first words last words

If words matter, which ones. The infant's inaugural sounds that grown-ups assign warm-hearted meaning to? She said mama! He said mama!? Hear it? No. Yeah. They said dada! They said momma dada nana poppa sissy bruth cuz booboo coocoo. Or maybe it was really a smart-aleck bit of gibberish that only the baby understood. Or a Dadaist manifesto. Try: gimme gimme love gimme love more love gimme shelter gimme more attention gimme dryness milk food more more now now quicker. 

And last words. Will they be an aphorism, an epigram, a saying that all by the bedside can later quote. Words bronzed in your heart, branded into memory. A word or phrase tinged with wisdom, bitterness, humor, irony, brilliance, mysticism, holiness, profanity, vulgarity, vanity, regret, gratitude, humility, pride, inspiration. Love. Generosity. Surrender. Personality. Or something else. Or else nothing. The long metallic note the roshi sounds at the end of the meditation session. The aural pebble in the oceanic roar, echoing infinitely into indescribable ineffable silence. Last words. (Google them. Good search topic. If Google even exists then. If AI has not replaced human or humanoid speech.)

What about between the two, what about the myriad or myriads times millions of words spoken (or merely imagined) between that alpha and this omega, between the first terminus and the last, between the first gurgled garbled mewlings, the oral scribblings and doodlings, at the departing station and the broken mumblings, screams, or ringing emptiness sounded at the last stop, the train's brakes screeching to a halt, the steam billowing upward, a stock movie scene. What about all those words, between A and Z (or whatever your language's alphabet begins and ends with, or whatever your private idiosyncratic memory consists of). The unimaginable flood of syllables strewn, streamed, leaked, and hurled, secreted or sworded, all untakebackable.

First words.

Last words.

In-between words.

 

The Embarrassment Manifesto

I am embarrassed. I have become embarrassed. I am embarrassing. Switch pronouns. We are embarrassed. We have become embarrassed. We are embarrassing. We are being embarrassed. We are an embarrassment. "We" here stands for the Disunited States of America. The good ol' DSA. What is it to be embarrassed? Embarrass: "to perplex, throw into doubt." The estimable Online Etymology Dictionary tells us "embarrass" comes to us from the French, meaning "to block," which came to us from the Italian "to bar," which came from Latin. Embarrass came to mean "to hamper, hinder," and then later "make (someone) feel awkward." Other meanings over the centuries have even included "mental state of unease." With this FACTUAL word history in mind, no matter where you perch on today's razored fence of political discourse, you cannot deny the reality of embarrassment. Whether you lament it or celebrate, it is here. The Age of Embarrassment. Whether you are on the barricades or hiding from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement [Embarrassment] (ICE), welcome to Embarrassmentville. "Welcome" is hereby spelled e-m-b-a-r-r-a-s-s by edict of Embarrassing Executive Order No. 001. So, get used to it, boys and girls -- and anyone in-between or off the charts. Get used to a state of being perplexed, doubtful, blocked, barred, hampered, or hindered. Get used to feeling awkward and ill at ease. Get used to being embarrassed or making others feel embarrassed. Please show your Embarrassment Visa on the way out the door.

 

 

prodigal

The priest quizzed the congregation as he was giving his homily. "How many of you know what 'prodigal' means, raise your hand." One, two hands went up. He gently and half comically chided people for not reading the Bible, as he had urged them to do as a Lenten practice, though one might argue that his question posed a vocabulary issue, not a theological one. I didn't raise my hand. That was because I just didn't feel like it. I was sitting in back with my mom. She can't hear well. If I had gotten called on, it might have confused her or scared her. "What's my son yelling about in church?!" The other reason I didn't raise my hand is because, I am ashamed to admit as a wordsmith, on a Sunday morning I was not fully confident I knew what "prodigal" meant. Sure, I knew the parable, from Luke. I love it. Who doesn't? I believe it may be the most frequently quoted story in the New Testament. (It is such a human drama; we sympathize with the Prodigal Son, but aren't all of us sometime the grouchy, law-abiding Good Son who does not understand the extravagance of mercy?) I was going to blurt out that it means "lost." A so-called verbal artisan should know better. It's a great word, prodigal, ain't it? Extravagantly wasteful, rashly wasteful. (Maybe I was conflating "prodigal" with "profligate," but the two words are roughly synonymous; so, I don't know where lostness entered in. This is where a reader chimes in silently to herself or himself and editorializes on the measure of my evident lostness articulated in these spaces.) There's also a denotation for prodigal that is positive: lush, profuse, abundant. Charles Darwin, on the sea of the tropics, wrote: "...so prodigal of life." Prodigal. Work it into conversation over by the coffee machine today.

my new favorite word: brisant

So, I was finishing the estimable novel Eat the Document, by the talented Dana Spiotta, and I spied this phrase: "...the most beautiful, white, elegant-but-brisant smoke trails." Boom! Brisant. An explosive word, a brilliantly crackling word, a French-Celtic conveyor of fragmentation, fire, and force. And "brisant" is so apt in this book's context, since it is a novel of Sixties radicalism involving the never-ending shards of an antiwar bombing (yes, I concede that can be considered an oxymoronic term).

