Word Furrows From Lily
Tamerlane
zinc
diptych
ornery
scrapple
commodious

Okay, I don’t know what you take me for, Lily, but “commodious” does not mean “like a commode”. And if you drink toilet water, you won’t get sick, but your breath may smell very perfumy. As with diptych–looks just like a dipstick that slipped past the spell-checker, but it’s not, it’s 1) a painting, esp. an altarpiece, on two hinged wooden panels that may be closed like a book. Or 2) an ancient writing tablet consisting of two hinged leaves with waxed inner sides. Oh, the roots are cute — early 17th century: via late Latin from late Greek diptukha–’pair of writing tablets,’ neuter plural of Greek diptukhos — ‘folded in two’, from di =twice + ptukhe=a fold. See? That’s a diptych, nowhere near dipstick. Which brings us to scrapple—a delicious word, thanks Lily! Scrapple: scraps of pork or other meat stewed with cornmeal and shaped into loaves for slicing and frying.

Tamerlane is a word which I cannot wedge with ease into anything I feel like spewing today—but, lo! It looks like I’ve just used Tamerlane! Ornery me! I wanted to use it in an idyllic fashion, and talk about my vigorous and lusty romps in Tamerlane as a youth, but that’s because it sounds like a lovely cove in bonny Ireland, not like some Mongolian ruler who used nomadic hordes to sate his insatiable drive for conquest. I daresay my ignorance is what leads me down the most poetic lanes–not to laud my ignorance–but, I’m just saying. Think what you will. Oh, right, you will think what you will, and I don’t need to say that. You’re so vocal today!

Where the fuck was I, pre-cognitus-interruptus?

Oh, right, the Tin Shed. I went out last night with Emma, to a place on Alberta St. called The Tin Shed, and there were two paintings above our heads. I mean, they were well-fastened to the wall, no one was actually threatening to drop them on our heads, c’mon, this is Portland! I admired both of the paintings. I asked Emma which one she preferred, and after a quick survey, she said they seemed to go together, like a diptych. Then she asked, “do you know what that is?” And I’m all, of course, how could you even ask that? So here is diptych all over again.

The word makes me think of many things. Like I often wonder what I would have done in previous tymes to earn my meager crusts, because in our tyme, the popularity of the computer is what brings the crusts–and they’re bountiful. I can’t picture myself hauling water or sewing on buttons for 16 hours a day. But I can see myself working as a scribe, tedious though it would be. 16, 17 hours a day, transcribing some emperor’s illegible script and shitey syntax onto papyrus, or, in a really bad century, chipping it into stone at the rate of one word per day.

My initiation into computers happened thusly. My mom had this electric typewriter. She kept it in her bedroom, on top of a very tall chest. The handles of the chest-of-drawers were round, and looked to be made of iron, and looked to be fashioned by someone who wanted to make them look old, but only succeeded in making them look kind of heavy and dark, and providing safe harbor to germs. Some neighbor dude one time got commissioned by my parents to make a whole buttload of “furniture” for our house. It looked very ill-placed next to the 18th-century maple furniture from my grandma Dickinson back East. Luckily, the uppity furniture was confined for the most part to the front room, aka the “living room”, which was in reality a room for televisions. There was a really huge television, and on top of that was an old, small black-and-white set. This enabled my father to watch two football games at once. Because of course this was way pre-VCR and there were times when a professional game was aired at the same time as what he called “college ball.” “College ball,” he’d say, looking like it mattered, “is a helluva lot more interesting than pro ball. They’ve really got grit in college ball.” I concurred although, truth be told (AS IT SHOULD BE IN ALL WORD FURROWS), I couldn’t tell the difference. The music on the college ballgames seemed cheesier, and they had the bands and what not, but then I thought the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders and their music were equally cheesy, so it’s hard to say. Especially at this late date, at this early hour.

