FLUENCY

CONVERSATIONS with a Hypoxic Dog (CwHD) is now entitled WHIMSY. This is still a weblog about words and language and other inanities. CwHD began May 1, 2017. All posts are available in the Archives. The Bookstore opened in July, 2017, providing an overview of my published work. Essays are published monthly. More or less.

Archaic words are those terms which were once used commonly in a language, but which are now rarely used. They constitute a slow eddy, a back water, a stagnant pool in the stream of sound and image that is language. A synonym for archaic is antiquated which means characteristic of an earlier or more primitive time. Take primitive with a grain of salt. Homo sapiens today are no more evolved than the cave painters of Altamira. Evolution, like the water cycle, does not work towards perfection, only towards efficacy. And the same can be said for language.

The internet has a plethora of sites that list archaic words. Cheyne is such a word. Meaning? Pronunciation To read Shakespeare these days one must be well versed in archaic language. Both words and rhythms have changed over time.

Fools had ne'er less wit in a year;

For wise men have grown foppish,

They know not how their wits to wear,

Their manners are so apish.

(King Lear, Act I, Scene IV)

Not only is his language Elizabethan (17th century), but he also relished the words and phrases from the middle ages (roughly 1000 to 1500 CE). The Canterbury Tales (1387) provides a plethora of tasty verbiage; and the Tales are well worth a read. Cheyne is used in the following quote from Chaucer, and context provides ample clues to its meaning.

For with that faire cheyne of love he bond
The fyr, the eyr, the water, and the lond
In certeyn boundes, that they may nat flee.
(The Canterbury Tales

The Knight’s Tale, 2987–2993)

Vintage literature is not the only reason to be well versed in archaic words and phrases. To read history with some degree of understanding requires a knowledge of the language used during the period in question. 'Unique,' for example, no longer means unique. And, of course, the classic aphorism of Spanish philosopher George Santayana still applies:Those who do not read history are condemned to repeat it.

Use over time for the word 'plethora.'

Languages, like all concepts, have a flow to their pattern of development, their use, their misuse, their demise. The above might be described as a flow chart. This is but one of many ways to use the concept of flow to describe words and language. 'Plethora' seems to have made a comeback of late.

Flow theory, created by a somewhat obscure Hungarian professor of psychology, states rather baldly that humans are most content when they are in a state of flow; and flow is described as a state of mind which entails complete absorption in the task at hand. The state is further marked by intrinsic motivation and complete immersion. All else becomes lost to consciousness in these moments.

Language itself is fluent when the metered rhythm of the words matches both the measured syntax of sentences and the logical order of paragraphs. Once flow is established, various techniques can be used to emphasize content. Staccato delivery might be used to emphasize specific words (the hard boiled detective grilling a suspect; the emotional orator pushing an argument). Words with multiple syllables are often relied on to suggest the writer's or speaker's erudition. And space --- the long pause (look back at comedian Jack Benny) or blank in the middle or between paragraphs (common poetical device) --- is often used to change the flow of language.

When one has thoroughly learned a language, one is said to be fluent. Without an understanding of how languages evolve from origin to ending, fluency will be difficult. Non-native speakers prove the point. Even basic literacy will be compromised without some knowledge of both the old and the new and the rhythms of each. Who'd a thunk it. LOL.

NOTES:
Fluency has many definitions most of which pertain to reading and speaking well. The word simply means to flow.

Here is Santayana again:

... the whole machinery of our intelligence, our general ideas and laws, fixed and external objects, principle persons and gods, are so many symbolic, algebraic expressions. They stand for experience; experience which we are incapable of retaining and surveying in its multitudinous immediacy. We should flounder hopelessly, like the animals, did we not keep ourselves afloat and direct our course by these intellectual devices. Theory helps us to bear our ignorance of fact.

The Sense Of Beauty (1896), Pt. III, Form; § 30: p. 125

And click on the name to learn more about Mihály Csíkszentmihályi.

RUBBLE

A song by Blind Alfred Reed (1880 - 1956) and performed by Willie Watson raises questions with no easy answers. Are we our brother's keeper? And is the concern for our brothers and sisters (lions and lambs? Trees? That rock you stubbed your toe on?) relative or absolute? Do we help this one, but not that one? Her but not him? Us but not them? Eeeny meeny miny moe.

