My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 4

       My pen, when I got it, was somewhat of a marvel.  Aluminum it was, I'm sure.  Very light, and, oh, maybe not more than four inches in length, perhaps five or six.  It had its own built-in cap for the point, not like any I've seen since.  It protracted out over the point to protect it when not in use and retracted to reveal the point when you were ready to write.  The cap could be moved back and forth with the same hand one wrote with (with a little effort) and couldn't be lost because it was attached to the pen.

       The silvery aluminum barrel had an array of ridges up and down its length which made it firm to hold but somewhat hard on the fingers after writing for awhile.  It also wrote rather faintly, a pale blue that was legible if one adjusted one's eyes to it.  Oh yes, it "skipped" a little compared to dip pens...tiny gaps in the ink flow that you could make out...but obviously a small penalty to pay for so many advantages.

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 3

       When the ballpoint pen came out, the question for a time was, would the teachers accept work written in ballpoint?  But I was one of the most eager to obtain one, for no one could expect from the ballpoint that freeflowing, elegant, and ultimate handwriting of the dipped pen.  The ballpoint was more sparing of its ink supply and more jealous of its release onto the page. 

       Besides, hadn't it been advertised with such marvelous appeal as being able to write under water, as being able to write over butter...I guess they meant paper that had been impregnated with oily butter....Who could resist being the possessor of such a marvelous instrument?

       And it could make carbon copies like a typewriter or pencil.  Disregard the fact that I had no use for carbon copies and had never made one up to that time...the new pen could do it!  And it was another point of appeal for its purchase.

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 2

       Of course, for Miss Evans of the swirling hand, we were not to pinch our fingers as we made our way across the page with the pen, but to have whole-hand-and-wrist free movement as we skated and pirouetted "on point."

       But I would always look at my handwriting--the handwriting which to this day wreaks and which my students when I wrote them notes would beg me to translate--and look at Miss Evans's handwriting, and the heart would sink deeper into depression-admiration.  Who could ever emulate--yet who could but be astonished and appreciative of--the "hand" of Miss Evans?

click on image to enlarge

My Paean to the Ballpoint Pen, Part 1

       This year, 2014, is the 70th anniversary of the ballpoint pen.  If you're interested in language, you're interested in the instruments that carry language.  From typewriter to computer was a very big step.  For me as a kid, from ink pens and fountain pens to ballpoint pens was such a one.  I remember the fascination, pride, and pleasure with which I purchased my first ballpoint.

       Quite a novelty for a school kid then, especially one who had been brought up on Palmer penmanship.  I never did come anywhere near mastering the Spencerian handwriting style taught us in the early grades by a wonderfully behatted elegant woman who whisked in once a week to teach us how to write.

       We sat stunned and astonished as Miss Evans swirled her incredible hand across the blackboard in exquisite cursive letters of beauteous perfection.  It was like a show.  In a way, we loved to have her come in.  It wasn't so much teaching as a demonstration, a theatre of the classroom. 

       

      

My Prowess with Words, 4

       Now there's one more word, "enervated."  For a very long time I "knew" what that meant:  "energized"--full of the dickens!  If you were enervated, you were ready to go!  Association with "energy" in its first two syllables, as simple as that, but, well, you know, it means just the opposite, no energy, depleted of vim, vigor, and vitality, without energy.

       I'm getting enervated just thinking of my "prowess" with words.  Only a little more depletion on my part and I'll be . . . be-dridden.

My Prowess with Words, 3

       From childhood on up I was confused by the word "misled."  My inner ear heard it as MIZ-eld.  I knew in a vague way it was not a very good thing to be.  Too much later I learned I was looking at miss-LEHD.

       Of course, I was also the guy who, in my early adult years, happened across a booklet on "Corporal Punishment" put out by a church group.  For a full day or two I was dumbstruck that a religion could approve of this practice.  My eyes grew bigger with each page.  But what was in my mind the whole time was "capital punishment."  And they were recommending it for kids!

My Prowess with Words, 2

[...confirmed to me that I understood this word.  Hah!]

       I suppose it was my fate to make this kind of mistake.  Wasn't it I who sat in the first grade, stared all year at the map in the front of the room, and read the legend underneath:  un-KNIT-ed states?  All year I had this dissonance within me--a little kid of six, "If we're supposed to be the you-NIGHT-ed states, as I've heard, all together and joined, why are we this way, all unravelled as that map says?"

My Prowess with Words, 1

      When I was growing up, I read the word "bedridden" as [be-DRID-en].  Why?  I haven't the faintest idea except I read it that way the first time I saw it, and it was that way for years after.  I knew it was a more negative than positive word . . . connotations of "ridden" and "driven" came through to me.  Somebody was in dire straits as I saw it, and overarching notions of "bewitched" and good "riddance" confirmed to me that I understood this word.  Hah!

"The Californian's Ten Commandments"

Herewith, the remainder:


       Thou shalt not murder; it keeps others from doing their own thing.

       Thou shalt not commit thyself to one person beyond the duration of a true, mutuallly satisfying relationship.

       Thou shalt not steal a Mercedes if it leaves anyone without wheels.

       Thou shalt be up front at all times with thy neighbor.

       Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's live-in sex partner; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's pad; thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's boogie board.


             Alas,
                 Don

"The Californian's Ten Commandments"

       Some might say it's sacrilege; others might say I'm trivializing a profound document; still others might think the list is simply not funny; nevertheless, since I conjured these some years back and just rediscovered them, I thought they had a place in my blog.

       I'm figuring about five a day is all you can bear:

     
       I am the Lord thy God who brought thee out from back East.

       Thou shalt have no other gods before me, with the possible                            exception of the sun and the sea.

       Thou shalt not utter thy mantras and thy primal screams in vain.

       Remember the 3 day ski weekend to keep it holy.

       Honor thy father and mother's space.

A Couple More Puns I Came Up With

       Hatha Yoga is better than none.


       You have to be into it to intuit.

How a Street Sign Revived a Song

       I saw a street sign yesterday and said it aloud: "Sherman Way."   Something in it started me singing,

             "Dada Dada, etc., Boom-too-dee-ay."

