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") 

autodidact

Sometimes, in this white space (though what color, really, exists in the digitalsphere?) I wonder if I am merely speaking to one person who is listening, i.e., myself. And yet if that is so, that is okay too. T.S. Eliot wrote somewhere that a poem is not completed until it is heard or read by someone, even if that "someone" is the poet.

Silent Day

I guess I have survived the orgy of getting and spending we call Christmas (though, not parenthetically, it is hoped, ignoring its Presence found at the intersection of Silence and Mystery, amid the most abject Pain and Need, in the Ground of Being), left with a residue of weariness and emptiness, a vacancy filled by the Unnameable Name.

High-sounding words.

Silence is better.

I stayed in my pajamas all day. And now night.

Literally. Really.

Is that depression? Or sanity?

Late last night, the church provided sanctuary and solace, reverie and focus. The Story never changes, except infinitely so, in each of us. The trumpet declared brightness and awakening, even at midnight. There were tears in eyes.

Would that we all were there.

Or here.

Alas, we were / are, yes?

Readers: To you, Blessed Christmas, a season that lasts at the very least until Epiphany.

Ergo, keep your candles glowing.

Bloomsday Blogsday 1, and Counting

Today is my first blogiversary. Or is that blogaversary? Maybe it's even a bit of blogslavery, shackled by semantics and the art and craft (and obsession) of saying (saying anything, anything at all, in almost any manner). (Incidentally and fittingly, June 16, is also Bloomsday, the day in 1904 when the fictional events in James Joyce's Ulysses take place, in Dublin.)

It started on a Thursday night and into Friday morning, wandering around the steamy back alleys of the World Wide Web (without the editor's choice of "Worldwide," which would have forever branded us with WW), teasing out the scene not far from Seattle, tempting my tendency toward the tawdry, when I should've been sleeping.

And so, the nom de plume Pawlie Kokonuts was hatched, with hats off to Paulie Walnuts.

The title of The Laughorist was a natural, since I had already started a store revolving around the concept of so-called laughorisms. And my first post, on solipsism, was indicative of a suspicion I harbored, and harvest, for this talking tour.

Looking back, I notice I received no Comments for a week; not until my 11th post (did I care? was I more pure then? less self-conscious?). The first Comment was from the blogger at Kierkegaard Lives. Thank you. (I see, he's still posting; we share similar layouts.) Most likely, I stopped at his blog and teased him into stopping by at my place, with a word or two on Soren Kierkegaard thrown in.

I confess I've not been the perfect blog community member or neighbor. By that, I mean I don't reciprocate Comments faithfully or even read other blogs consistently. And that is because it's hard enough for me just to keep this going, being of meager discipline and possessing little perseverance. Don't take it personally, or impersonally.

Thanks for stopping by. Then and now. I've met all those people you see linked n this page, as well as many others, and more who need to be linked. Or will be. Deo volente.

It's been a journey of linking, connecting, conversing, and cavorting. I've gotten more from all of you than I've put into it. Thank you.


Spotlight on Year 1

One Slice, With Legs

Testing Testosterone

Water You Know

We the People, We the Ephemerists

(which evoked the most Comments).

One easy discovery was, I can't be funny all the time, nor do I want to be (witness several posts on the deaths of loved ones, or on la petite mort, or on the death of deception or illusion).

And who would've guessed that I would get the most hits, so far, owing to my post on the serial comma, with chitchat coming from Vanity Fair and The New Yorker?

Again, thanks to all of you -- first-timers, late-comers, new-comers, toll-takers, big-talkers, and silent-partners (even if all those hyphens aren't truly needed).

Carry on.

Excelsior.

Age quod agis.