Maestro, cue up the song. We'll have a listen. See what we think.

Watson, 'Always Lift Him Up'
(click photo to listen)

We live in interesting times. Old folks, goes one suggestion, have become expendable. The president of the united states (lower case intentional: he could use the humility) is at best an ignorant thug. A pestilence lives next door.

A poet's task is to reflect in metered words and phrases the tenor of the times. William Butler Yeats wrote "The Second Coming" in 1919. The first world war had just ended. The so-called Spanish flu had killed more than 20,000,000 people. Grim times.

Yeats was a notorious rewriter. The version of his poem below is from 1921 as it appeared in the Dial Magazine. What follows Yeats' poem is a bit of annotation. The poem has suffered pillaging for decades, from a Joan Didion essay to an obscure rock band's title song. A Paris Review article suggests the words and phrases of this poem are the most used and abused --- few, apparently, understand Yeats' meaning and many disregard his context --- in the English language.

The Second Coming

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand;

Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out

When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi

Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert

A shape with lion body and the head of a man,

A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun,

Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it

Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know

That twenty centuries of stony sleep

Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,

And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Spiritus Mundi translates as the spirit of the world. The phrase, according to most philosophies, is used to mean that all living things on the planet are interconnected. Intrinsically. Innately. Plato fostered this notion, and it was an important component of most Neoplatonic philosophies both East and West. John Donne's poem, 'No Man Is an Island' (published 1624), uses this idea as its theme.

Some think even the broad scope of Spiritus Mundi is short sighted. Is inorganic matter without spirit? And what of other celestial bodies? What of the Universe itself? A long walk off a short pier, this business. Enough, perhaps, to simply consider the beast who slouches next door. What of him? Or her? Or them?

In “The Waste Land”, published in 1922, T.S. Eliot has a poem that captures the same atmosphere of impending doom as the Yeats' work. His opening stanza is entitled 'The Burial Of The Dead'. Eliot, however, chose to end on a somewhat enigmatic, yet, essentially positive note. The end of stanza 5:

These fragments I have shored against the ruins

Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's man againe.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

The meaning of the Sanskrit 'da' words can be rendered as charity, empathy, self-control. The meaning of shantih is peace beyond understanding, and is the usual conclusion of the Indian philosophical Upanishads. Eliot has said that he used difficult allusions and Sanskrit incantations to make things difficult for his readers. If a line is hard to understand, if meaning must be worked for, then the thought will be better appreciated. Or so thought Eliot.

Intellectual hurdles or no, is our dilemma resolved, our questions answered? Perhaps. Maybe. Charity, empathy and self-control are fine virtues difficult to obtain. But what they offer one's brothers and sisters and dogs and cats is not always what is wanted or needed. Alas, alack. And peace beyond understanding? That 'beyond understanding' does put the wrench in the works. That which is beyond understanding is also beyond words and language. Doesn't leave much. Inanity perhaps. How whimsical.

So: Our brother's keeper? The ceremony of innocence is some long time dead and drowned. “We are all murders and prostitutes.” Which is to say that folks living in the proverbial glass house shouldn't cast aspersions. Or, conversely, lifting others, lifts yourself.

Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.

Shantih shantih shantih

NOTES:

Plato, in Timaeus, wrote:

Therefore, we may consequently state that: this world is indeed a living being endowed with a soul and intelligence ... a single visible living entity containing all other living entities, which by their nature are all related.

R. D. Laing, from his book The Politics of Experience, 1967.

WHIMSY

Whimsy, by definition, is a whim, freak, or caprice; but this definition does not take one to the heart of the matter. Whim, on the other hand, provides four meanings as a noun and two more as a verb, one intransitive, one transitive. I am not referring here to the ornithological whim which is but another local name for the wigeon.

whim, noun:

1. A pun; double-meaning.

2. A sudden turn or start of the mind; a capricious notion; a humor; caprice; fancy.

3. A fanciful or fantastic device, object, or person.

4. Any of various machines for hoisting.

Let us forego the fourth definition (at least until we are hoisted on our own petard); and put aside the verbal usage as well. Whims and to whim are rather rare these days. 'A sudden turn of the mind' suits my purpose best; but note that the word seems to range widely from madness and mayhem to joyful meandering. Behind the freak lies chaos; bolstering the joy lies wholesomeness. I have written elsewhere that wholesome and integral seem synonymous to me; and so, too, the words wholesomeness and integrity.

