My Latest Reading

     I have bought a new book. 

    Isn't it beautiful?

    

    My sister Sharon told me that when she was in college and had to develop a project for an academic paper, she suggested to her advisor that she read the dictionary.

    What a fabulous project! 

    But, she went on, her advisor frowned on the idea. He wanted a plan. Sharon said, "I want to know what would happen if I read the dictionary. Let's just start the project and see where it goes."

    Just imagine where it would go! Obviously it would lead to an improved vocabulary, even if she remembered only a small fraction of the new words she learned. Think of the many languages she would discover had contributed to English. And the fascinating etymologies she would learn—the vagaries of English pronunciations—the proportion of technical terms to everyday words—the obsolete words that were really too good to have been lost. The beauty of language. How long it would take to read the dictionary. Which letters had the most beautiful or unusual or obsolete words. And no telling what else. That was the beauty of the project.

    He would have none of it. She had to come up with another topic.

    What an opportunity lost. I've half a mind to do it myself. As it is, I've been challenged by a friend to write a poem based on a new word every day. So far the poems aren't very good, but the words elicit a lot of fun. Here is an example.

A Family of Artists

(Daedal: artistic, skillful. From Daedalus, Greek artificer of mythology)

 

My brother is good with wood.

My son is daedal with metal.

My mother was smart with art.

One sister paints like a saint

the power of flowers.

The other, a quainter painter,

is better with letters

adored and adorned.

I am absurd with words.

I make mazes with phrases

that leap or creep

all twisty and cvrispy

or steep into sleep.

But, however clever,

in the end I pen

a verse. Terse.

Bringing in the New Year

   Two days after Christmas I put up a Christmas tree?
  The day after New Year's Eve I have a party?

    Isn't that all kind of late?

    But by now, this being the third year of the event, a New Year's Day party at my house is an annual tradition. This year, I spent Christmas week with my son on Vashon Island, Washington. When I got home and turned my attention to the upcoming party, I realized that the house needed decorating, so I took my bow saw into the woods, cut down a little fir tree I had been keeping my eye on, set it up in the house, and decorated it with all my beloved ornaments. 

 

Then I made cookies.

Stained-glass-window cookies

Date bars

Hazelnut financiers

Eggwhite brownies

   Because eating black-eyed peas on New Year's Day is, according to Southern lore, good luck for the coming year, I set two large pots of black-eyed peas on the stove, one vegetarian, one with ham hock.

 I made two double batches of buttermilk cornbread. 

I set two bottles of red wine on the kitchen counter along with a corkscrew. I put white wine, sparkling water, and beer in a cooler nearby. I put every wine glass I had on the counter, along with water glasses.

    It was a drop-in-anytime affair. As guests arrived, I told them to help themselves.

    It was all a great success, because, really, for a good party all you need is good food and drink and great people, which I had in spades. 

    A parlor game might help, too. For this party, I suggested that guests bring three words or phrases for the new year, riffing on T. S. Eliot's lines: 

            For last year's words belong to last year's language

            And next year's words await another voice

            And to make an end is to make a beginning.

We put the words in a bowl, from which everyone drew a paper; then, in turn, we read the words. Sometimes the word wasn't comprehensible until the person who chose it explained it. "Maybe"? Well, yes, Margaret explained. It helps her take a step back and look at possibilities. "Autotelic"? "It means 'complete in itself,'" the guest explained, and comes from a history of Superman. My favorite word to come out of the game was ourobos, the end-in-the-beginning image, as of a snake with its tail in its mouth. (Last year's favorite was orophile, a lover of mountains.)

    My own three phrases played with past, present, future:

            A return to the wintry winters of the past. (Oh, I wish!)

            A future with a dependable democracy.

            All my loves and friendships always present in my life.

    That last phrase was fulfilled this holiday season, from Christmas with my son to a house full of friends on New Year's Day. As for the other two, I can only hope.