.i“ * ^ / . . . . . ` `~

Hoses? Do you now address me about hoses? You wish to know what sort of things I have hosed off, with what volume of water, at what personal expense? How many things from my past, from deep in my past, I have hosed? And had I hosed not merely to ‘hose off’ but to ‘water off’ as well? Had I sometimes used my capacities as a ‘wielder of the rubber’ to promote efflorescence, to promote germination, to effect saturation? Had I in fact made occasional patches of earth a kind of towering flowering king’s ransom? with vegetable chalices, with rubies of birds and chards, with petal headdresses of gold, forged in large part by my water, the water from my rubbery hose? My hose indeed the mighty hammer that I beat upon this anvil of ground to create this shower of petals and barks? This fire cracker my hose launched into the sky of the earth where it explodes in colors like bees. A great horse shoe shaped garden, it was, where my hose length had easy ingress to the all spots it must make sodden, where with a minimal adjustment of my torso I might spray all about, hearing the water fall in thick drops or in a light spray upon the broad leaves, the fat soil. Had I washed the seeds off cars? Had I not poured for the dusty doors of the garage a refreshing blast of drink from my hose, which they gratefully swallowed, feeling rehydrated, refreshed and cleaned? Let me give you a hint, the answer to all these questions is yes….

So when I glimpsed a coiled hose to my right at the side of the house (which I have elsewhere referred to as a shed) I was launched into a fever of concerned thought, what should I do, what should I do? Should I grab it, should I make off with it, should I say “mine! mine!”? Should I do something useful with it? Should I, perhaps, have some sort of thought about hoses or about this particular hose? ought I to fashion some sort of thought? What, what?

Well, what in fact I did was almost immediately forget its presence, though not before it had injected me with a sort of sustaining booster shot of love, as it were, a sort of love of life – ay, thought I, seeing its green coil by the house side, it is I who have been hosed by this hose, coiled though it may be, and my true self arose garden-like within the boundaries of myself once again. Hosed, my friends? Yes, friends, quite thoroughly hosed. Hosed and hosed off. My fear is hosed off, my pride is hosed off, I have become a lush garden of love.

9 juin 1847: La paresse est sans doute le plus grand ennemi du développement de nos facultés.

Funny story from Carlos Baker’s 1969 biography of Hemingway. Piggott is a small town in Arkansas. The Pfeiffers are Hemingways in-laws. (Hemingway museum in that house off Cherry Street now.)

“He had just begun to walk around the town, wearing western clothes, full beard, long hair, and a sling to support his splinted arm, when an incident occurred which increased his former prejudice against Piggott. One day after grade school had reopened, he was limping through the schoolyard across Cherry Street. The children mistook him for a tramp. When they saw him heading for the Pfeiffer house, they became frenzied in their determination to protect the town’s leading citizens from this rough-looking outlander. Some two dozen boys and girls pursued him, yelling “Tramp! Tramp!” and pelting him with snowballs. He was pale and shaken when he reached the Pfeiffers’ front porch, and often mentioned it afterwards as a nightmare experience.”

Ah, so to dub (“to make a knight”) is not related to dub (to double a recording.) Maybe I already knew that.

Interesting that television wasn’t introduced to South Africa until 1976.

Tumbril: A cart used to carry condemned prisoners to their death, especially to the guillotine during the French Revolution.

1919: “Once Steve came in suddenly, his face pale above the dripping poncho, his snapping, and said in a low voice, ‘Now I know what the tumbrils were like in the Terror, that’s what they are, tumbrils.”

(Speaking of Red Cross ambulances in WWI.)

Verdi’s Shakespeare operas comparable to spaghetti westerns? Or more comparable to Shakespeare’s historical plays? Got an abridged version of his Macbeth today.

Larrup: (v.) To hit or beat. (n.) Backtalk, rudeness.

Difference between an engine and a motor seems to be roughly that the former creates, through a chemical reaction, the energy by which it’s powered, while the latter relies on a pre-existing power source, like electricity.

Surprised to come across acidulous instead of acid in a book from the 1960’s.

Agamemnon, 88-91

“The rains had come, the rains had gone, and the sun was back on its throne like an absolute monarch kept off it for a week by his subjects’ barricades, and now reigning once again, choleric but under constitutional restraint.” The Leopard, Di Lampedusa.

Was struck by the arms of the angel of this tonight, an eternally human component. The expression that makes the painting be alive, its genius. Hands of Mary those of the traumatized. It’s wild how dead and aloof she seems as opposed to the angel’s eagerness. Young woman who suspects she’s in trouble. (Curious about the small window by her head.)

Why is Mike Johnson looking into the back of my microwave?

Is it because he thinks there are answers in the back of my microwave?

Is it because he knows there are not answers anywhere else and the one place he hasn’t checked yet is in the back of my microwave?

Is it like one of those occasions when after checking everywhere your house keys could possibly be, you start looking in places they couldn’t possibly be, places like in a locked drawer or like in the back of my microwave?

Or is it because there aren’t any answers? Or is it because, though there are answers, they are not the ones Mike Johnson had been hoping for? 

Is it because Mike Johnson already knows the answers but wishes he didn’t? Is it because Mike Johnson is pretending he doesn’t? Is Mike Johnson going so far to perpetrate this ruse as to rigorously search my microwave?

Yglesias having made the interesting point yesterday that historical accuracy is a fairly modern development and that Homer himself was historically inaccurate.

Hemingway took part in this parade that Hart Crane “might well have watched” according to Unterecker.

The idea that classical music could experience a resurgence in popularity, being so unfraught, as it were. Openly about nothing but music itself.

life is just a picture in which I am included but that I watch as if it were a play with no plot… Pessoa

“But to be no longer circumscribed and defined by his father was like finding that all the clocks wherever he looked had stopped, and all the watches, and that there was no way of knowing what time it was.” The Human Stain.

Can’t believe I’m looking up proboscis again. But this time I’m noting the etymology as well — pro (in front of) bosko (feed, nourish), i.e., in front of the mouth.