The etymology of the word whim places its origin in the Scandinavian languages. In Norway, kvim is foolery, as in our Tom Foolery, acting the fool, pretending to be mad. In Denmark, vimse means to be giddy, skip or whisk about. A selection of synonyms for whimsy gives some idea of the range of the word:

bee, caprice, crank, fancy, freak, humor, kink, maggot, megrim, notion, vagary, vagrancy

This brief introduction is necessary to support my notion that making a decision is, for the most part, a whimsical endeavor. Deciding, of course, is an integral part of all behavior; so that one might conclude that most of human behavior is, well, freakish or fanciful. Think not? And just how did you come to that decision? Make a list, did you? Pro and con and what-have-you. Enumerated this and that, skipping about until giddy; then, finally, pulling the trigger. Deciding.

This business of decision is a function of one's mind, and can be lumped under the general rubric of problem solving. Just how one goes about solving problems is not well understood by neurologists, psychologists, or the fellow down the block. While it is a myth that one only uses 10% of the brain, the fact remains that homo sapiens only understand about 10% of the brain's function.¹

How problem solving actually comes about falls largely into that cloudy 90% area of confusion. Einstein, when confronted with the abstruse, use to go for a ride on his bike. "Intuition is a sacred gift," he said. Intuition. "The rational mind is a faithful servant." Reason. I would have added '... but a faithful servant ...' The intention is to downgrade reason from all-powerful to merely another tool, blunt though I find it, to shape one's thoughts. Trying to decide whether to fish or cut bait, for example, is a common metaphoric conundrum that rarely succumbs to reason. Listing pros and cons is enlisting the aid of that faithful servant, reasoning. This method will barely get you to the door; but allowing intuition to have its say (how is that done, you ask? How much time do you have?) is receiving the gift. Wham, bam, the door slams open. Decision made. Problem solved. Why didn't I think of that! A bit whimsical, this business, don't you think?

If you are struggling with your intuition, not hearing those little voices, it should come as no surprise. All of modern society from public schools to corporate management, from parenting to politicking, is a wet blanket thrown over intuition to keep it down. If not used, one loses the knack.

You get your intuition back when you make space for it, when you stop the chattering of the rational mind. The rational mind doesn’t nourish you. You assume that it gives you the truth, because the rational mind is the golden calf that this culture worships, but this is not true. Rationality squeezes out much that is rich and juicy and fascinating.

Anne Lamott

And from 1500 years ago, while the Greeks were poisoning the well of Thought with reason, Chinese mystics were telling stories like 'The Empty Cup.' Many versions of the story exist. Here is mine:

The Magistrate went to the Master seeking advice on the latest outbreak of lawlessness. The Master bade him sit and prepared tea. "The District is all higgledy-piggledy," the man said. "I have done all I can, and am now at an impasse. What should I do? What can I do?"" He wrung his hands in agitation. Sweat beaded across the man's broad forehead.

When tea was steeped and stirred, the Master placed a cup before the portly Magistrate. He began to pour. As his guest looked on, the cup filled. The Magistrate became increasingly anxious. The Master poured. As the cup overflowed, spilling over the table and running off into the man's lap, he pushed himself up with an oath. "Fool," he cried. "What are you playing at?" The Master merely nodded his head. "Just so," he said. "Like this cup, you are much too full of yourself. Emptiness must precede wisdom."

A mind replete with facts, opinions, anecdotes, and preconceived notions, will fail to recognize wisdom. Every time. Such a man with such a mind will not even accept the mildest piece of advice, or the most gentle rebuke. He is lost in the hurly-burly of his mind.

Whimsy, I would suggest, is the function of an empty head. And the back side of whimsy is ... wisdom.

DID YOU KNOW?

A petard is a bomb, and to be hoisted by one is to be blown up. Shakespeare coined the phrase '...hoisted with his own petard...' for Hamlet, and it has since become something of a cliché.

Anne Lamott is a writer, educator, and political activist from northern California.