"Sherman Way" had shaken my memory banks and resuscitated "Rose O'Day."  Same rhythm; it rhymes.  The chorus:

             Rose O'Day
             Rose O'Day
             ? ? ? ? ? ?
             Boom-too-dee-ay

Later, Internet texts of the lyrics filled in the Dadas with sounds that didn't quite fit my memory!

       Finally You Tube gave me the right words in Kate Smith's singing of it on record in 1942...when I was twelve!  72 years ago. 

             Rose O'Day
             Rose O'Day
             You're my filla-ga-dusha
             Shinna-ma-rusha
             Bahl-da-ra-da
             Boom-too-dee-ay

Thus did a random street sign, once uttered, renew the life of a truly forgotten song.

       Kate sings it for you here.

      

A Couple Puns I've Come Up With

        If somebody dies in a sex orgy, notify next of kink.

                                              
        What is a battle of wits?  A journey through mind territory.

"Where Do a Poet's Words Come From"

       A former student of mine who is a teacher,  a friend, a poet, approaches his own retirement from teaching.

       In Michael's honor, and with thanks, I place this poem of his in my blog.  I think it says beautifully...indeed, poetically...just what it is a poet does.




               WHERE DO A POET'S WORDS COME FROM



               the wind, but not borne on the wind, something

               inside the wind, some feeling which suggests

               possibilities, a joy and a sadness intertwined



               the ocean, but not riding the waves, something

               intrinsic, a force which summons song, which

               compels utterance of those twins, hope and despair



               the rain, but only when one stands or walks in it,

               its steady commitment to grief, not the words of

               grief, but the feel, the taste, the forgiveness, the prayer



               the mountains, not their grandeur, rather their

               endurance, their ineffable patience, their connection

               of earth and sky, their challenge to rise above, to dare





               Michael L. Newell

Earth Day every day

       Earth Day was two days ago.   But every day should be Earth Day because we owe ourselves to planet earth--it is our home.

       And just as "humus" is Latin for earth, so Latin has supplied us the word for beings who are of the earth--human, us!  Yes, it is etymologically true.  "Human" beings are "earth" beings.

       And for those who would like to visit or revisit my "Earth Day Reading" of April 22, 2013, you can find that link here.

       And for some further connections of "humans" to this "earth," may I suggest a return to my post of August 14, 2013.

       HAPPY earthday.       

    

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--4

[The same words of Hillel, in Hebrew or translation, support both explications.  Each has merit.  But analogous with particles and waves, each will give only a single account of the saying.]

              Language too, like physical properties, has so much “folded into” it, in variable word meanings and roots, in interchangeable grammatical constructions, in altered readers and readings over centuries, that this “implicative” order of language, probably its fundamental reality, must remain indeterminate.

              God and the gods of language willing, this essay did not have too much “folded together” in it.  For I can see how that might                                        “complicate”    things.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--3

[This is a traditional explication or folding out of meaning.  It  

is quite clear and unambiguous.  And it is worth pondering.]

       But cast a different eye at the saying, one conditioned by a more recent existential mode of thought, and lo and behold, another explicit statement can be “unfolded” from it.  Stressing the “am” and the “be” in the first line (“If I am not...for myself, who will be for me?”), this explication arises:

               If I do not take the responsibility to carve out my own                               identity, who will fulfill my existence in place of me?  



Stressing “am” and “what” in the next line ("If I am only for myself, what am I?"), the meaning becomes,

               If only I am able to fulfill my existence, what is it that I am?
  


Leaving the third line ("And if not now, when?") to mean, 

               And if I don’t start becoming that now, whenever will I?
   
       The same words of Hillel, in Hebrew or translation, support both explications.  Each has merit.  But analogous with particles and waves, each will give only a single account of the saying.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--2

[This is the "explicative" order; it is unambiguous and clear.]

       Light can behave explicitly like particles at times... like matter...and explicitly like waves at other times...like energy...but the reality of light is fundamentally ambiguous.  Neither the explicative order of matter nor that of energy will suffice, and light “itself” remains “folded into” the implicative order of nature.*

       I find a similar phenomenon in language.  Generations have taught an understanding of this ancient saying of Rabbi Hillel:
               If I am not for myself, who will be for me?
               If I am only for myself, what am I?
               And if not now, when?

An explication de texte for this saying might be: 
               If I don’t believe in myself and espouse myself, who will                                  believe in me and support me? 
               But if I am only out for myself and my own interests, what                                 kind of human being am I? 
               And if I don’t act on both of these premises now, whenever                                 will I?  


This is a traditional explication or folding out of meaning.  It  

is quite clear and unambiguous.  And it is worth pondering.

* David Bohm in "New Ideas in Order" from the CBC radio series Physics and Beyond, done during the 1980s.

"Implicit"/"Explicit"; "Implicate"/"Explicate"--1

       It’s nice to know there’s a simple image at the basis of what might otherwise be a very “Latinate” and abstract set of terms--”implicit,” “explicit,” “implicate,” and “explicate.”  The little “pli” syllable is the bearer of that image:  “to fold.”  A thing as easy to imagine as folding clothes or a blanket can even help one stay with a modern physicist’s use of such words.
 
       David Bohm says that today’s physics posits an “explicative” and an “implicative” order of things.  The underlying reality is “implicative,” “folded in,” irrevocably ambiguous; but from time to time, we are able to “unfold” from that realm a precisely statable explicit characterization of reality.  This is the “explicative” order; it is unambiguous and clear.

On Stage Fright, Part 3

[I knew everybody was waiting for my next words, but I was frozen.]

       Something told me that movement might help break the ice jam.  I turned and walked laterally across the stage, and as I walked, the line came back to me.  Then I realized I couldn’t blurt it out or everyone would be certain I’d had a bad lapse.  I took a couple more steps, turned deliberately toward the audience as though this had been a significant pause for effect (though the content didn’t call for it), and calmly but forcefully came forth with the line.  I really don’t think anybody knew I’d lost my place.

       I promised not to talk to myself like that again in the remaining moments of the speech.

       I won the contest and a $50 prize, but things went almost too smoothly.  Maybe that’s why Chinese painters put a small purposeful thumb smudge on their paintings.  Human efforts are not supposed to be “perfect.”

On Stage Fright, Part 2

[I had written out the speech, memorized it, and rehearsed it.  Listening to the other speeches that night, I thought mine would probably measure up in content.]

