cold enough for ya?

oh were not the coldest in syracuse its colder in places like thief river falls minnesota but its so cold the keyboard crinkles and sticks and freezes and punctuates poorly missing a beat on commas semicolons apostrophes colons and gets caught on enter
enter
enter
enter
enter sometimes called return
return
return
return
return return even cold enough to have cities villages towns hamlets mandate coats and hats and gloves for public statues cold enough to make one wonder hey do we need all those commas serial commas or otherwise or question marks or exclamation marks hyphens all that redaction kind of thing question mark and as for its with the apostrophe versus its without it no one except an elite few seems to care anyway giving a cold shoulder to redaction rules and regulations regs some call em cold enough to cause people cold to sleep closer snuggling even when smoldering mad at each other cold nough to reconsider hot heat of temper and intemperate tantrums tending to tantric tangos now were really frozen all the rulesslippingintoonelandlockedwordlockedfrozenriverofletters
that cold
period

The Litany of Wintry Gamboling

A crevice of light in the sky.

The Slavic man shouting into his cell, outside his car, in the night, echoing.

Slush.

Our dog gamboling in drifts spindrift snow dolphin leaping.

Wet pavement black.

Leaps of faith that say, "This is this; exalt!"

The pebble in my hiking boot that turns out to be a grain of (rock) salt.

Biblical pillars of shoveled detritus.

Naked branches.

The missing chickadee.

Muzzle in the shards of crystalline alabaster.

January.

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.)

Evanescent Epiphany

Burnet Park. Three vehicles roll down the hill. They stop, lined up as in a parade. Amber lights flashing atop the vehicles. Hard-hatted people emerge. Three Kings? Three Queens? Two Jacks and an Ace? They walk up to lightpoles. A polar eclipse? An elliptical polarity? They are fussing with extension cords. They are here to de-light the park of holyday hollyday holiday illuminations. I head home. I stop. I turn back, facing lightward, waiting for proof of my ruminative illuminative de-lighting delightful theory without recrimination. An epiphany in reverse, as it were, as it was, as it ever shall be. The dog tugs. The lights are still on. Homeward. Eponymous day night eve ever everyes.

Wordy Wordilicious Word of the Year

My award for 2008 Wordy Wordilicious Word of the Year is:

tranche.

It describes an arcane financial instrument that symbolizes the economic collapse visited upon us by people using obscure words for even more obscure products. To round out the chimera obscura, news stories about the handout of up to $700 billion (to the guilty parties no less!) refer to the "first tranche" of the bailout, as if a French word prettifies the robbery.

One might say, "We are in the tranches encountering a tranche da vie avec la tranche l'oeil." Somesing like zat.

The PANTheon of Bargains

This recession has its benefits. A few days ago, way back in 2008, I learned this first-hand. I am not extravagant. Correction: I am not extravagant when it comes to purchasing, especially clothes, an area where I am puritanically frugal, seeking to ferret out sensational bargains (though prone to wild-abandon impulse buying at inexplicable times), a mercantile abstemiousness exercised not just by me but also imposed on those around me, but I can be recklessly extravagant in the swirl and sprawl of a single sentence, sodden with solipsistic reverie and rollicking verbosity, yet obedient to the rules of grammar, syntax, and style, as with this very example, complete with its own serial comma. Back to the benefits of an economy quieted by its earlier excesses: Ralph Lauren Polo jeans. Black. Originally marked $125. Normally, I would not look at them. In fact, I'd likely rail against their very existence in this space. Marked down to $99.99, now hanging on a 50% off rack. Lord & Taylor's. Then a 20% off coupon. $39.99. $41.59 with tax. Still exorbitant for me, and admittedly I was lured by the dramatic differential from the so-called original price and what I ultimately paid, and aware of the hollowness and trickery of all that. But still. Better than the $12 jeans from Old Navy given me at Christmas, pants that won't be worn by me because, because, there are buttons, buttons! instead of a zipper, on the fly. No way that flies for me, no way. (But on the Polo pants some colorful stitching on the coin pocket: three polo-playing jockeys on well-nigh-flying horses; must be why the pants were so chic. Pedigree. All that.) Bye.

9 Things I Learned in 2008

2008. Already it is so yesterday. Before I close the portals of the last year, I offer you an inevitable year-end tally (though you will see no inevitable resolutions for the new year in this space), an accounting rooted in things personal, more or less, less or more.

1. Yes, we can; yes, we did.

2. One can reinvent one's work life, given the grace of talent, opportunity, and others' graciousness and generosity -- all critically important givens.

3. Loss happens. Sometimes it's surprising, sometimes it's unfathomable, sometimes it rewarding. It is always inevitable.

4. The 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. scenario, give or take a few hours, is something I may never return to.

5. I like my MacBook; had hated laptops; never owned a laptop until my newly formed business called for one.

6. My office can extend to anywhere I am. This is not news, but it is something I understood empirically in 2008.

7. Follow-up, even of the most mundane prior minutiae, is one of my most daunting challenges each day.

8. It's all on paper, but is it real?

9. Words like "socialism" and "capitalism" either mean nothing or mean things we never were taught.