1https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/do-people-only-use-10-percent-of-their-brains/

JOHN PRINE

Toss One Down For John Prine

The response to the hospitalization of singer-songwriter John Prine has been startling in its size and support. The man has come a long way since his debut album in 1971. I still have that album. Listened to it yesterday. What follows is my two bits worth.

Webb Chiles is 78 years old. His weblog of March 30 had this:

An article in the NY TIMES yesterday on medical ethics confirmed what I expected:  I am expendable.  If decisions have to be made between giving medical treatment to some and not others, the criteria are likely to be who has the best chance of survival and who likely has the most years left.  I agree entirely.  Quality of life cannot be measured; quantity can.  Those of us who have lived as long as I have had a life.  Twenty year olds have not.  So it is incumbent on me to avoid being in the situation where others have the power to make that decision about me.  That is not entirely in my control,  but I am going to do what I can.

http://self-portraitinthepresentseajournal.blogspot.com/

I, too, am an old man; and I agree.

John Prine is 73 years old. Though he, too, is expendable, doctors are working hard to keep the man alive. He remains, as of yesterday, in critical condition. His first album appeared in 1971; his latest, 'Tree Of Forgiveness', just last year. His songs have made me laugh and cry, provided needed perspective, provoked thought, and inspired my own creativity.

Yesterday afternoon, I cued up 'John Prine' on my turntable, poured a couple of fingers of Green Spot, and sat down to have a listen. All the songs, though nearly 50 years old, are worth hearing. Two songs struck me as more relevant now than when they were written. Links to both are added below. The third song, 'Please Don't Bury Me', is something of a novelty tune. Good for a laugh. John has an active sense of humor, and likes to make me people laugh. The song is good for much more than just a laugh, though, if you think about it. What better way to consider one's mortality? nd, of course, maintaining a sense of humor is a key ingredient in any survival situation.

The song's fifth stanza could well serve as Prine's epithet:

Please don't bury me down in that cold, cold ground.

No, I'd rather have them cut me up and pass me all around ...

That 'passing around' ends with this:

... send my mouth way down south and kiss my ass good by

No better way to pass the time then listening to John Prine.

Hello In There

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVhA01J0Zsg

Flashback Blues

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H332qsXz2k8

           

Please Don't Bury Me

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEhqzOeJnto

One more time, a live version of old JP singer 'Please Don't Bury Me'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGCi5LUJRnY

SLACK WATER

CONVERSATIONS with a Hypoxic Dog (CwHD) is a weblog about words and language and other inanities. CwHD began May 1, 2017. The Bookstore opened in July, 2017, providing an overview of my published work. Print and ebook copies are available at my publishing website, majikwoids. A link is provided to these sites below and in the sidebar.

Visit majikwoids for editorial services, free reads and my latest stories.

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CwHD 92

(A glossary of archaic or uncommon words is added at the end of the essay.)

Slack Water and the Crinoids of Chomolungma

For all of us, mountains turn into images after a short time and the images turn true. Gold-tossed waves change into the purple backs of monsters, and so forth. Always something out of the moving deep, and nearly always oceanic.¹

Can buoys, green in color, six to nine feet in diameter, as tall as twenty feet, can weigh several tons. The Owner had decided to follow the green cans across the bar and stood by the forward shrouds directing traffic. The Cabin Boy, Mozzo by name, manned the helm. The two men might have been friends ...

A four or five foot swell, rather benign, provided a bit of spice. The boat, a 41 foot ketch designed by William Garden, wallowed about, struggling up the steep face of wind waves, motoring, slamming into troughs, the tide making. The boat, stuffed to bursting with the Owner's toys, was taking him, his dog, and his family on vacation. Mozzo and the dog had come along for the first part of the journey, delivering the boat to Victoria where the family would join the Owner. The family, apparently, wanted no part of the voyage up the coast.

The helm was sluggish, and Mozzo, in his inexperience, became anxious. Just off Peacock Spit, the Owner suddenly thrust out his right arm, pointing, and yelled, “Turn.” The dog, a Norwegian elkhound, barked.

Mozzo cranked the wheel to the right.

“The other way,” screamed the Owner, arms waving. The dog stood on the gunnel peering over the combing. He looked at Mozzo and barked. Twice.

