter, that quirky R, at least to the naked, etymologically untrained eye?

In case you are wondering how that R got into February, the estimable Online Etymology Dictionary ( http://www.etymonline.com/index.php ) tells us:

February (n.)

late 14c., from Latin februarius mensis "month of purification," from februa "purifications, expiatory rites" (plural of februum), of unknown origin, said to be a Sabine word. The last month of the ancient (pre-450 B.C.E.) Roman calendar, so named in reference to the Roman feast of purification, held on the ides of the month. In Britain, replaced Old English solmonað "mud month." English first (c.1200) borrowed it from Old French Feverier, which yielded feoverel before a respelling to conform to Latin.

fear the beard?

Is there a difference between growing a beard and simply not shaving?

A look in the mirror presents the unkempt appearance of an unshaven social misfit, though that sounds unduly harsh. (Can you be harsh, but not unduly harsh?)

Unkempt. The second syllable sounds so German, and it is by way of Old English, we are told by etymologists (not entomologists; stop bugging me!).

Uncombed.

Can you comb a beard, when you come right down to it?

So, you can be kept kempt, Kokonuts.

Carry on.

Laugh, or else.

visible erasure

From the January 11, 2010, edition of The New Yorker, "Top of the Pops," an article by Louis Menand on Andy Warhol:

". . . he painted over 'Thirteen Most Wanted Men' with silver paint--a visible erasure that was widely read as a statement about censorship."

Visible erasure.

I love that oxymoron.

Reminds me of Thomas DeQuincey calling the human brain a palimpsest, which, as you can see from the Online Etymology Dictionary, is a word akin to palin, which is YIKES akin to moron, not oxymoron.

In the long run, I'd say that all blogging is subject to the palimpsest of visible erasures in the Ephemerasphere of cyberspace.

Pthe Pawline Pneumonia Pchronicles

So around 3 a.m. today one white-haired Emergency Department (ED) doctor, Dr. Seely, placidly pronounces the words "a touch of pneumonia" as the raison d'etre for my being admitted to Crouse Hospital, and minutes later the similarly white-coiffed, Brooklyn-born Dr. Kaplan sounds a shade more doubtful, using words like "infiltrate," as a noun, to describe stuff in my lungs, stuff which induced gagging, air-inhibiting, breath-obstructing coughing, which were the reasons for the trip to the ED way back at 10:15 p.m. Friday. Breathing is such a simple and effortless and shall we say natural thing -- when it works. Struggle with it for just a few moments and its currency rises faster than the price of gold during financial tumult (cf. my choking incident earlier this year). Not being able to breathe because of coughing, stamping one's feet, chasing, chasing for the unfound way to stop the spasm of repetitive coughing evokes fear and panic for the participant and those around him. To the point when it was my young daughter, crying, who insisted on some real action here, folks, c'mon! Insisted. Rightly so.

I surrendered.

Hearing the doctor's (or doctors' if you figure in the broader analysis of both snow-cropped docs) diagnosis was actually a relief. (Why a "touch" of pneumonia and not a splash or dash or stain or Everglades swamp, huh?) Even more so, being ordered to stay in the hospital provided more relief, despite the fears of structural and procedural errors and the abundance of even newer germs to be found in the place. Relief because there are worse things than hearing "pneumonia" as your problem. I shall not list those. Granted, the Big P is serious stuff, and in yesteryear, before antibiotics (the triumph of science, Ethan!) were common, pneumonia claimed many, especially the young and the old. So, I respect it and do not belittle its power. Just ask Jim Henson. But, the diagnosis could be worse, far worse. Call it the Lung Is Half-Full Theory. HAHAHAHAHA! I experienced relief also because quite honestly I was loath [corrected, thanks to Mark Murphy, from the earlier wrong word, the verb "loathe"] to return home, frankly afraid to face the specter of another violent coughing jag. Wife and young daughter and I were not going to settle for some fake palliative. So this is the right place to be.

