Today is December 1st. Waiting for some warmth to chase away the chill in my feet (hot coffee is working on the rest of me), I was curious about the etymology of the word, 'December'. I was surprised to see the trail of alterations from the original root, decem, which is Latin for 'ten'.

'Ten' what? I discovered that December was the tenth month in the early Roman calendars, which started with March. Ah! So, New Year's Day was actually March 1!

T.G. Tucker, author of Etymological Dictionary of Latin, posits that the first five months of the Roman calendar were named for their occurrence in the agricultural cycle, and "after the gathering in of the crops, the months were merely numbered."  The Latin suffix -ber was added onto the five numbered calendar months.

The first calendar was thought to be invented by the Roman king Romulus (or he took all the credit) around 760 BC. It had only ten months of 30-31 days and only lasted 304 days. Thus, 61 days were unaccounted for in the winter. I wonder if life was relatively unimportant during that time. Reminds me of the long winters in the HBO series, Game of Thrones. Perhaps the Romans went around exclaiming 'Winter is coming!' and all life stood still. More likely, all human life centered around agricultural activities and winter was ignored. At least, in calendars.

Names of the first five months in the Roman calendar were derived from names of gods and goddesses, except for February. During that time of the year was a dies februatus, Latin for the "day of purification". The Roman festival of purification was celebrated on February fifteenth, but has been long lost in history.

Now, when the enlightened French displaced the global Roman influence, december became decembre. Most of the Latin calendar names were later retained or altered in the Old English version. This early form of modern English language was developed by the Anglo-Saxons in present-day England and parts of Scotland, and persisted from the mid-5th to the mid-12th centuries.

Old English, and I could argue modern English as well, is a 'mutt' language, where most of the words were borrowed from, combined with, or were bastardized (now, that word has an interesting etymology!) forms of many tongues. The Anglo-Saxons founded Old English mostly on the West Germanic languages, vastly different from the modern English. 

Indeed, if anyone had to suffer studying the epic poem Beowulf (circa 700-1000 B.C.) in its original Old English form (yes, I had to do that in high school), they might recall it was like reading a foreign language. In all essence, it was, and is. Can you imagine trying to memorize and recite it? If one considers that literacy was very uncommon in those early centuries, the poem was known more in its oral form rather than written.

Like any language, English evolved over thousands of years. Words were changed or dropped, shortened or lengthened. It's an ongoing process; grammar is simplified, and meanings change like the phases of the moon. Even pronunciation of words vary between continents and even between regions of countries. "Tomato, tomahto"; "barn and bahn"; we don't have to call the whole thing off! Like any association with self-identity, precise language usage is a relative trait of human nature. There are purists with binary black-and-white minds who insist on traditional and precise use. But there exists a huge dynamic gray world in between. Me? I consider myself a pragmatist. ;)

Regarding the month of December, the modern English name made it full circle using the original Latin name. Let's celebrate that!


Note: Bastardize is a verb derived from the well-known noun. The Old French word bastard was used for an "acknowledged child of a nobleman by a woman other than his wife, probably from fils de bast 'packsaddle son,' meaning a child conceived on an improvised bed (saddles often doubled as beds while traveling)". The term was not always demeaning; offspring from relationships non-sanctioned by the Church were common and not always discriminated against.

The word 'bastard' later assumed more derogatory meanings. The figurative sense of of the word as "something not pure or genuine" appeared in use during the late 14th century. It's popularization as a vulgar term of abuse for a man is traced back to the 1830's and sticks today.

However, the verb 'to bastardize' has been in use since the early 1500's, and figuratively means "to make degenerate, debase". We English-born people tend to do a lot of that. Even my birth-given name is a bastardization of a German name. I get some odd looks when I explain that to people. ;)

Labels: musings, writing

Tattooed on the arm of the girl in the store was this: "You don't have a soul. You are a soul."

This tickled old chimes in my memory, way down in the dungeons of the abyss. Long ago, covered with dangling cobwebs, smelling of must and muffled, an echo quivered. "I know you."

Yes. That was it. From a book that I loved. Ideas that grew and formed my outlook on life.

Forty-five years ago I read a book for my English class, Canticle for Leibowitz, by Walter Miller. I had to write a book report on it. I got carried away and wrote 5 or 6 pages worth of meandering thematic thoughts. Science, philosophy, human nature, theology, history, society and culture.

