wet paint

hey you; you, not them; you; look here; don't touch me; do not touch me; touch forbidden; warning; please touch touch me; please please pretty please touch me; now; dare you; danger; stand back; come here; no harm no foul; who are They to tell you what to touch or what not to touch; it won't hurt anything; what's the harm; go ahead; WET PAINT; after all, it doesn't say touch or don't touch; it doesn't say anything like that; WET PAINT merely states a fact; but is it a fact; is it really wet and is it really paint; no command, no imperative mode; an adjective modifying a noun; reality-based; T.S. Eliot said a poem is not complete until it is read, with that in mind the declaration WET PAINT is incomplete, unfinished until the proposition is tested, is borne out, by human experience; and what about nonhumans, a bird, say, who flies headlong into the sign or into the supposedly nondry paint, such a tragedy; if Heidegger can ask 'why beings rather than nothing,' can we not query the veracity of this sign; luring, seducing, tempting, daring, cajoling, nudging, almost screaming to touch, touch furtively rapid-fire when no one is looking, no one around, running the risk of imprinting your inimitable fingerprint, your human stain, for all it's worth, now and seemingly forever
 

duck duck geese

I paused at the light, ready to turn right on red. I spotted a gaggle of geese attempting to cross the three lanes of Bridge Street, a street so named that fails to bring to mind any sort of bridge whatsoever, except a patch of roadway over a tiny stream. A gaggle of geese. The collective noun derives from the linguistic attempt to imitate the sound the geese make. Just so you know: the geese are not called a gaggle if they are flying. They become a skein if they take flight. These geese were jaunty and persistent in their effort to cross the busy road on a sunny afternoon in July. It seemed they had a leader, perhaps a few leaders. Presumably, the leaders would be the first to perish if the crossing proved fatal. It would remain to be seen whether such tragedy would thwart the efforts of the remaining gaggle. I turned right. In my rear-view mirror, I noticed the geese were making progress. They were getting cars to stop or slow down as they waddled across, more or less a few steps forward, a few in retreat, then another sally forth. The geese were causing risk to the drivers bearing down upon them. A sudden slowdown heightens the chance of a chain-reaction collision. As for my own driving risk, I had to avert my eyes and proceed forward on my own passage. 

We wholesomely respect such matters as "animal rights" in our society. Some places post roadside warnings: GEESE CROSSING or DUCK CROSSING. We do it for deer, too, though such warnings are more a matter of alerting drivers to be cautious with respect to deer gamboling across the road. In our public square, we champion and protect the rights of animals such as geese or ducks. We do so even at the risk to ourselves. After all, most drivers don't see geese or ducks in the road only to step on the accelerator and plow into the gaggle, exploding it into feathers, flesh, and blood. We're not like that. They are poor, innocent creatures. They have no say in their own safety, they had to cross the road for some reason, perhaps for food or water, maybe to go home to a nest. 

Humans? Forget it. We beep the horn. We get angry at a person or persons for being in the road, impeding our progress, especially in the midst of a travel portion, outside of a defined crosswalk. We might give the finger to the "gaggle" (horde? gang? clutch? group? crowd? tribe? remnant? family?) of humans. Add factors such as migration, race, mobility, behavior, size, attire, et al., and you alter the atmosphere and the attitude of some drivers, possibly increasing personal anger or vehicular speed. 

O, to be a skein in human skin!
 

Listing Listfully and Listlessly

My life is cluttered, and lists are part of the clutter. Lists reside on tiny pieces of paper that I carry in my pockets, with the left side used more than the right. Lists abound on my desk on sticky Post-its of neon colors. I have even taken lately to drawing up a list at the start of the workday. It's an exhaustive list inventorying all the anticipated tasks of the day: responses to calls, e-mails, queries, comments, asides, requests, deadlines, and stated or implicit demands of disparate pieces of paper on my glass desk, a desk as transparent as my orderly attempts to rein in my rampant disorder. (I am ending this paragraph right here in homage to Lenny Cohen.)

Then I numerically rank each task, perhaps stopping at ten. Then I cross off each completed task.

This list-ordered tasking seems to settle me down and focus my efforts. It works until intrusions of yet other tasks.

Or does it work at all? And will it last?

List last.

Last list.

Lost lust.

Lust lost list last.

List lost lust last.

I just love the lilt of those four words.

Et cetera. Inter alia. Age quod agis.

Where was I?

If am without lists, does that make me listless?

Or do the lists themselves make me listless, tricking me into thinking listing equals doing?

In consulting my Oxford English Dictionary, or OED, I am thrilled to find the deep and criss-crossed layers of listing and its variants and associated forms. (Yes, such a finding thrills me, and I make no apologies for it.) The word list offers a rich playground for any list maker.

(But I will be brief. I need to pack for Berlin -- and alas I have for now successfully avoided lapsing into all kinds of blatant Wall metaphors, analogies, and paradigms.)

My OED tells me that list in some associated form or other (to say nothing of Franz Liszt!) refers to:

hearing,
the ear,
a border,
a hem (as in [ahem!] a silken piece of ooh-la-la! cloth you know where),
an earlobe,
part of a head of hair, such as a beard,
a scar,
a ring around the foot of a column,
a place of combat,
a staked enclosure (plural = the starting point of a race),
joy,
delight,
appetite,
craving,
lust (you knew it would come to that),
the careening of a ship (such as the ship of state embarking on certain courses of action),
a roll or catalog of words (such as This parade of nouns),
to please,
to care for,
to listen (I've barely begun to touch the verb forms)

insert ellipsis points here

This is just for starters. (Does that make it UNjust for finishers? hahahar!)

The list goes on.

Or could,

But I am getting listless.

Laugh. Or....

Else.