       When I delivered the speech, I remember the wonderful feeling of having a large audience’s rapt attention and knowing what it means to have everyone “in the palm of your hands.”  The speech went on flawlessly, seamlessly, so much so that I began to experience being behind myself watching the beauty of the occasion, until a small voice slipped in before I could stop it:  “Suppose you forgot your speech at the end of this sentence.”  I came to the end of the sentence.  I couldn’t remember the next line.  “You idiot,” I said to myself.  I knew everybody was waiting for my next words, but I was frozen.

       (Concluded tomorrow)

On Stage Fright, Part 1

       It was the annual Ludden Freshman-Sophomore Oratorical Contest at the University of Minnesota.  I was a freshman who had done well in a public speaking class and a couple high school contests.  I was encouraged by my teacher to enter the competition, something like a 20 minute persuasive speech on any serious subject.

       Emery Reeves’s The Anatomy of Peace was a popular book of the time, proposing and arguing for World Government just after World War II.  It was a more serious giving up of national autonomy than the UN, and it struck a chord with me, and many others.

       Outside of drawing too heavily on that single source, my speech was a good one, well constructed, and I believed strongly in the material.

       I had written out the speech, memorized it, and rehearsed it.  Listening to the other speeches that night, I thought mine would probably measure up in content.

Signatures Anonymous

       If cursive handwriting is no longer taught (it's already being allowed to disappear from school curricula), what of signatures?

       Can one's printed name be considered a signature?  In my lexicon, a signature is handwritten, and I do mean "written," not printed.

       And what becomes of handwriting experts?  They can identify people from the peculiarities of their writing, but maybe and maybe not from their printing.

       If someone says, "Put your John Hancock here," we know what it means from that flourishing signature on the Declaration of Independence.  Has all that gone overboard in a flood of "texting"?

"Spendthrift"

       I recently spent a lot of money in only two days and called myself a "spendthrift."  It's a term I always feel funny using because it seems to me it should mean "thrifty."

       But "thrift," I find out, once meant "prosperity"...as in "thrive"... not "frugality," and that earlier meaning hangs on in "spendthrift" too.  In other words, "spendthrift" means "spending one's prosperity," wasteful, wreckless spending.

Words that Push Us Forward

       A bright fellow draftee in the Korean conflict introduced me to four lines of poetry that have stuck with me.  I now learn the poet was a Vermonter of whom Robert Frost said the following:  "To a saint and a reformer like Sarah Cleghorn the great importance is not to get hold of both ends, but of the right end.  She has to be partisan."

                      The golf links lie so near the mill
                      That almost every day
                      The laboring children can look out
                      And see the men at play.
                                 Sarah Norcliffe Cleghorn, (1876-1959)




 

Brushing Up My French

       My son's recently trekking through the mountains and glaciers of Chile where avalanches are common reminded me of these notes I took while driving through glacier and mountain country in Canada, reading the signs:

"Danger Falling Rock" is in French Chutes de Pierre.  Pierre must be rock.  Well, Pierre, South Dakota, must be Rock.  Falling Rock doesn't sound as good as Chutes de Pierre.  I hear it in the words.  I hear the danger. . . chutes de pierre [SHOOT de pih-AIR].  Chutes is also in "waterfall," chutes d'eau.  This is a refresher for my French.  And I'm learning some things I didn't learn in French class.

E. E. Cummings once lamented:

I'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be                                                           living apart.

You were expecting maybe print copies?

"Same Product New Packaging"

       I needed to replenish the sunscreen I had for hot days ahead.

       The pharmacy confronted me with eight bottles and tubes of different sunscreens.  None looked like mine at home, as I recalled it.  Reading ingredients helped a little, but I wasn't certain of the name.

       I grabbed a plastic bottle more aggressively and saw a tag on the back--"Same Product  New Packaging."   Fine...EXCEPT... how did I know WHAT product if I couldn't really recall the OLD PACKAGING.

       In frustration, and need to get something, I bought it.  "Same Product" yes, but the "New Packaging" only accomplished reducing the amount of "product" in it for the same price.

       As for me, they could at least have put a picture of the "Old Packaging" on that tag to reassure their customer!

      

"You can't preach to a community you don't know"

[CONCLUSION:  See yesterday, please]

       Once the community is known, once the dialogue and exchange is real, something can be imparted.

       In his book The Essential Rumi, Coleman Barks tells of his introduction to Sufi ways and understandings.  For a number of years, Barks had contact and interaction with a Sufi sheikh, which helped him in doing his eloquent versions of Rumi’s poetry.
 
       At one point Barks asked Bawa Muhaiyaddeen “if what I saw in his eyes could someday come up behind my eyes and look out.”   Barks says the sheikh began speaking of the subtle relationship between a teacher and a community, “Not until the I becomes we.”

"You can't preach to a community you don't know"

       “You can’t preach to a community you don’t know.”  This was said by a preacher who was helping install a rabbi at our temple.  He knew our new rabbi well.  He was the senior rabbi at the temple our new rabbi had just served at for six years.
 
       Preacher went on that the door must always be kept ajar and she, our new rabbi, already knew this; he’d observed her for those years.

       What is it the community supplies that allows a teacher to teach, a preacher to preach?  Doesn’t the teacher know something more than the community, and therefore they need him or her?  That would seem to be so; yet the teacher, knowing something more, still must know what's not known at the beginning of preaching:  the community itself.

(Concluded tomorrow) 

Say it "trippingly on the tongue"

       Here is one of those found tongue twisters I relish coming upon:

                                         "plausible plot point"

Can you say it five times fast without a false note?!

YYURYYUBICURYY4ME

[Please see yesterday's post before going further.]

       I was reminded of this puzzle while listening on the air to a discussion among scientists on chromosomes that differentiate the sexes.  The X's and Y's were flowing.  Did I hear "Two X's and one Y," "Two Y's and one X"?  "Two Y's"?   

       My friend Eric had put me on to the above puzzle/poem, and my difficulty with it had been I couldn't make the first two letters say "Two Y's," which would have unlocked the conundrum:

       Too wise you are
       Too wise you be
       I see you are
       Too wise for me

       While listening to the scientists, I also realized what a panoply "Two Y's" had for the ear:

       Two Y's
       Two I's
       Two eyes
       Too wise

They are all pronounced exactly the same!
       