The first three pages of my graded paper were marked with some red lines and scribbles correcting some grammar or sentence structure. Then a sentence in red pencil in the left margin: "I give up. I have to read this book. What do you do on weekends? Tell me you at least go out and play."

I did. I still do. But reading and books have been more than just words on paper, or on a screen. They are the voices of thousands of souls. Human, non-human, physical, spiritual, past, present, future, fantastic, mythical, astronomical, microscopic, universal.

A thread ties us, everything, together. In and out, around, under and over. When I see a hill, I see a mountain that was, the rocks that it begat, and the sand that it eventually becomes. I see and smell the musty soil that it feeds, the plants that it nourishes, the animals that feed on them. I hear the rain and lightening which  hastens its transitions and feel the hooves and claws that walk on it. And me, you, we, are no different than this mountain. We came, we are, we were.

We as humans are terraforming this earth. This mountain is now a hill and its soil is being consumed. We, too, will pass. And it will probably start all over again. Just like it has before.  Perhaps this is what Miller had in mind. And I wonder if this is what dove him to suicide.

It's been many decades since I read the book. He wrote a sequel shortly before his death in 1997. Perhaps I need to read that one, too. After all, it was Miller, Steinbeck, Tolstoy, Asimov, Moorcock, Kipling, London, Poe, and even Robert E. Howard -all authors of my youth- that spoke to me and inspired me to write. And to think.

Labels: books, essays, writing

1. Eat
2. Rest
3. Rove in between
4. Render loyalty
5. Love the children
6. Cavil in moonlight
7. Tune your ears
8. Attend to the bones
9. Make love
10. Howl often

Labels: musings, writing

.....are a real challenge for me. I had originally planned to post them on this blog. Because this blog still utilizes the Classic template (Blogger) and does not conform to the criteria of the official Challenge, I easily revised the template of my original blogsite, Whose Reality Is This?. And am now posting daily (except Sundays).

Today is the letter 'H'. And today's post is 'H is for Heart.' You can follow future posts in this Challenge series by subscribing to the blog site linked above.

"Embarking on a path may be full of uncertainties. But if we have heart, and we know that our direction is true; if we accept that we may have to change course along the way, and if we learn from all the obstacles along our path, then that path has heart. And as we journey forward, we become stronger and whole; and more happy." - excerpt from today's challenge post. 

Labels: writing

Today is a day of memories in literature. Always loved Lord George Byran's poetry. A toast to Byran and Walt Whitman, who inspired my love for poetry.

Today celebrates the birthdays of Toni Morrison and Wallace Stegner. It is to Stegner that I owe much more. 

"Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed ... We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed ... We simply need that wild country available to us, even if we never do more than drive to its edge and look in. For it can be a means of reassuring ourselves of our sanity as creatures, a part of the geography of hope."

If anything, wilderness reminds us of what it is to be human.

Read more about these writers on the website of The Writer's Almanac. You can also listen to the podcast featuring Garrison Keeler. 

So We'll Go No More A-Roving
George Byron

So we'll go no more a-roving
So late into the night,
Though the heart still be as loving,
And the moon still be as bright.

For the sword outwears its sheath,
And the soul outwears the breast,
And the heart must pause to breathe,
And love itself have rest.

Though the night was made for loving,
And the day returns too soon,
Yet we'll go no more a-roving
By the light of the moon. 

Labels: writing

What??? Me?

Jon Evans, a columnist for the online E-zine (okay, 'blog'), TechCrunch, published an essay today on the continuing evolution of modern English. Starting with a reference to an essay, Tense Present, on modern English written by David Foster Wallace in 2001, Jon updates the evolution of our English language in the context of computers and social media. Prior to the last five or six years, the major impact on our language use was through audio and visual media formats such as television and movies. Even radio lost it's foot hold long before that.

Now we have instant impact via social media platforms: blogs, FaceBook, instant and text messaging, Twitter, and so on. The meme machine at work is now operative at warp speed around the globe. Even scientists are now present on these social media formats, which introduces a revolution in cut and dry language.

We had our bohemians prior to this: e.e.cummings with his shape-shifting poetry and lack of capitalization and punctuation, the spontaneous prose of Jack Kerouac, the uninhibited and often rhythmic rambling of Dan Walsh as he traveled the world on a motorcycle..... There are many revolutionaries preceding modern social media that stretched the boundaries and broke the rules of the English language. Hell, even the esteemed and celebrated co-author, E. B. White, of The Elements of Style broke his own rules.