Hey, reader, watch out for verbal collateral damage. Me personally, I want to insouciantly work the word "brisant" into my coffee shop conversation today, as any good boulevardier or flaneur should. (Excuse my French. [I rather dislike that phrase to mask obscenity; just say the fecking word].)

modern life

A few days ago, at Target, in Fairmount, a suburb of Syracuse, I saw a young woman, maybe in her young twenties, wheeling one of those red plastic carts, wearing a T-shirt, maybe it was a sweatshirt, which said this in script letters on her back: "TRUST NO DICK." The phrasing may have differed slightly, but that was definitely the gist of the point being expressed, however blaringly, imprudently, clearly, confidently, or coarsely. That was its core marketing message. Don't censor the messenger here. I mean, here we are in Target, not far from where I bought Simply Balanced organic black tea, plastic storage crates, and tissues; amidst toddlers in carts and senior citizens like me, mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, grandparents, sales associates, and babies too young to talk or read.

I am not a prude. I won't pretend I was offended by this declaration via vulgarity. In fact, I mused somewhat amusingly to myself: "Well, that's true. No self-aware man would even argue the point himself, upon honest reflection." There's a multitude of locker room sayings endorsing the same viewpoint toward male anatomy and its sway over the psyche, from the male perspective. I won't bore you with them. 

I always have questions, though, and this time they are:

-- Did the wearer of the article of clothing in question sport this out of anger or hurt?
-- Was she whimsical or serious?
-- Was it essentially anti-male or pro-female or neither or both?
-- Was anyone shocked or offended to see this level of discourse in the public square?
-- What would be the reactions and responses if the anatomical reference were switched to one of the female variety, using a crude term?
-- Does anyone care?
-- Am I an old scold for even thinking about this?

nonversation

Good word. Especially as a riposte.

Nonversation.

"Mr. Boehner, your attempts at leadership so far are a nonversation, a nonstarter, a nominal nod to nihilism."

Thanks to Merriam-Webster for links like this demonstrating the dynamic and organic growth of English.

how are you?

Dear Blogosphere Citizens (Blogizens),

How are you? How you be? What up? We haven't talked in a while, have we? Oh, you've left a comment here and there, but for the most part you've been silent. Why is that? Am I not provocative enough? Is serial comma serial comma serial comma serial comma just not triggering enough search engines in the same way that, say, sex sex sex adult adult sex adult sex sex adult sex adult sex adult sex sex sex sex does as a string of keywords? Am I too bland? Not, um, sexy enough? Too verbal, not visual enough? (Incidentally, does sex ed. or gender studies garner the same response as the aforementioned verbal string? Probably not.) Ironically enough, does the mere repetition of the word "sex," paired with any word for that matter, mark me as something or someone that I am not? In other words, are we so Puritan that the mere repetition of the word "sex" demarcates one as a deviant -- just the word! - even though our society has a proliferation of images and music -- and words for that matter -- that stretches the bounds of good taste, civility, normalcy, and morality? And what if one were to quote this blog post out of context? A detractor could (wrongly) claim: it's all about "sex"! Nathaniel Hawthorne's "The Scarlett Letter" is the quintessential book that exposes America's long-simmering hypocrisy about prurience and prudishness, morality and the public square. Can you weigh in on any of this? It's been a while? Speak up. Eh?

Sincerely,

P. Kokonuts, The Laughorist

twenty minus ten oxymorons

intimate strangers
job security
committee decision
holy war
even odds
once again
front end
adult children
bad sport
auto pilot

More here, though many are not true oxymorons.

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.

December Night's One-Sentence Meditation

Call it a day on the verge [as Merriam-Webster puts it online: Etymology: Middle English, rod, measuring rod, margin, from Anglo-French, rod, area of jurisdiction, from Latin virga twig, rod, line Date: 15th century 1 a (1) : a rod or staff carried as an emblem of authority or symbol of office (2) obsolete : a stick or wand held by a person being admitted to tenancy while he swears fealty b : the spindle of a watch balance; especially : a spindle with pallets in an old vertical escapement c : the male copulatory organ of any of various invertebrates 2 a : something that borders, limits, or bounds: as (1) : an outer margin of an object or structural part (2) : the edge of roof covering (as tiling) projecting over the gable of a roof (3) British : a paved or planted strip of land at the edge of a road : shoulder b : brink, threshold] between rain and ice, inundation and danger, gray and black, leading into this vespers of frank thanks that, well, it is almost over, and I still draw breath, which sounds like mere survival but rather celebrates a prevailing, as in prevailing winds, billowing pulse and possibility.

