words du jour : scoop/chewy/beater/smear/grooms/unguent

A few weeks ago I tripped and fell and skinned my knee. In the ensuing days, I would notice my skinned, scabby knee-parts, and think of being a kid. It seemed back then that having scabby knees, elbows, or both, was just a routine part of life. I don’t remember giving it much thought. I didn’t notice, for example, that it was rare for adults to have scabby knees and elbows. I didn’t take preventive measures. Nor did I read up on the subject in order to better understand the nature of scabbiness, its history, its rise, its fall. I just had scabby knees.

Fast forward to my morning’s chewy scoops of oatmeal. Brought to you by Lily. That’s right. Until we spoke a few weeks ago, I was starting off each day with a bran muffin. If no bran muffins were to be found, I had to beat up a batch—using Kitchen-Aid beaters—of course. Fresh out of the oven, one smears one’s muffin with butter, daubing it lightly with one’s marmalade of choice, and grooms it, if desired, with peanut-butter or other nutty butter. Maple syrup or honey can be spread atop the whole as a kind of unguent to soothe the battered branny materials who, only minutes before, had enjoyed the solitude and quiet of the buttery.

Noun: buttery (pronounced butree, accent on first syllable)
1. A small storeroom for storing foods or wines
2. A teashop where students in British universities can purchase light meals

Adjective: buttery
Unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech “buttery praise”
Resembling or containing or spread with butter “a rich buttery cake”

I’d like to point out that I’m not thrilled with WordWeb, the little desktop dictionary that I go to when I write in rushed spasms, pretending my world will end if I don’t scoop out the literary dollops. At such times, WordWeb chews up words, and spits them out. I’d prefer a quieter, more genteel dictionary, which would introduce me to a word the way someone introduces you to the person you may someday marry. They don’t point out the faults and foibles of the potential marital entity. Nor is it pleasant for them to bring up the potential’s string of past relationships, analyzing each in turn, and dispensing with it as so much offal.

Speaking of variety meats, my heart is less bruised this morning, having received the unguent of Emma’s correspondence. I cannot bear these times without her. But this time, instead of longing for a way to get along, I’ve decided to strive for a workable solution. To go after this one with a practicality normally reserved for the sorting of my shorts. I mean, we work out all of these systems—banking, business—we operate automobiles for crying out loud—yet, in matters of the heart, even the best of us (yes, I am in that number!) throw up our hands. “It’s all so complicated!” “It’s so messy!” That may be. But sometimes, it’s the simplest sliver of the finest pecan pie. Rich in texture and flavor, loaded with fat molecules to please the tongue, and dangerously weight-inducing. When nothing else will do. I set aside the meat pies and pork pies at such times, happy to settle for the merest crumb of the fine pie, the one that comes of knowing one’s self, and finding the ability to expand one’s self—all the way to another, reaching across a chasm one thought uncrossable.

In other words, I just love her and my heart sings when I am with her. But the boycott times and the strikes, and the times of strife, they threaten to break my heart to bits.

That’s all she wrote. The women of Artist’s Way are on the way.

Love,
Emily

Next words:
Cohen (I looked this up in Joys of Yiddish – a Hebrew priest of yore. Didja know that? Huh?)
Marianne / fresibee / offhanded / unneurotic / timepiece / time-fuse / furlough