I’ve a newfound interest in talking about football, but do not want to leave behind the issue of the chronological and taste mismatch in our home furnishings, which will neatly resolve back to the tale of the typewriter, which in turn explains, with much hemming and hawing, my introduction to the world of keyboards, computers, and programming, all roads which lead to clients, whiners, and a steady stream of glitches which I am able to remedy by means of bubblegum and baling wire (AS DAD ALWAYS SAID) and thereby earn my crusts, my bread, my meatloaf.

But, isn’t it so postmodern of me to, like, detain you here? Because this way, you sample my brain’s trail. I do not lead you by the nose through my version of events, I do not nurse any of your illusions about my mind being a commodious, well-organized place replete with Voltaire diptychs and Uncle John’s oil rendering of Tamerlane at the battle of Ildemar. No! I take you down the ornery paths, strewn with Grandma’s week-old scrapple and dogfur, for those are the paths I must trod each and every day. Let that sink in, if you will, whilst I sip. Because to sip is divine; to plod on through without sipping is human.

Mom could sit at that machine and just, I mean, type away. It was amazing to me. It was magical. In goes a perfectly white sheet of paper. I lie on the bed behind the tacky chest of drawers, mom perched high on top of a stool, there is nowhere for her knees to go, they slam into the chest of drawers. Tip tap tip tip tip tap…1 minute elapses, and she takes the paper out, really kind of rips it out of there—though it never tears!—and puts in the next sheet.

The piece of paper torn out of the top is placed word-side down to her left. And so the stack grows, until all of the typing is done.

Now, it’s rare, but it does happen: Mom makes a mistake. She has a little bottle of White-Out for this. And in later years, there was a better invention—this whiteout paper where you hit the backspace key, insert the whiteout paper, and re-type your mistake. I used that for quite some time in the 80’s, but Mom didn’t have that, as I recall it was strictly liquid whiteout, highly toxic. When she opened up that tiny jar the smells clamored to my nose. It was strong!

Sometimes, Mom let out just a little tiny sigh when she made a mistake. I liked to just lay there and listen to the humming noise of the typewriter, and, every minute, the tearing of the paper, the neat stacking thereof, and the continuation of the ritual. When she made a mistake there was a lull in the action, and it sort of woke me up, and then there would be that nearly inaudible sigh. But it was a sigh that could change worlds, a sigh that could shatter the harmony of my time with her in the bedroom with all the sun shining in on my legs on a perfect Saturday. Because she might be a little grumpy after making that mistake. And the whole thing could even come to an end. “Well, there’s plenty of things to do around here today, Emily!” she might suddenly, viciously chirp. And then I would know my time with the words flying magically onto the page, and the perfection of the typewriter’s hum, and the beauty of being in a room with such a great typist, had come to an end.

I don’t think anyone ever listens to my own tap-tappings and waxes half so romantic or nostalgic. I’d wager not even 10% so nostalgic. But then again, I cannot be in the brains of those who have heard me clack on these keys. I hit them almost as hard as I hit the keys on that manual typewriter in 7th grade.

I’m now forced to hit the fast-forward key, or to credit my reader with the ability to fill in the gaping vast blanks I’ve left in this tale. Yes, the love of the typewriter didst later translate into an interest in the computer. A fascination, really, for many years. Though the fascination has now ebbed and I much prefer to hit a badminton birdie than to write an algorithm these days.

I left out the zinc. Zinc was responsible for this whole parade, so let revisit the subject of those round, iron-like handles on the tacky chest-of-drawers made by the neighbor. They may have actually contained a bit of zinc for all I know. Amazingly, on a recent visit to Arizona, where Mom has just moved, I noticed they shlepped three pieces of that man’s furniture all the way from New Mexico. Paid a pretty penny to the movers too, no doubt. They could have gone to Ikea and got some really pretty stuff for what they paid to move those tired old, memory-laden, painted-green chests of drawers. Ach, could’ve gotten a fresh start. Ach, didn’t.

Words for 01/14/2008
copse
lapse
hirsute
makeover
spittoon
rumpsprung
scrap heap
meth lab