Here's One to Ponder...

       Do you know the following?  When I first saw it on the page, I puzzled for a long time and couldn't make it out, finally had to give up and ask my friend for help.  I'm supposing in a Twitter age it's a snap, but maybe not.

                        YYURYYUBICURYY4ME



      

How I Read Aloud, 17

[Such a poem, when uttered, is...an experiential garden where fellow humans meet and revel.]

       And what does any of what is said above have to do with voice?   If anything, the voice being responsive to concerns that lie within the poem and within one’s heart can warm the voice up and make it listenable.  But attention to voice itself and what it can do will leave listeners with nothing but a disembodied voice, only their act of listening and your act of reading, nothing important, just a mutual trance of self-reflectedness.  That’s a prospect I do my best to walk away from.
 
       And when you are walking toward the poem and into the poem and what’s happening there, you are walking away from that.

    Don

How I Read Aloud, 16

       Going through something like this process helps the poem belong to the one reading it aloud, keeps it close to the heart, to life, and therefore potentially close to the people with whom one will be sharing it.  Such a poem, when uttered, is not a discomfited, self-conscious pronouncing of another person’s words to a group of detached auditors. It is instead an experiential garden where fellow humans meet and revel.

How I Read Aloud, 15

[But I can be a partner to a sunset and a witness to the perfection of the day's end, seeing its absolute completeness.]

       And now the speaker/reader (you or I) and our audience’s lives are brought into the picture more closely for the last two lines.  This day that is coming to an end is one of “the days that keep dawning,” and by which we “age.”  Somehow the days’ dawning and setting and our dawning each day while we age, are encompassed in that single line.  And the “lived-out day” (how apt and affirming that phrase--think if the choice had been “used-up”) is perfectly parallelled with the physical day’s limits.  We donate the “lived-out day” back to something much vaster than a human life, but by which ours is measured, “eternity.”

       Those last two lines lure us magnetically back and forth between the poles of “age” and “eternity” through the field of “lived-out” and ever “dawning” days.

How I Read Aloud, 14

       The day “departing” and lying “open at your feet” asks that you remember and imagine that special sunset of yours; maybe in my case I conjured Pacific Palisades because the sunset is more “at your feet” there, on a cliff above the Pacific.  But to each his or her own.

       Something in me resisted a little “You can’t create anything yourself,” except when on second thought, I compared my creations to anything like this, like the world.  But I can be a partner to a sunset and a witness to the perfection of the day’s end, seeing its absolute                                                    c o m p l e t e n e s s.

How I Read Aloud, 13

[And the accessibility of the "prayer" continues for you and your audience with the warmth of "just lending a helping hand."]

       The beauty of the next imagery is the lynch-pin of the poem for me.  I, you, any member of the audience is taking “a created day” and slipping it “into the archive of life,/where all our lived-out days are lying together.”  There’s something so right about that imagery, maybe especially for someone who’s built up a dossier of such days.  And the “our” wraps the speaker of the poem  (you or I) together with members of the audience.  It signals that we can talk with familiar tones, as though we and they were one.

How I Read Aloud, 12

       Look how slowed down it gets with that 4th and 5th line.  I can take the lines slow.  They’re “walk”ing lines.  There are four “you”/“your”s in those two lines, and they apply to both you and your listeners with whom you can be in direct contact.  Then in the 6th, the “words are golden” whether or not they’re real words, because the sunset is golden.

       The “you”s continue into the second stanza, with the informal “catch on” allowing you to keep an easy, direct relationship with your listeners.  And the hint of challenge in “if you don’t catch on” alerts all that they are to be participants in the grasping of this “secret.”   Of course it’s not really hard to “feel a little elevated,” and, besides, no listener would want to be the one not to catch on.  In any case, it’s only a little elevated.  And the accessibility of the “prayer” continues for you and your audience with the warmth of “just lending a helping hand.”

How I Read Aloud, 11

       Where are your sunset images derived from?  You must have a good one.  You could use it for this poem as I did.  Imagine yourself there, and each audience member will be transported, not necessarily to your exact location, but to that magical one of their own, because you are at yours.  Something happens to an audience when something happens to a performer.

       Perhaps naturally, I am near the Pacific, it’s Pacific Palisades; there’s some grassiness, and there’s the ocean; I’ve experienced sunset there a few times.

How I Read Aloud, 10

[Right away I am not a "reader," and right away the audience is not hearing "words" bur rather is being enticed to share in a secret.]

       As I read through the whole poem, I know I have not had the exact experience the poet Jacob Glatstein is evoking, but I have had some experiences keyed off by the poem.

       I have prayed, but I have also been put off by prayer; yet a sunset is so familiar I am teased to find out what comes next, and by that third line about “a juicy bit of praying,” I find it’s so disarming in its informality, almost subversive of conventional ideas of prayer, that along with the easy, pleasant sense memory of “strolling on grass,” it arouses my curiosity and makes it easier for me to think I could do the same with my listeners.

How I Read Aloud, 9

[The poem [see yesterday's post] is by Jacob Glatstein, "The Sunset Prayer."]

       This is a poem I was asked to read aloud at services.  Unfortunately, I was given only a handful of minutes to look it over before I'd have to present it.  I like much more time to prepare than that, but these are things I discovered during the ten minutes or so.
 
       The first line announces an intimate confidentiality between a speaker and his/her listener(s); the “I” and the “you” immediately let me know that I can have this relationship with my audience; I can let them in on a secret, taking a familiar tone we have all enacted or heard dozens of times.  And when I look up from the words, where do I look?  Right at the “you,” my audience; and how?  With that friendly conspiritoriality the words contain.  Right away I am not a ”reader,” and right away the audience is not hearing “words” but rather is being enticed to share in a secret.

How I Read Aloud, 8

[That art I don't know, but I would never have said to Calder, "How perfectly you balance all your mobiles!"]

