Dilatory Days

That's better as a phrase than Salad Days, no? Of all we have to thank Shakespeare for, I completely despise him for that combination of words. There is no real reason for my disgust. I like salad. I enjoy days. I find the combination unequal to its meaning.

Dilatory Days, that's something I can stand behind. When I get around to standing behind things, or for things, or on things, or even occasionally by things. Now I procrastinate, of course, but only in the habitual sense, not the intentional sense. I'd most enjoy the time to write Are Go posts all day and of course all damn night. Writing about language is my backgammon, my mojito, my devil with a blue dress. Cicero would likely put me with the Greeklings (his term), those who write about doing something instead of doing it. Fine, fair enough. But I still have my voice. I'm waiting for that comeback, Marcus Tullius...what, Roman mob got your tongue?

This is a minor post on a tiny blog. Its purpose is to resuscitate interest in my uncommon words, to leave a fingerprint in martian soil, you know, just in case lives to come that are beyond our language will know that we tried.

Minatory Song

When I rip down this wall, you will fall.

The age of smugness ends tonight. I am the finisher of your epoch. I will not so much destroy you as I will atomize your existence. You will not so much regret the things you've done as you will feel sorrow for the stories your family will tell about your demise after you're gone.

Tick tock, click clock, your luck is fucked.

These threats are not idle or even exaggerated. There is a way that quiet people explode with an aggrevation only understood on a scientific scale. Souls expand and contract in equal ways over the course of a lifetime. Some fluxuate on minute intervals. Some change with the moon cycles. I've been holding this for my life, and the reaction will alter it permanently.

I'm not writing this to warn you. You already know I'm coming for you. These words are like the word Ambulance written on an ambulance. I just want you to know your power and influence: as your life gets worse, the world gets better. Now.

You Change All the Lead [Sadness of a friend]

Sadness of a friend, no isolation is so external.
To be so far, to share the same infinitive sky.
A life
of parentheses disengages,
leaving a single period on a white sheet.

This ink, this blood, these images
among concomitant friends and beautiful horizons,
echoes in my intellect, one body movement from a far lake or, less easily,
a flashlight against a daylit night sky.
These stars are different down here. Everything is different,
what this is, and what this is not.

A hug from the near-dead, a picture of the forgotten,
a richly colored sky on the day we are born.
A compliment from a stranger, a tree branch in reach,
so changes the sadness, so changes the friendship.

Untouched skin, unwatched planets, the core of Gaea's pubis
from which smooth and wondrous paths venture out
before calling back in the grammar of ancients.

My pulse fuels this constant fire, an approaching blaze.
My ink learns. My church burns.
Do you? Light as the biggest cloud, thick as a moan.
With an indication of all existence, you connect with me,
A single, perfect lily placed deep, deep, within my now perfect soul.

Etymologitastic: Caterpillar

So. I was recently called out for laziness with words. A good friend of mine writes an English language newsletter published for writers that do not use it as a first language. She has a splendid section devoted to etymology. I decided to be her inspiration: "Hey, what's the story with 'nick of time'?" "Hey, what's the origin of 'state of the art'?" "Yo, what's the story with 'checkers'?" In her splendid way, she informed me of Google. So.

Time for my own work on my own interests in this area. Still lazily, here's my first go. Completely from one entry from Google.

So:

Latin *catta pilosa means "hairy cat." "Catta" gives us modern English "cat" and "pilosus" is from "pilus" hair, giving us pile in carpets. That caterpillars should resemble cats in any way may be surprising, but note other names used to describe them - "pussmoth" and "woolly bear." (English Etymologies)

First

Every new writing should be like the first run. The activities, both core to our identity as living beings, should share in the same endorphins, that same exhiliration of doing it again after a tragic pause. That same welcome pain. That slowness. That assessment, after months of avoidance, of what is wrong in our lives.

Despite my earlier words, a difference: one is for ourselves, the other for the widest possible audience. Strangely, it's the latter through which we are more selfish, less important, and completely human.