I must report I was a little cheesed off (thank you, Beatles -- John? Paul? -- on VH1 airing of Beatles Anthology for that expression reminder) by the triage nurse in ED who had earlier remarked glibly, "You're not going to die" as I was gasping for air in front of her unable to answer her administrative questions, sounding like a drowning sailor in Leonard Cohen's plaintive ballad "Suzanne." On the one hand, I can accept that her words were meant to pacify my panic, but it came off as dismissive. Excuse me, Ms. ED RN. You are not the Big Cosmic Cheese and do not have permission to make such breezy declarations about the breezy wheeze trapped inside my chest. Melodrama may not be called for on my part, but I do happen to have a pretty good sense about my body. Shucks, Ms. ED RN, be not so cavalier as I gasp in front of you like the common New Yorker magazine cartoon of the guy crawling in the desert looking for water but who sees a mirage. In this case, I was crawling for air and it was not a mirage. So there.

That was then. This is now. Respiratory therapy treatments have helped, as well as IV antibiotics (more to come at 4 a.m. and 6 a.m., ugh), as well as the care of nurses Allison, Cori, Amy, Carolyn, Allison, Amal, Maryann, Priscilla, Pauline, and Oksana (hope no one has been omitted), and Dr. Masood, as well as the calls by caring friends and family, and the heart-warming visits by Beth, Adrianna, Ethan, Jenny, Evelyn in absentia, Warren, Win, and Timmy [sorry I missed you] (hope no one has been omitted).

I expect to go home Monday.

This from the Online Etymology Dictionary:

pneumonia
1603, from Mod.L., from Gk. pneumonia "inflammation of the lungs," from pneumon (gen. pneumonos) "lung," altered from pleumon "lung," lit. "floater," from PIE *pleu- "to flow, to swim" (see pulmonary). Alteration in Gk. perhaps by influence of pnein "to breathe."

Back to the Pluperfect Present, Tense

Back to the present, be it pluperfect or tense or neither or both.

Pluperfect, a quintessentially mysterious concept.

As Merriam-Webster informs us:

Late Latin plusquamperfectus, literally, more than perfect

Date: 15th century

A steady rain.

Late evening, May, cool.

Hypnotic tapping of raindrops on the pavement.

Breathing in and out.

Pluperfect, by any other definition.

Beheading the Head

We have beheaded our head.

Dethroned the throne.

Cannily canned the can.

Privatized the privy publicly.

In other words, we have a new toilet.

In America, dead toilets are forlornly put out to pasture at the curb, at least in my town (not having any alternative means of disposing of the great disposer, not to my knowledge).

It is, well, embarrassing, exposing this old friend, shockingly available for one and all to see.

There's no way to make it look good, not by art or vandalism; not by any simple means, saving smashing the porcelain to smithereens. (Smithereens, a lovely word).

The thoroughly entertaining Online Etymological Dictionary tells us a fascinating history of the word toilet, ultimately bringing us to meanings such as "dressing room" and "cloth." Shite, it all started so innocently.

But all's well that ends well.

Sort of.

p.s. I bought a Jacuzzi brand toilet. Strange. Not what one thinks of when one thinks Jacuzzi. "I'm in the Jacuzzi" now takes on new meaning in my household.

Trim, the Mystery

English is a funny language, with much grist for the humor mill (or humour mill, across the pond). George Carlin, who died this year, surely made much hay of our funny linguistic harvestings. Am I mixing enough metaphors here?

Trim got me thinking. We talk about "trimming the tree" at Christmastime, but in doing so we are adorning and adding ornaments. how is that trimming? Maybe the sense comes from trimming, or paring, the tree to its ornamentable size (as we did Saturday, when we hunted one down at a farm and hauled it home). I gladly participated in the ritual sawing and hoisting and erecting in the stand, then I took a nap and let the ladies have at it, ornamentwise (actually, I hate that overuse of -wise as a suffix; the estimable reference book Words Into Type cites a New Yorker cartoon in which one owl says to another something like, "So, wisewise, how are things?" HAHAHAHAAHAHAHAAHAHA. [H]owls of laughter). This year after bringing the box of ornaments down from the attic, I studiously avoided all manner of familial tension regarding the stringing of lights or placement of baubles. My nap on Sunday was luxuriously guilt-free (yes, the day after we fetched the tree from the proxy-quasi-semi-Bavarian forest).

But we trim our hair, which is taking away.

If you drill down far enough in the etymology of trim, you find that "trim a tree" is redundant, because trim is a tree, or was long ago, in the knotty-so-distant-past we sometimes pine for, oakay?