       When it comes to reading aloud ... When there’s time to prepare a reading, every clue that’s there is valuable, everything that moves an audience’s attention toward important things and away from two obvious facts:  1. these are words and 2. a person is reading to them.  Take the following poem:

I’ll let you in on a secret
about how one should pray the sunset prayer.
It’s a juicy bit of praying, like strolling on grass,
Nobody’s chasing you, nobody hurries you.
You walk toward your Creator with gifts in pure, empty hands.
The words are golden,
their meaning is transparent.
It’s as though you’re saying them for the first time.

If you don’t catch on that you should feel a little elevated,
you’re not praying the sunset prayer.
The tune is sheer simplicity,
you’re just lending a helping hand to the sinking day.
It’s a heavy responsibility.
You take a created day
and slip it into the archive of life,
where all our lived-out days are lying together.
The day is departing with a quiet kiss.
It lies open at your feet
while you stand saying the blessings.
You can’t create anything yourself,
but you can lead the day to its end
And see clearly the smile of its going down.
See how whole it all is,
not diminished for a second.
How you age with the days that keep dawning.
How you bring your lived-out day as a gift to eternity.

       The poem is by Jacob Glatstein, “The Sunset Prayer.”

How I Read Aloud, 7

[What makes those words come alive for an audience isn't the "ideal voice,"...]

       I think of Alexander Calder whose mobiles I fell in love with decades ago.  I even felt encouraged to try my hand.  It’s been fun but strictly amateur.  Whatever success I’ve had has, again, been due least of all to what people seem to think is most crucial about making mobiles, balance.  How does Calder get all those elements to balance that way?  How do you do it, people ask.

       Well, of course, the invention of the suspended, moving work of art is Calder’s, and he is a genius.  He is both engineer and artist.  But once the great brainstorm of the idea for mobiles was his (and he did elaborate the idea with great creative zest), the balancing of elements is fairly rudimentary at core.  It’s the wonderful elements themselves in their wide diversity of materials from mobile to mobile, the uncannily contoured shapes he created for a given mobile and the subtle variations in form within it, it’s the vibrant color choices he made for the elements, it’s the whimsicality of his imagination in both the creating and the naming of the mobiles, all these things that make Calders the wonders they are.  I can do the balancing, but it’s the “art” of the mobile I keep “having at” and which keeps escaping me.  That art I don’t know, but I would never have said to Calder, “How perfectly you balance all your mobiles!”

How I Read Aloud, 6

[The last thing this page is--chronologically as well as in importance--is words!]

       So when you read, you’re reading the world into existence, you’re putting something on everyone’s plate, something that’s already there, from their own experience, ready to be activated into the new slant on life contained uniquely in these words and no others.  If we’ve been read well to, we’re not left with words, but a changed life.

       What makes those words come alive for an audience isn’t the “ideal voice,” it’s everything else nonvocal, nonverbal that makes the voice spring into action responsively, turns on the mind, turns up the juices, puts one into the game with a new frame of reference--first of all the reader and because of that, the listener!

How I Read Aloud, 5

       When others are asked to read aloud in front of a group and do have time to prepare a passage, I find the usual response based on the evidence is “This is a piece of cake if all I have to do is read it aloud.  I’ll just look it over a couple of times, and that’s it.  After all, it’s words, and I can read.”
 
       But whether there’s time to prepare in advance or not, the last assumption I make about a sheaf of language is that it’s words!

       The words are only pointing through to other things which are distinctly NOT words, namely some kind of experience: textures, sounds, images, attitudes, desires, fears, aspirations, tenderness, vulnerability, hate, awe, doubt, wonderment, affirmation, the grit and gristle and marvel of life, our own life.  We read this page with our own existence--up to this moment in living.  The last thing this page is--chronologically as well as in importance--is words!

How I Read Aloud, 4

[engaged in the tensions of discovery as am I.]

       The main difference between myself and some other readers in the room is that I am not self conscious, wondering and worrying whether I will stumble or how my voice sounds or if I can read well enough given that others are listening to me, but only concentrating on the unfolding play of meaning and situation and attitude that faith tells me holds some increased understanding and wisdom and delight--if I only stay with it--both for myself and others.  While we’re getting to that place of understanding, the provisional undulations of tone and meaning themselves can hold interest from moment to moment because we are mutually engaged in this joint tracking through the black marks on the page, trying to decipher what they hold.

How I Read Aloud, 3

[what's going on that makes it listenable isn't what most people would think it is.]

       I was simply following the story along from word to word as I was reading it, putting on a vocal attitude here that might be called for based on the previous few words and seeing if it works, and if it does, continuing in this vein to the end of a thought or end of the sentence, provisionally testing the ongoing flow of meaning for what it might possibly be heading toward, guessing right enough of the time to build up a bit of steam with the gathering context and implications of the story.

 
       What is making it listenable?  That my listeners are identifying with me in this impromptu situation, trying on the attitudes and tones with me, engaged in the tensions of discovery as am I.

How I Read Aloud, 2

       [The voice is incidental.]

       I’ve discovered this is true whether I’m reading something I’ve prepared and worked hard on and thought and experimented much with before reading for others, or whether I’m doing a sight reading with everyone in the room including me being exposed to material for the first time.
 
       Let’s say it’s a Chasidic tale in a class where we’re all studying to learn what it is this part of Judaism has to offer us.  Each of us reads some part aloud that’s just been handed to us, and then we talk about it.  Some appreciation of my reading is expressed by others, and yes it was fluent, and yes the guy’s got a pretty good voice (God given of course; so who could take a compliment on this personally in any case), but what’s going on that makes it listenable isn’t what most people would think it is.

How I Read Aloud, 1

       I have been blessed to have a pretty good speaking voice, but my enjoyment of and success at reading aloud has almost nothing to do with this.

       Yet people are all the time coming up to me and praising my voice as though that somehow contained the secret, as though that were the secret of my ability to read well.
 
       Maybe none of us quite has a look-in on each other's abilities and strengths; what we take as the knack or secret or ability is quite far afield from the real gift.


       In a sense the real gift is a deficiency.  I pretty much assume I don’t understand anything.  From the beginning, my reading aloud was an attempt to make out what was being said here.   The goal of getting things into my head, and sometimes into my bone and gristle, is what the reading aloud is usually about for me.

       And what I discover is, foraging through the language to try to “take” its meaning is what allows others to take the meaning, and often the coloring, and pleasure, and feeling, for themselves from my reading.  The voice is incidental.