Then there is the dry, disconnected, structurally perfect technical writing, exemplified in scientific writing for journals. There is a reason why scientists are portrayed as stiff white men in white coats and women with glasses and bound hair in baggy lab gear. Evans refers to such clinically-correct writing as Clinical Standard Written English. I extend that to Clinical Standard Scientific Written English.

I remember two hours across the desk from a PhD discussing what words we were going to use in a paper to describe how we killed the mice used in the experiments. "What words are politically and ethically acceptable?", he asked. "How about 'guillotined'?", I responded. We ended up using the term 'sacrificed'. It took me several attempts to type that in the manuscript draft because I couldn't stop laughing at the sheer irony of how using such a word would change the fact that the poor mice were killed for the sake of studying a few proteins. The word 'sacrifice' sure didn't make us feel any better about their futile existence for the sake of science.

A fantastic hit-home excerpt from James Nicoll right states the reality:

"The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don’t just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and riffle their pockets for new vocabulary."

Then this excerpt hit home. It was a mirror in my own earlier writing:

"And nowadays — this is where things get interesting — people who write in CSWE [Clinical Standard Written English] actually mark themselves as untrustworthy by doing so. Because the new usage, call it Modern Written English, is everything CSWE is not: first-person, colloqiual, breezy, open, and personal. That’s what readers understand and trust. But if you write like a high-school essay, or the Wall Street Journal? That is now a big red flag.Your readers don’t know you … but they do know that you have deliberately hidden who you are, by donning that mask called CSWE . And on some level they do not like it."

This is true. How do I know? I got called on it back in 2000. I was too used to my nice comfortable cocoon of dispassionate technical writing while conveying autonomic but complicated physiology and biology. Trying to explain complex concepts about our own bodies and how they all worked as if our brains were not attached to those bodies.

Then a commentator asked me once if I had a soul. "Do you have a life? Do you possess a soul? Are you really a human being, or some automatron in a straight jacket typing away that has no feelings?"

That hurt. And rightly so. I was ejaculated from my comfort zone.

Evans quoted George Orwell, "Orthodoxy, of whatever color, seems to demand a lifeless, imitative style." It is true. I knew this to be true, for I was a closet reader of Harlan Ellison, Kerouac, Cummings, Walsh, and Trickster coyote stories. I started writing more in first, second narrative modes, and the hell with conventional third person!* Then I started mixing narratives and even adopting animal voices. I wrote one story that broke every rule I could identify and giggle like a naughty schoolgirl the entire time. Oh, glorious indeed! Writing became fun again!

Another motivation was oral storytelling. Anyone that has listened to stories told in personal contact will know that they contain a life all their own. Irish, Native American, Australian Aboriginal, even your own family oral stories. They are words and stories that are alive, outside the writing rules and boundaries. Unlike the single-dimensional and sometimes dead words you read in a book or paper.

I have wondered for years how I can merge the two: writing with written word and oral storytelling. How to make the words an interactive process rather than a passive dread.

Wallace wrote,

"When I say or write something, there are actually a whole lot of different things I am communicating. The propositional content (the actual information I’m trying to convey) is only one part of it. Another part is stuff about me, the communicator. Everyone knows this. It’s a function of the fact that there are uncountably many well-formed ways to say the same basic thing, from e.g. “I was attacked by a bear!” to “Goddamn bear tried to kill me!” to “That ursine juggernaut bethought to sup upon my person!” and so on [...] “Correct” English usage is, as a practical matter, a function of whom you’re talking to and how you want that person to respond — not just to your utterance but also to you."

The words we choose to use become alive in different contexts. They can invite participation of the reader, an exchange between the writer and reader, or they can be a collection of dead signs pointing in one way. An excellent example of merging storytelling with written word is Sherman Alexie, a descendent of Coeur d'Alene tribal heritage. Alexie “blends elements of popular culture, Indian spirituality, and the drudgery of poverty-ridden reservation life to create his characters and the world they inhabit.”** His success extends into film and audio, marrying oral storytelling and other media forms.