Look Before You Leap

Yesterday, just after hearing the haunting and apocalyptic "A Day in the Life" by The Beatles on the radio, while approaching the crest of the roadway on the Tappan Zee Bridge (spelled wrong on an official New York State Thruway sign near Port Chester), with radiant Manhattan about 10 miles downriver to the left, I saw this sign, or its approximation, in the late-afternoon lambent light:

LIFE IS WORTH LIVING

along the right railing, with a "life line" phone number to call.

I suspect the signs (I saw one Saturday, coming from the other direction) are an attempt to ward off suicides, or at least potential pedestrian suicidalists (presumably with cellphones, to call the help line). One would think drivers bent on the act would not need to wait until reaching the highest point of the bridge (a lovely bridge, if I may so). Well, come to think of it, why would anyone need to reach the highest point of the bridge before leaping? Certainly, it would not be necessary in terms of the efficacy of the leap. A leap even at the first locus over water seems plenty high enough to do the deed. (But, as you all know, "I Leap for Kierkegaard.")

I also wondered: why limit signs like this to dramatic venues and vistas such as the Tappan Zee Bridge or the famously suicide-prone Golden Gate Bridge, et cetera? Are there not landward temptations to self-extinction? Indeed there are. Perhaps LIFE IS WORTH LIVING signs should be posted just as pointedly at the entranceways to workplaces, government offices, retail stores, churches, homes, rocky cliffs, flat plains, and at the doors of your local Wal-Mart, Target, The Home Depot, or other big-box store. And who but my eponymous graffiti artist who goes by the tag of LIFE should paint these vivifying signs?

Before you get all fretful about my mental state, let me add these are not lugubrious musings. Far from it.

Life is worth living.

I see the signs everywhere.

(A parenthetical word on bridges. Pons is the Latin word for bridge. Pontifex, a word for pope, literally in Latin means "one who makes a bridge." So does this mean I have been pontificating? Or am I simply bridging the gap between the quotidian and the numinous [check out that etymology!]?)

Just A Hunch

Under the delicious deluge of autumn rain this morning, I (umbrella-less) hunched my shoulders as I scooted from parking garage to street to sidewalk to building entranceway, a short distance.

Did the hunching help?

Did it make me less wet? Did I think hunching would protect me?

Hunch. A great word. Merriam-Webster declares its origin unknown.

Hunch conjures up combinations of huddle and scrunch and hump, which if performed simultaneously would tie one up in potentially orgasmic-enhancing or orgasmic-squelching knots. (Take your pick.)

The fecklessness-of-hunching metaphor raises this question (or raises nothing at all, if one is rendered impotent by such contortions):

What other hunch illusions do we fall for?

After all, does your flinching matter as the I-beam sliding off the semi slices through your windshield?

That sounds dark and gloomy, but isn't, really.

It is meant to underscore the illusion of power we live by, afraid to surrender to the reality of powerlessness. We do this as individuals and as a culture (and as a government).

Powerlessness is really such a relief.

Alas, easier said than done.

My letting go (or failure to do so) typically leaves a bloody trail of claw marks on the object of desire.

(Pare it down, and you've got a Leonard Cohen song or poem.)

Hamming It Up

Scene: The deli counter at Wegmans, amidst a crowd of ravenous shoppers, Sunday night. Hautboys.

I take my little numbered slip out of the dispenser. It reads "05." My number gets called.

A quarter pound of Wunderbar bologna, please.

The clerk, an elderly woman, maybe in her sixties, with short hair and almost manly features, soon hands me a plastic bag with the contents as ordered.

Anything else? she asks.

Sure, ham-off-the-bone, a third of a pound.

[We interrupt this program to declare: "Ham-off-the-bone" is not a term I will touch with a 10-foot Pole, or a 6-foot Swede. HAAHAHAHAHAHAHA.]

Honeyed? she inquires.

Um, I don't know. No. Regular (even though I don't even know what "regular" is).

A fellow employee walks up to the clerk, asking her to take something; it looks like lemon chicken; he asks her to weigh it and put a price sticker on it.

Do you mind if I do this?

No, I say, quarter truthfully but not expecting any significant delay.

The clerk goes to the opposite end. She is weighing, wrapping, weighing, wrapping, putting containers on the scale to get the tare weight. She is nodding upward to read through her bifocals. This is taking a long time. Numbers 07, 08, 09, and 10 are being called. I start to feel like an idiot and begin to fume. I begin to loathe my personally appointed sales associate serving Mr. Pawlie fecking Kokonuts himself. I consider just walking off. Screw it. Maybe come back later with, say, a lovely new number, maybe 24, Willie Mays's number.