Venice, Italy

       "The mere use of one's eyes in Venice is happiness enough."
                                    Henry James
                                    Italian Hours, 1873

       I remember asking a friend who'd been there, "What's so special about Venice?"  She responded, "Oh, my dear, it's an opera."  I knew I needn't ask more.  But I didn't really know what she or Henry James meant until Connie and I visited there.

Suburban Stonehenge

Click on photo to enlarge.

"Attention, mes éleves!"

       My post about Spanish words yesterday reminded me of something delightful while driving a road through deep forest in Southern Canada.

       Warning signs can take time to read, and you might miss their important content flying by in an automobile.  Not this one.  This one was a cutout; the whole sign was jigsawed into the clear, unambiguous shape of an elk, antlers included, easily identifiable and visible from either direction you were traveling and from either side of the road.

       And on both sides of the sign was a single word:  "Attention," which sufficed for both English and French, perfect for Canada, the whole being unmistakable in its meaning, visually and linguistically, in a single glance:  "Look out for elk on the road!"

"Olé!"/"Hola!"

       (Written last night.)

       I hope I don't do tomorrow at tennis what I did last Sunday.

       Every time my partner and I executed a winning point, I'd yell out "Hola!"  (Pronouncing it [ho-LAH].)  I didn't know what I was saying. 

       Sounded Spanish, of course, but I wasn't sure.

       AFTERWARDS.  I discovered the word I thought I was saying but wasn't: "Olé!" [o-LAY], which is Spanish for "Bravo!"

       And then I discovered the word I was saying last week, "Hola."  It is Spanish, but for "Hello!" which I shouted in triumph and self-congratulation; plus, the "h" is silent [o-LAH]!

       Now I know why they were snickering on the other side of the net.  They lost that set of tennis, but they had a laugh on me.  

Provocative sign: "Language Line"

       "Language line"--discovered on a wall near a nurses' station at Kaiser Hospital.  What's that?  Somewhere nearby, another phrase, "interpreter services available."

       Oh, a phone line to an interpreter to help translate, communicate with patients.

      But the phrase has other suggestions in it--"language line":  Wait in line to get a language?  Or "language line":   like clothes?  all of 'em hanging out to dry?

        

"Criminently"

       The word suddenly popped into my head yesterday.  I haven't thought of it for a long time.  Something from a children's book, Connie said.  Maybe a comic book, I thought, something Robin might have said to Batman:  "Criminently, Batman, that's one of the biggest thefts ever in Gotham!"

       Yes, a U.S. expression of annoyance or astonishment, but what did it come from?   Wiktionary says, "Probably formed by infixation of nonsense syllables into 'criminy'."  And "criminy"?  The OED says "crimine" or "criminy" is a late 17th century interjection which is an alteration of "Christ."

       I get it.  Discomfort at taking Christ's name in vein; so altering it into "criminy" and even more removed, and maybe sillier,  later into "criminently" (or "criminetly").

       Wiktionary cites Ray Bradbury and Tennessee Williams putting the word into characters' dialog.  [CRY-mihn-EHNT-ly]!  

Don't ask too many questions, Don.

       Sitting waiting for a blood pressure test today at the "Thrive" area of Kaiser Permanente, I looked up to see this hallway leading to what?




       I could barely discern the sign(?)  with letters through the doorway, and it looked like an optometry eye chart.  Oops, maybe I needed that test too.  The letters were a little blurry.  Could I read them?  "G..H..J..K...DEF"  But they were Conference Rooms!

       Then why didn't they put them in alphabetical order? 

"This early morn": a poem

       Last month my daughter Elizabeth celebrated her 50th birthday, and Connie and I sent a card with her natal photograph, also one taken at 50, and the following poem I wrote on her natal day:

                                        Are you blue eyed?
                                        Are you red haired?
                                        Are you whole and alive?
                                        Are you the nurse’s or mine?
                                        And what’s that chalk on arms?
                                        No crying?
                                        So complete and ready-made?
                                        Yet through suffering arrived,
                                        This early morn.
                                        That chin--it’s hers
                                        My wife’s and her whole family’s.
                                        Their chin and face.
                                        Am I in on this?
                                        Sire an offspring to my wife?
                                        It’s hers, not mine.
                                        And it’s a girl.
                                        I said it might be.
                                        But all that activity,
                                        Yet I said it might be,
                                        I suppose not believing it.
                                        Now, a girl, and hers, not mine,
                                        Yet alive, and whole,
                                        Maybe even beautiful
                                        Certainly not that ugly thing                                                I was told to expect
                                        But ours, yet ours--a girl,
                                        And ours.                                        

Bill Maher...in his Own Words?

       Connie and I watch and listen to Bill Maher "religiously" on HBO, though religion is a dirty word to Bill.

       But on the opening monolog of his most recent show Friday, February 28th, I caught Bill Maher in an ironic if not heinous phrase from his mouth.

       In reassuring us that Arizona had come up with another outlandish proposed law we would hardly credit, surprise inspections at abortion clinics, Bill said, "I swear to God."

       Bill, shame on your tongue to have uttered such a "believing word," Mr. Religulous.

Calder, 3: The words that capture the experience

"Little Face," 1962, 42 x 56 inches

     
       "But suddenly, when the agitation had left [the mobile] and it seemed lifeless again, its long, majestic tail, which until then had not moved, came to life indolently and almost regretfully, spun in the air and swept past my nose."

                              Jean-Paul Sartre, 1946

Calder, 2: "Hello Girls," "Three Quintains" (the words that title the picture)

(Please click on image to enlarge)

       "Three Quintains" is Calder's intended name for the work.  Note the three parts.  Previous post shows the main quintain alone.  Calder jokingly called the two black circles on top (semaphore-like) "Hello Girls" because they were added to be easily visible from the balcony dining area next to the pool.  LACMA thought Calder wanted that as name for the whole; a recent discovery revealed his true intentions.

       The word "quintain" dates to Ancient Rome, "fifth" street in Roman encampments, where military exercises were held.  In medieval times the word designated a crossbar on a post, able to turn, with a target on one end and a sandbag on the other, to train men on horseback for jousting.  The image is carried forth in Calder's colorful art work; here water jets and wind keep the mobile parts swinging interestingly, unpredictably.

