Month: July 2013

Village vacancies

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They don’t make idiots like they used to. Once upon a long, long ago, in the late 1400s, an idiot was an ordinary person who lacked an education, someone without professional training, a layman in the church, or simply a private person. Clearly, idiocy was nothing to be ashamed of, and during the day the word hobnobbed with people like the author of the alliterative, allegorical poem Piers Plowman (who may or may not have been William Langland) and John Wycliffe who along with others translated the Bible into Middle English.

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After a hard day of being charitable, however, the word would head to the nearest pub, have a few pints, and start calling everyone in sight a fool. That’s how Chaucer uses the word in the Wife of Bath’s prologue in The Canterbury Tales. Chaucer and others used the word idiot both in this sense and in the sense of being mentally challenged. These three meanings were used concurrently until the end of the 17th century when the kinder meaning moved out of town. From that time on, the number of self-proclaimed idiots decreased dramatically, until the advent of the Internet and YouTube.

 

From the beginning, the word worked as both noun and adjective. The highly quotable Victorian poet, Lord Tennyson, verbified it in the phrase “Much befool’d and idioted.” I rather like it as a verb because it expresses the feeling I get from my fellow-drivers who have an inordinate interest in my bumper and try to inspect it while traveling 60 mph or who pull in front of me, curious to know whether or not my brakes still work. After any time on the road, I come home feeling idioted out.

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I don’t consider myself an idiot driver; my skills in idiocy lie more in the why-did-I-wait-until-now-to-do-what-is-due-today type of situation, or the you-already-know-what-your-foot-tastes-like-so-why-do-you-keep-putting-it-in-your-mouth situation. Plenty of people have these problems, but the wise ones keep quiet about them. The others, like me, create blogs and wander around the Internet village broadcasting their idiocy. I am a private person by nature and back in the Middle Ages would probably have been called an idiot by my friends. At this point in my life I am advancing beyond my own middle age, wandering around the Internet village, unashamed, speaking to strangers and telling my secrets. Every village needs an idiot or two, and I’m here to fill the vacancy.

 

 

Addendum: No Comment

 

As a blogger, I’ve never wanted to be one of those drive-by likers, the ones who visit hundreds of blogs per day, indiscriminately liking posts in the hopes of getting liked back. I don’t always comment on posts that I like, but I occasionally try to write something that is spelled correctly, even if it doesn’t make sense.

 

These days, however, WordPress (which is easily flummoxed by what I write and thinks you will be too) will not let me comment when I want to. Over half of the comments I try to post are denied. I get the message that you see below.

 Sorry, this comment could not be posted.

If you are a blogger, you probably consider this good news. But I warn you, no system is idiot-proof. I will find a way to comment and flummox you again. Only because I think it’s good for you and helps build character.

 

 

To blog or not to blog

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To blog, or not to blog; that is the question.

Whether ‘tis nobler to make readers suffer

These posts and arouse outrageous mention

In the comments section and cause trouble,

Or opposing, end this scrawl today, to write

No more; and by to write to say I end

The heartache and the thousand natural shocks

My posts are heir to, ‘tis a consummation

Devoutly to be wish’d …

As you can see, I write a lot like Shakespeare, especially the parts that are his very own words, which I will put back later. I promise. I took them off an obscure website, so I don’t think anyone will notice. And no, I’m not plagiarizing; I’m merely borrowing. I learned that from my students, who often borrow entire essays.

In case you haven’t noticed (because you can rarely make it through my posts, and believe me I empathize: it’s hard for me as well), I have a lot in common with Shakespeare.

• He was born brilliant, and I was also born.

• We both had early lives.

• He managed to write 30+ plays (comedies, tragedies, and romances) and about 154 sonnets; I manage to write a now weekly blog.

• He liked hoop earrings, and I do too.

• He was a bard; I have been barred (due to excessive punning).

• He was from Avon; I have used Avon. *

• He was buried after his death, something I am planning myself. Not the death, the sequence of events: death, then burial.

Eerie, isn’t it? If I didn’t know better (and I rarely do), we could be twins, separated merely by talent, gender, legacy, facial hair, and about 450 years.

*Hi Miss Avon Representative: If you would like to give me free beauty products because I inadvertently advertised for you on my blog by using your company’s name, please feel free. I believe your products will make me look young and beautiful again. I also believe in unicorns. Just ring the bell.

If you are one of those I-can’t-look-away-from-this-train-wreck kind of reader and happen to have arrived here at the second ending of this post, both relieved and horrified, go here to see a 1960s “Ding Dong, Avon calling” commercial.

 

The body remembers

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The body remembers.

 

The sun-scorched skin can number the days beneath the sky’s great torch, planting grain, lying on the beach, and walking to the train. The knees recall each road they travelled and the weariness of sidewalks and pavement. They can count the ups and downs of stairs you’ve long forgotten. The back has followed every step you’ve taken, holding you upright through the hard days, willing to bend at your command and lift small children, boxes, and bags and bags of groceries. The bones empty themselves to make space for all the memories of stillness. They languished those hours, longing to carry you, to feel the heft of life and movement. In the unseen places, ligaments, tendons, and cartilage journal every blow, fall, jolt, jump, stroll, dance, and spin; most of which you cannot remember.

 

The body grows weary of silence.

 

Year after year the body waited, remembering. The few times it spoke, you listened, tended to its needs, and heard no more. Stories must be told and now the body speaks. The skin brings up memories of the sun, like old photographs printed on your face. The knees insist you listen to the recitation of burdens borne; the back wakes you at night to tell its tales. Day after day the memories excavate within the bones, hollowing them out  for a place to rest, nestling within the fragile spaces of the clavicle, radius, and femur. Tendons, ligaments, and cartilage lose themselves in remembrances that stretch across the years.

 

The body must tell, and should you turn away, it speaks more loudly. Listen it says, this is where I’ve been, this is the road I trod. And you must listen. Where else can you go?

 

 

Elderly woman:  Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, Detroit Publishing Company Collection.

 

 

Eating summer

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We eat the strands of sunlight that the plants spend their days gathering. We eat the roar of volcanoes, old memories of fires and dinosaur bones, forgotten car trips, purr of cats, chatter of blue jays, breath of smokestacks, and all of our words, even our silence.

 

We eat earth’s metals – magnesium, zinc and copper – that the plants mine. They find the wells of sweet waters far beneath the soil and draw it up for us.

 

One day in July the garden calls us to eat spring and summer, sweet, salty, tart, and juicy. After we slice the sunlight into a blue bowl, we pour the sun’s golden liquid that we gathered from the tight fists of olives, and eat until our bellies fairly shine. Then we lick the bowl like it was the sky itself.

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