Evans wraps up his essay eloquently with,

"Because it seems to me that Standard Written English, for all its virtues, has become something of a desiccated undead corpse. I submit that whatever can breathe new life into it — even bizarre memes, subversive polemics, and the mad ravings of anonymous redditors; hell, even 4chan — should be welcomed with open arms. Because words matter. Language matters. And, with respect, it’s past time for last century’s Standard Written English to give way to something a little more lively."

I agree, despite that this old writer and scientist is still in the process of learning and in transition. And for the person I intimately knew many years ago that would become enraged if I mispronounced a word, "you say tomato, I say tomatoe", I'm glad we called the whole thing off.

Confession: I still cringe when every other word in a sentence is 'like'.........


* See the inspirational and critical book, Unnatural Voices. Extreme Narration in Modern and Contemporary Fiction, by Brian Richardson.

** Quirk, Sarah A. (2003). "Sherman Alexie (7 October 1966-)". Dictionary of Literary Biography. Seventh 278: 3–10.

Labels: writing

Yes!!!

Good writing is clear. Talented writing is energetic. Good writing avoids errors. Talented writing makes things happen in the reader’s mind — vividly, forcefully — that good writing, which stops with clarity and logic, doesn’t. - Samuel Delany

This is one reason why I support and encourage self-publishing. Most publishers and even many editors will dictate a writer to write within small boxes:

• "Write for your audience."
• "Stick to the grammar rules!"
• "This is too vague."
• "Don't use the first-person narrative."
• "Never, never mix point-of-views and narrators!!!"
• "You can't start a sentence with a conjunction."

Bah! Think and write outside the box! Free yourself!
- excerpted from a wonderful essay, "Good Writing vs. Talented Writing", on BrainPickings website.

Labels: writing

Speaking of tricksters, here are my favorite modern tricksters; Calvin and Hobbes. This is brilliant.

But behavior in the human being is sometimes a defense, a way of concealing motives and thoughts, as language can be a way of hiding your thoughts and preventing communication.  - Abraham Maslow

Language is more than a way to communicate between two or more individuals. It is also a process in which we communicate with ourselves. It is an avenue of thinking which links together streams of various forms of information beyond words, all which lead to understanding. And, of course, is (or should be) subject to change.

I wish to suggest that the general process of reaching an understanding between persons and the process of understanding per se are both language-events that resemble the inner conversation of the soul with itself, a conversation which Plato asserted was the very essence of thinking.
- Hans-Georg Gadamer, Language and Understanding (1970), Theory,& Society, 2006, vol. 23(1):13-27.

Labels: writing

It has been seven years since publishing anything in the lay media: A long curse of writer's block, very little free time, and lack of motivating inspiration. Now, with time to do many things I have put aside for nearly a decades (knitting, hiking, riding with no particular place to go, reading, and, yes, writing), I am now a contributing columnist  for a Big Bend area online newspaper/magazine, the Alpine Daily Planet, edited by Mike and Cindy Perry, a couple extraordinaire. I thank them for the opportunity to regain momentum.

Even included two photos. :)

My Desert Smells Like Rain.

Labels: Big Bend, writing

"Writing is not a serious business. It’s a joy and a celebration. You should be having fun with it. Ignore the authors who say ‘Oh, my God, what word? Oh, Jesus Christ…’, you know. Now, to hell with that. It’s not work. If it’s work, stop and do something else."

Labels: writing

Forget your generalized audience. In the first place, the nameless, faceless audience will scare you to death and in the second place, unlike the theater, it doesn’t exist. In writing, your audience is one single reader. I have found that sometimes it helps to pick out one person—a real person you know, or an imagined person and write to that one. - John Steinbeck

Labels: writing

On October 15th, 2007, bloggers throughout the web, around the world, will unite to exposit an important matter to everyone: our environment. By propagation through blog posts in the blogosphere ideas, opinions, facts and figures, questions, concerns, rants, pleadings, poems, quotes, stories, testimonies, observations......

By virtue of written language, hundreds, perhaps thousands of voices will be heard on a commonality between not just each other as humans, but perhaps indirectly by every entity upon this planet. A meme spreading through cyber space in which the participants are us; you.

I challenge readers, all of you, to become involved. Bloggers, be a part of Blog Action Day; blog a post about the environment on your sites. Those who do not blog, join the collective and perform an action demonstrating your support. Show that you do care.

This is our Spaceship Earth and we have to clean and maintain it just like our houses in which we live.

This planet is our home.

"You must be the change you wish to see in the world."
— Mahatma Gandhi

Labels: writing