Calder, 1: The picture worth a thousand words?

Click on Photo to Enlarge

Alexander Calder's fountain mobile, Los Angeles County Museum of Art

O, No. So Bad.

Diplomacy Begins with the Tongue

      Kind of glad to see L.A.'s new Mayor Garcetti speaking Spanish while visiting Mexico and doing a pretty good job of it from most accounts.

       Of course he had some lapses, not being a native speaker.  In one fairly notable instance, he was trying to say "the social fabric," and his Spanish made it fabrica social.  Unfortunately, el tejido social would have been correct.  What the Mayor uttered translates as "the social manufacturing plant."

       Writing for the L.A. times today, reporter Richard Fausset said:  "If Garcetti had been speaking French on a diplomatic mission to Paris, he might have been harangued--or even hanged--for his errors.  But Mexicans tend not to be such purists, and they have built up decades of tolerance for visitors from El Norte mangling their mother tongue."

Calder's Universe, and Einstein's

       I'm looking forward to seeing about my fifth Alexander Calder exhibit this coming Friday.

       LACMA curator Stephanie Barron noted in the L.A. Times this week that when Albert Einstein saw Calder's work in 1943 at MOMA, he "spent 45 minutes looking" at one mobile, watching it go through its total pattern of changes.

       Finally Einstein said, "I wish I had thought of that." 

Nostalgia Is Setting In...

Johnny Ray/Justin Timberlake, Take Note

       With Crimea and Ukraine in the scary news at this time,  my son David told me that there is indeed a place called "Crimea River."

Reigning Smart Phones

       Connie and I each purchased smart phones yesterday for the first time and learned that we're protected by the "cloud."

       In other words, the way I understand it, if everything we put into our phones evaporates somehow, we can still get it to rain down on us.

Creative Mishearing

                                       "The Way I Heard It"

       On the radio:

       "Prophylactics for birth control have come under the Catholic Church's condomnation."

Waiting to Emerge

Staring Down the Same Two Paths

       My wordplay cartoon here seems as relevant today as when it first appeared in the Wit, Wisdom, Words and Wonders calendar I produced 17 years ago:  Benjamin Netanyahu was Prime Minister of Israel then too.

Cartooning Blogger's Diptych

Oh, you bad, blogging cartoonist

And Tummy?

The one way of sliding down hill they didn't include in the Olympics:

          ski
             snowboard
                luge
                   bobsled
                      skeleton
              

 (Some countries call skeleton toboganing, but Olympic skeletons don't                   resemble the toboggans I grew up with in Minnesota.)

Beware: Word Cartoon

Hilburn and I must be brothers under the "s kin."  See yesterday's post.

Cartooning Blogger Once Again

      

The Indelible World Wide Web

       I woke up yesterday shocked to realize how many signs of me and my use of language are on the planet...due mainly to the internet.

       Currently I am heard both live and recorded on radio and online reading newspapers for the blind; I can be read, heard, and seen since 2012 and from now to perpetuity in this blog; and there are audio recordings of me that were made 65 years ago that are accessible to anyone anywhere in the world...at this minute!

       Yes, I acted in radio dramas for kids while in college.  Someone retained those broadcast recordings, and they're now online.  You can hear me as "Whitney the Neighborly Whale" narrating my whale story back in 1950 by clicking here.

        Consider:  you yourself may be leaving indelible marks you're hardly aware of!

The Cartooning Blogger Again

      

The Cartooning Blogger ("ellipses")

Poetry, the Most Compact Language

       Many have pointed out our need to be better listeners and more reluctant speakers than we are most of the time, and I have heard and read some eloquent language encouraging me to engage more fully and sensitively in what the world, others' thoughts, and my own inner voices have to say, to really listen.

       But today I heard Coleman Barks, the devoted advocate and translator of Rumi, give a line of the great Sufi poet that sums up all the other admonitions, gives their essence, and obviates the need for anything more:

                 "I should sell my tongue and buy a thousand ears."

Amtrak Voices on the Train

       A four hour Amtrak return trip today, different train announcement styles from ones I heard last Friday.   Those were more personal, in tune with our desires for better seats upstairs, etc., what to anticipate at the next stop, e.g., number of people expected to leave and enter the train.  The tones were direct and helpful.

       Today's voices were brisk, fast, routine.   Sometimes the tones were those bored--pay-no-attention-to-me-while-I-talk--deliveries airline attendants assume when reading safety procedures.

        My basic moral would be:  Remember you've got listeners to what you're saying; don't be perfunctory and arrogant!  Regular travelers can disregard if they want, but others could be your future customers.  Court that traveler; have in mind a person whose needs you are fulfilling with your words!

Without Words

      I am away from home for two or three days with Connie and with family we haven't seen in too long a time.  Words fail me today.  But the pleasure of being with others one is close to and spending joyful time, that does not fail me.

  

      

"Touch Me" by Stanley Kunitz

       I heard Stanley Kunitz doing this very reading of his poem at the Dodge Poetry Festival.  I hope you find it as moving as I did, and do.

"Forever Missed"

       New technologies serve new purposes.  Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall Street Journal wrote on "virtual gravestones" and "digital legacies."

       Fowler realized he himself stood in need of one of several such services that already exist.  He had a homeless friend without anyone else to take note of his passing.  Fowler found the best for himself and for his friend was a service called "Forever Missed."

       Paying a single fee of about $75.00, Fowler could establish a legacy with words that acknowledged the remembered friend's life, to be kept in perpetuity, to which one could return, which others who may have known him could visit and add their own reflections.

       A gravestone on high accessible to virtual visitation. 

The Letter-Fascinated Cartoonist

Click on Cartoon to Enlarge

       Looks like they might be a bit "JUMPY" at the hideout too.

"Cute" is Aphetic

       While looking for something else entirely in the dictionary today (of course), I came across the abbreviation "aphet.", had to look it up, found "aphetic" applied to words like "cute," which struck me as serendipitous since yesterday the word "cuter" appeared in my post, and I knew this had to be my post for today.

       Actually aphetic is a linguistic term, an adjective from the Greek meaning "letting go."  Vowels at the beginning of words tend to be lost over time.  This is what happened to the word "acute" in the sense "keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd," also the original meaning of "cute."  Gradually cute became a term of approval for someone with those qualities, and thence to its own sense of "attractive, fetching."