And so Mozzo cranked the wheel back the other way. The Owner had pointed at the green can buoy coming just a whisker off their bow. Mozzo saw it then, close to, bobbing down the starboard side, a near miss. Not the most auspicious start to the voyage.

Three miles out, ten miles up the coast, still motoring, the ketch decided it had had enough and stopped. The sudden quiet was unnerving. They drifted a bit. Mozzo suggested sails, but with little or no wind the suggestion was ill received. Besides, the sails had not been out of their covers in years. The Owner motored; he chose not to sail.

Mozzo sat at the lifeless helm watching the Washington coast bob up and down. Willapa Bay, he reckoned, off there to starboard. Japan, off there to port. The Owner on his hands and knees down below, cursing, as he tinkered with fuel lines and filters; but the ketch adamantly refused to cooperate. The dog sat on the stern sheets watching gulls lift and turn and mewl. They drifted.

“Call the Coast Guard,” suggested Mozzo.

“Shut up,” retorted the Owner.

Time passed. The Long Beach peninsula continued its up and down, the purple hills beyond provided a backdrop at once maudlin and sublime. The mizzen boom rolled to starboard then back to port, giving the winches a good bang each time. Though frustrated with the failure of his motor, untoward anxiety, edginess, also marked the Owner's face. He cursed. A box wrench was flung through the companionway into the gentle heave of sea. The boom swung to port. The boom swung back. Thump.

The dog went below. He hopped onto the settee, sat and considered the Owner.

"What?" said the Owner.

The dog turned and curled up in the corner. He sighed.

Damn it, yelled the Owner.

Raised eyebrows from Mozzo. Definitely out of sorts, he thought. More than the situation warranted. He wondered, knowing the fellow's history, what goodies might be stashed aboard. Did he fear having the federales on board?

Reluctantly, the Owner called the Coast Guard for assistance. They waited in silence. The dog slept. The Coast Guard arrived, a stout line looped the ketch's samson post and off they went. They crossed back over the bar which was, of course, a milk pond. Mozzo thought he might easily canoe this glassy expanse. Well timed, this rescue. Slack water.

Trail Dog

Between ebb and flow is slack. Not always a milk pond, but usually quite benign. For the businessman, slack is a slow period. For a climber, a loose bit of rope. Also, the dictionary tells us, the word suggests negligence. The link below is to a video that is not about ocean, but about ocean's obverse which is mountain. The Euclidean perspective (a hairball best left to mathematicians, but useful in this context) suggests that all space is unique yet comparable. Its otherness lies in its nature.² Many mountains were once sea floor; much of the seafloor was once mountains.

Slack features prominently in the short film. The contention made in "Trail Dog" that happiness is beyond good and guilt is almost so. Almost. But beyond happiness and its opposite,which is sorrow, beyond all dualities, is what I chose to label Slack Water. Slack Water is a place as well as a state of mind. It is where animals---dogs and cats, deer and whales---live. That is, if the animal in question has not been too domesticated. Slack Water is what humans---especially those who are out of sorts---seek. Slack water, to all who know the tides, gives a tangible image for an abstract concept.

No words can adequately describe that which is beyond all dualities. The term offered here merely suggests the complete integration that lies beyond concepts. The film linked below is narrated, and the words are well written and compliment the images equally well. But it is the images themselves which tell the story. The Runner and his friends are beyond mischief, happiness, dancing Slack Water.

A story is one medium for explicating the difficulties of concepts. A film is able to provide visual information to fill in the blanks. Ultimately, humans, with their limited ability to see beyond the end of their noses, must be moved by some epiphanic occurrence and then expand themselves, physically and mentally, to find Slack Water, and so become their obverse.

Watch Video at:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=05sUhlxFBk0

Glossary

Chomolungma, Tibetan name for Mt Everest (K15)

crinoids, marine fossils some of which can be found on the summit of Chomolungma. See website linked here ( https://www.volcanocafe.org/fossils-of-mount-everest/ ) for more information

epiphantic, an intuitive perception or insight, usually unexpected, into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually triggered by some commonplace occurrence or experience.

obverse, the counterpart of a fact or truth.

1Norman Maclean, A River Runs Through It (The University of Chicago Press, Chicago and London, 1976), 144.

2The tallest mountain on the planet is Mauna Kea, Hawaii, at 33,000 feet from its underwater base to its summit.