Wishbone Soup Cures Everything

Zeugma (as explained by the Collins online dictionary) ‘noun: a figure of speech in which a word is used to modify or govern two or more words although appropriate to only one of them or making a different sense with each, as in the sentence Mr. Pickwick took his hat and his leave (Charles Dickens)’ Dickens loved to turn such a phrase, Alexander Pope was prone also: ‘Here Thou, great Anna! whom three Realms obey, Dost sometimes Counsel take – and sometimes Tea.’ And Shakespeare, and The Bible, and more. Used as appropriate to only one word as in ‘weeping eyes and hearts’ it strays (I think) into metaphor territory, some of it fantastically comic; potentially bombastic, pathetic, overdone. In good writing, amazing, in bad writing, a great deal of unintended entertainment. Old pulp fiction is a fine source. Alas, the best example I ever had was tragically lost in a kitchen swamping some years ago - I forget the title but this sentence ‘I felt a sitting duck’ has st...

Me with my first yoga teacher, my Mum. Here we are up a mountain, typical us :-) Word History: The word yoga comes from Sanskrit yogaḥ, "yoking, joining together" and by extension "harnessing of one's mental faculties to a purpose" and thus "yoga." The Sanskrit word descends from the Indo-European root *yeug-, "to join, yoke." In the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family, *yeug- developed into yuk-, represented in Old English by geoc, the ancestor of Modern English yoke. The root *yeug- is continued by words in most of the branches of the Indo-European language family, which indicates that the speakers of Proto-Indo-European used draft animals to pull their plows and draw their wagons. [American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.] ‘Whoever desires whatever ob...

Xanthippe is by legend a nagging wife. Her contemporaries do not report this. Her husband, Socrates, is given words that when I read them stand as admirably commemorative: "None of your soft-mouthed, docile animals for me, the horse for me to own must show some spirit" (Her name means Yellow Horse.) It is said that once she followed up loud words by upending a chamber pot over the head of Socrates, to which he remarked, ‘after thunder comes the rain.’ It seems to me that this was a lively household: two strong minded parents, three young sons. (The chamberpot in other accounts is merely ‘washing water.’) I like the stride of the Yellow Horse, and catch a glint of amusement in those imagined eyes.

W was the letter I would have featured yesterday- Were I so inclined- What was it that I was doing? It was Monday so: One adventure before breakfast (in the Dead Tree Field, an unexpected lake, ice shadows, an outpost of Badgerland) One grandchild was here, for her second breakfast, to draw a face for a scarecrow, to plant melons and snail shells, to mispronounce windmills (minnedwills, millwynds, whealmills, windmiles). ‘Snail shells, do they grow into flowers?’ ‘Nooo, Granma, it makes a tree!’  

I loathe crosswords. This no one expects, because I love words. But if you want to share a word with me why be oblique? I don’t want clues, I’d like to know what word and why you are bringing it to my attention. That it intersects with other words does not inspire. But I do love playing with words. So my new word game hobby is vandalising a book. Not any book, just one I found in the ‘3 for £1’ box at Launceston’s secondhand book store. It has no date in it, but the story is set at the end of the First World War, the binding looks suitably shabby-chic, the paper is impressively thick, it suggests something put together in the 1930s. (Wikipedia says this novel came out in 1923.) Scandalous to mess with it, as an object. But as I found the story objectionable, the ending depressing, the writing imbued with racism and anti-Semitism, I decided to change its history. The game is to find in each page a set of words and/or phrases that form a pleasing flow, then cover over the re...

Un- the prefix of rejection. Bold. Untouchable. Up- the prefix of raising up. Celebratory. Upbeat. One of these I would have chosen for today's U themed topic... I did not choose anything but walking out with dogs, once in the pale early sun, when the hedge flowers were half open, as though colour had just been invented, was making a shy start. Once in a fine moorland mist, as though colour had been a mistake, and rubbed out, to start again, perhaps with metallics? Or tones of mud? Undecided. Uproarious.

Every moment is not meant to be neatly sketched. Details are best daubed. Grab any size of brush any way you please. Mix colour. Don’t mix. Express bold, hide in shade. Put your head in the pot, if you like.  All of the pictures ever created, stitched like patchwork, still make only one sliver of eternity. What of all this would ever matter? If everything is not simply transient but lost in vastness? What is it that you feel; closed eyes, open in mind, in soul?