       Cute not only "let go" of a vowel, but its own original meaning!

WORDS in Art?

Barbara Kruger's towering black-and-white text now dominates the lobby of the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles.

       I've been puzzling what to make of Barbara Kruger's use of language in her art for a good number of years.

       That "YOU" you're looking at (click on image to enlarge it) says, "You are here to get cultured.  To get smarter, richer, younger, angrier, funnier, skinnier, hipper, hotter, wiser, weirder, cuter, and kinder."

       It made me chuckle and smile at some of those words.  And the culture you'll gain at a museum consists of that wide a range of possibilities?  Includes things that are personally desirable to me, and feelings and wishes and curiosity and emotions I've had or suppressed, not just what's way outside my body and life?

       Is she saying the whole world, including ME, is in art, and art can even include huge words to help remind me of that!? 

Speak to Me in Snowboarding

       Reminded me of the strange lingo in other specialized activities, other sports like figure skating, yes, but other crafts as well, like ceramics.  Where did they get those names for things?  Out of the air, out of deference to the guy or country who created the move, out of plain descriptive ardor.

       Sage Kotsenburg won the Olympics in slopestyle snowboarding with his "Backside Double Cork 1620 Japan," chosen impetuously just before his last run because, as his brother advised him, "Why not?"

       And to top it off, do anybody but wild American youth toss around terms of joy like "down for it," "I'm stoked," "coolest thing," "that is sick."

       ALL in the spirit of "Why do we climb mountains?   Because they're there."  And with  meticulous devotion to techniques (and fun!) that'll get the job done.

"international artists"

       I recently saw mentioned a group of singers named

                    "international artists so-called."

I thought it was funny, a satirical jibe that hit a nerve for some performers (and maybe other artists).

       I've had the feeling from time to time that a performer was staking a claim that was fudging the truth.  Had a U.S. citizen stepped across the Canadian border one day and asked a couple strangers to appraise him as he sang a few notes, their approval and smiles sealing (for him) his "international reputation"?

       So it is a good joke to form a group that takes on the title officially (uncapitalized), thumbing its collective nose at pretension, in effect saying, "come listen to us for the music."

       I can't find the group online,  but if they ever appear near me, I'm going.

"Shtick"

        President Obama tonight used the word "shtick" in response to a question asked him on TV about President Putin just before the opening ceremonies at the Russian Olympics.

       Obama said the "bored," "tough guy" face Putin often had in public was part of his "shtick."  Interesting to me that a black American leader would use about a white Russian leader a term I grew up with as Jewish "ghetto" language.  It's pure Yiddish.

       The etymology is "piece" or "bit," and shtick traces to Middle and Old High German.  It's defined as "a show-business routine, gimmick, or gag" or "a characteristic attribute, talent, or trait that is helpful in securing recognition or attention" to cite Merriam-Webster and American Heritage Dictionary respectively. 

       Putin's face is a "put-on," a shtick, says Obama.

"tWITter"

       I don't do Twitter, but I was pleased to read some tweets on the way polite, laid back, Seattle tore up the town after their huge first Super Bowl victory.  The L.A. Times reported there had been "a few torched sofas, a damaged historic building, maybe half a dozen arrests."

       A hashtag (#How Seattle Riots) produced these gems: "Throw garbage in the compost-only bin."  "The Priuses are honking."  "Wearing sandals without your socks."

       It does tend to prove that brevity is the soul of wit.

      

Proofreader's Emendation

       Reading today's newspaper over the air, as I do every other Wednesday for the blind and print-impaired, I came across this sentence:  "Upon taking the helm at Microsoft, Nadella instantly becomes one of the most influential Indian business leaders in the..." the next word was "word," but I recognized it must be "world" and changed it on the spot before the mistake got out of my mouth and into the listener's ear.

       We've heard of "proofreader's error" when  a proofreader just doesn't notice a missing letter because the mind knew what should be there and filled it in (and spell-check can't catch this kind of error), so the mistake goes by and is permitted.  What shall I call what I did to restore the missing letter?

       I'm calling it "proofreader's [spell-check's?] emendation." 

"Enthuse"

       Film composer James Broughton's composition was nominated for this year's Academy Awards and then disqualified.  Some Academy rule was broken.

       The music is for a religious film, and what interested me was that the film will have a wider release in June from "Enthuse Entertainment."  "Enthuse" may not sound like a word with religious connotations, but I'm sure the company knows its etymology.

       Entheos is the Greek adjective meaning "having the god within," "possessed or inspired by a god" and is the root of our noun "enthusiasm" and verb "enthuse."  Enthusiasm is now pretty thoroughly secularized, and neither the gods of the Greeks nor the God of Jews, Christians, and Muslims is apparent.

       Fervor is still at the heart of it, however.  So forgive me if I enthuse over English's Greek linguistic heritage.

The Consonantal Divide, 6

       After crossing several consonants,  here's a reward.  You deserve it.

       Just put together a couple of the sounds we've been dealing with, and you’ll be there.  Give me a panting [h] and give me the second vowel sound in [w], i.e. “uh.”  You've got “huh.”  Say it out loud.
 
       Now string out 5 of them going up the scale:

                                        huh
                                huh
                        huh
                huh
        huh

       And string out five going down:

        huh
                huh
                        huh
                                huh
                                        huh

       Good.  Once more now.  First up, then down.
 
       Now collapse the “huh”s together more closely and speed it up; then do it all in one breath.

       I hope you’re starting to have a good laugh!

The Consonantal Divide, 5

       We've been talking about the strange characteristics of the consonants "w," "h," and "y."  But put  them all in the same word "why," and they surprise again.

       The phonetic symbol for the first two letters in this word is an upside down “h”.  And why is this?  Because the first part of the sound for these two letters is [h], not [w].  To say “why” properly, you first say [h] (the pant), and then [w], just the opposite order of the letters in the word.  And of course the “y” at the end here is pronounced as a long “i”, as in the personal pronoun “I,” not the “ih” of “yes.”

       You may be tired of traveling this trans-consonantal highway; so tomorrow I'll give you a laugh.