Twenty Adjectives

You know how the preacher shouts, "Can I get a witness?" Well, can I get an adjective?

You know how the gym teacher says, "Drop and give me twenty [push-ups]"?

Here's 20 adjectives:

1. avuncular
2. solipsistic
3. psychagogic
4. demagogic
5. unctuous
6. hoary
7. wizened
8. teleological
9. epistemological
10. tetchy
    
11. querulous
12. ambient
13. stochastic
14. sarcastic
15. calm
16. prosaic
17. stingy
18. generous
19. riddled
20. saucy
    

Twenty Verbs, Redux Again

let's try the infinitive forms of verbs today

1. to snow
2. to freeze
3. to shine
4. to shiver
5. to leap
6. to skip
7. to cry
8. to surprise
9. to cleave
10. to cling
11. to divitiate
12. to surbate
13. to aberuncate
14. to venditate
15. to surrender
16. to melt
17. to warm
18. to inosculate
19. to flob
20. to indagate

Prescription Abandonment

Prescription abandonment.

I've added it to my list over at Wordie.

Prescription abandonment is the (growing) practice of not picking up your prescription; for lack of funds, presumably.

I suppose it could also be lack of interest or lack of care, quite literally. Or even some kind of passive-aggressive silent-protest conspiracy.

(In real life, this is no joke. I'm just blogging, which is not Real Life.)

I have often abandoned prescriptions in my life; have abandoned those mandates prescribed by tradition or culture or habit. Ergo (it always sounds smarter to throw in a Latin phrase or two), I have performed prescription abandonment before its heyday. You would be doing prescription abandonment if I exhorted you to use the serial comma, but instead you shunned it.

When my writing was poor, I performed description abandonment.

When I have failed at enlisting support or consensus, I was guilty of conscription abandonment.

And so on.

You've got your own.

Age quod agis.

What would Kierkegaard do?

He had prescriptions a-plenty, with Danish, to go.

Below the Fold

If, as noted in post ex parte a priori:

Above the fold is an expression rich in meaning, conjuring metaphors financial, erotic, biological, psychological, historical, chronological, sporting, physical, metaphysical, informational, categorical, theological, semantic, and musical. Connotations, denotations, and illustrations also abound in the world of fashion, clothing, and tailoring; or baking; or sheep-herding.

. . . then it stands to reason (or stands to emotion; though neuroscientists increasingly tell us there is no difference between reason and emotion; these are Aristotelian impositions, labels) that below the fold conjures metaphors scatological, Earthy, apocalyptic, illiquid, liquid, Venusian, recondite, illusory, underdoggerel (or is that subcaninic?), impish, secondary, tertiary, secretive, preternatural, fecund, fetid, and nascent.

Below the fold.

I like to read below the fold as well as above the fold.

It is most difficult to read or discern precisely at the fold itself. Perhaps at the fold is the most cogent metaphor for our current times.

Lex Mix Pix

I recently received, from my brother, for my birthday, or possibly Christmas (they're only a week apart), The Lexicon: a cornucopia of wonderful words for the inquisitive word lover by William F. Buckley Jr.

Here's a random sampling, followed by the results of a self-imposed challenge beforehand: a spontaneous, rapid-fire attempt to use all the words in one sentence (more or less correctly).

eleemosynary (adjective) -- Of or relating to charity.

nescient (adjective) -- From nescience, the doctrine that nothing is truly knowable.

periphrastic (adjective) -- Ornately long-winded; given to profuse formulations.

congeries (noun) -- A collection; accumulation; aggregation.

bumptiousness (noun) -- The quality of one who is presumptuously, obtusely, and often nosily self-assertive.

breviary (noun) -- An ecclesiastical book containing the daily prayers or canonical prayers for the canonical hours.

indite (verb) -- To write, compose; to set down in writing.

raillery (noun) -- good-natured ridicule; pleasantry touched with satire; banter, chaffing, mockery.

traduce (verb) -- To lower or disgrace the reputation of; expose to shame or blame by utterance of falsehood or misrepresentation.


I may have indicted myself by attempting to indite a grammatically correct sentence in one periphrastic sitting using this entire congeries of words, an effort that in retrospect may have been enhanced by praying from a breviary and calling upon the eleemosynary qualities of a divine power so as not to invite rampant raillery by having traduced the rules of syntax and etiquette elicited by my bumptiousness and nescient arrogance.

(That took about four minutes, such as it was.)

Rehab Your Vocab

Have some vocabulary fun at Free Rice. In playing, you donate free rice to the United Nations (or so we are told).

My high score is 46.

So far.

Warning: The game ends only when you decide to stop. It took (stubborn) me forever to figure that out.