I hold off.

She comes back to be.

Thank you so much for waiting, she says with touching earnestness.

That's all right, I lie, starting to feel like an impatient fool, but grateful I did not storm off.

Many people wouldn't be that patient. I really appreciate it, she declares.

That's okay, I say.

What did you want? she asks, almost maternally

A third of a pound of ham.

It looks as if she's a few slices off. In my impatience, I'm waving her off, as if to say, Don't bother, don't worry about it, I wanted a little more than a third of a pound anyway. But, aha! I begin to realize she is throwing those extra slices in there after everything was weighed as a gift, as a thank you for my perceived "patience."

I thank her, and continue shopping, making a note to blog about this when I get around to blogging again.

Internally, I was not at all patient.

Externally, to her, I was a paragon of patience.

Does it still count?

(It used to be a mortal sin in my conscience, even if I thought the impure thought.)

Incidentally, my knowledge of Latin from back in high school, from my seminary days, tells me patience comes from the Latin word meaning "to suffer," "to endure."

I guess impatience can be a sort of albatross.

Incidentally once again, The Online Etymology Dictionary is a great resource. I recommend it; the site offers opportunities to sponsor words, teasing readers to send someone lust.

Intriguing.

(Disclaimer: No actual meat was consumed in the typing of this post.)

Moonday Moonday

Monday, the first day of the week, at least according to ISO 8601, of the International Organization for Standardization (ISO). Stubbornly, unlike the ISO, the United States still holds that Sunday is the first day of the week, despite the cyclical symbolism of mini-Easter drowning in a sea of secularism.

But, let's face it, Monday is for most of us the first day of the week, the first whirrings of human anxiety over the labor pains mandated by Adam Smith and his Captains of Commerce.

Is this what St. Benedict had in mind with his "laborare est orare" ["to work is to pray"]? I believe he symmetrically balanced the phrase with "orare est laborare" ["to pray is to work"]. Yes, sometimes it takes work to pray; other times it comes as easily as

H

E

L

P

!

as one dangles from one's fingertips from the ledge of one's unmaking.

But back to Monday. Or, if you prefer, Moonday.

I wonder why we have this moon thing going on. I invite your lunar musings. Monday means the day of the moon, Moonday. (Of course, right after the day of the sun, Sunday.) The inevitable comparisons to the moon's feminine attributes will be invoked, but what are we to make of them?

On Mondays I typically must invoke ever-more-powerful prayers and incantations to pry myself from under the canopy of cozy sheets. Translation: God! It is hard to get up!

Am I trained to dread Monday with its quest for the almighty quotidian, its maelstrom of management and duty? Or, am I out of training for the travails of work? Does Friday and Saturday catapult me away from the rigors of capitalism?

Maybe that's it: workaholics are so afraid of losing stride, so neurotic about getting out of workshape, they never stop working. Feck 'em.

Or is Monday no worse than any other day, except in my weekend-laden mind?

Perhaps Monday is perfectly named, with its moonish craters and cravings, its hotness and coldness, its unearthly airiness, its moonday Mondayishness.

In all honesty, it wasn't too bad today. I got through the day. I didn't invoke Saint Monday and stay home. I'd say Mondays are dangerous and potentially subversive, in the same way vacations are. That's it! That's where the powers of the moon come in! Beware of anyone making a life-changing decision on a Monday or during or right after a vacation. ("Marge, I think we should stay here in Aruba. We can find work. We'll love it. It'll work. Really!")

Well, at least I didn't book a flight to Vegas, just to escape the pressure, as Tony Soprano did in last night's episode.

He just might stare at the Vegas desert sun forever, and never see the moon again, anywhere, day or night, Moonday or Monday.

How was your Moonday?

P.S. Incidentally, come to think of it, the French don't mince words: Work literally is travail!

A Sentence of Patinations

Across the street from our new downtown office sits a cathedral (sits being an apt word, for a cathedral is the seat of the bishop) whose pale patina from the copper roof installed several years ago has pistachio-stained Montgomery Street, having oozed onto the sidewalk peopled by panhandlers and politicos alike, whispering intimations of greenery onto stale concrete, holding a paten of eucharistic morsels for anyone willing to offer their emptiness as two naked palms and a tiny pang of hunger.