Home
January 22, 1997
Write 3. To frame or combine ideas, and express them in written words; to play the author; to recite or relate in books; to compose. --Webster's Dictionary
frame: verb, 3. to compose, put into words; devise;
contrive; conceive;
--- also an annoying, incompletely implemented browserly construct...
:-)
combine: verb, 1. to come or bring into union,
unite, join
Hmm, the dictionary doesn't mention farm equipment under combine as a noun. Once in the mid-1960's my family was driving from Boston to San Francisco to visit relatives. We had a white Plymouth station wagon with a heck of a lot of miles on it already and a Nimrod tent trailer. All 8 of us (2 parents, 6 kids) crammed into the wagon.
Going across the flat expanse of Missouri, the Plymouth bent a rocker arm. Here we are on a winding back road. Dust swirls around us. Not another car in sight. We eat peanut butter sandwiches. A pickup truck passes us by. Suddenly it backs up at about 60 miles an hour! Dad explains the situation. We pile into the back of the pickup. The guy drives us to the local Massey Ferguson dealer. They send a tow truck for the car.
The dealer has no Plymouth parts. I don't think they have any car parts. They sell harvesters, combines, tractors... They send to Kansas City for the part. We set up the tent trailer among the combines. A thunderstorm comes up and damn near blows us all away. I've never seen a wind like that since - except maybe the blizzard of '78. It was a hell of a storm.
We camped three days among the combines and my mother kept calling them concubines. Well, we did sleep with them...
ideas: noun, 1. a thought, mental conception, mental image, notion. 2. an opinion or belief. 3. a plan, scheme, project, intention, aim, design. 4. a hazy perception, vague impression, fanciful notion, fancy, inkling... it goes on to Plato's definition...but I won't.
So where do we get ideas? At Wal-Mart in the idea aisle? On television? In books? Divine inspiration? And about those "received ideas", of which the now deconstructed to absurdity Todd Napolitano writes, if we receive, who kicks off? And did we win the coin toss and elect to receive? We will kick off. We will receive.
express: verb, 3. to put into words; represent by language; state.
written: past participle of write. Been there. Done that.
words: 7. a speech sound or series of them , having meaning
and used as a unit of language: words may consist of a single
morpheme or of combinations of morphemes.
8. a letter or group of letters, written or printed, representing
such a unit of language.
to play: verb intransitive, 13. to act the part
of.
"I'm not a doctor, but I play one on tv." -- Marcus Welby,MD
"I'm not a writer, but I play one on the net" ?????????????
author: 3. a person whose profession is writing books, etc. -- well, I'd be hard pressed to say my profession is writing books anymore. Middle management does that to you. Writer's block does that to you. My profession is trying to figure out what to do next. Meanwhile, I drink coffee, clean litter boxes, drive the kids to/from piano, guard piping plovers, and study oceanography.
recite: 2. to tell in detail; give an account of; narrate; relate. - I can relate to that.
relate: 1. to tell the story of; narrate; recount. My name is Janet. This is the story of me. I can recite that.
books: sheets of paper fastened together between covers - one of many definitions - didn't say anything at all about a book having to contain irony, shit, sarcasm, original ideas, just sheets of paper - none of the definitions mentioned irony etc.
compose: 3. to create a musical or literary work -- OK, so this journal is neither musical nor literary but I am composed. Composed mostly of water as are all humans and our plant. But what about other planets? Just because we need water to survive does that mean water is a condition for life on other planets?
Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt me. This never seemed to work as well as "I'm rubber, you're glue. Bounces off me and sticks to you." I taught the kids that but they didn't know what rubber was.
It's only words, and words don't mean a thing... what song is that from?
When will this idiot Janet stop this dictionary mania? Tomorrow. There's only one more definition left.
Why am I doing this? To convince myself that I can write? To convince others I can write? To get past the idea that nothing I have to express or narrate on paper or electronic media is worth the disk space it's stored on? Ah but it is all impermanent...
Adoptions: Lindsey! Precious! Melvin, and host of others some of whom have only been there a few days. I hope Lindsey's new family has a stepladder. Roberta misses Precious. I hope Precious' new family feeds her bologna sandwiches right out of their mouths like Roberta...
Blood: Calley got me good. She swiped at me with her claws and got one stuck in the base of my thumb - the scrivener's palsy hand. It hurt like hell. I begged off washing dishes and litter boxes as a precaution.
Feline Body Fluids: That new Siamese stinks! Buggs is a male recently neutered who has the yellowest smelliest pee I have ever seen. The whole shelter reeks. I could smell it the instant I walked in the door before I even got upstairs. No blaming this one on Jaguar!
Issues: We're almost out of kitty litter. We couldn't change every box like we're supposed to. We scooped most of 'em and only dumped the ones that were really bad. Of course Charlie doesn't poop in his box anyway so it wasn't too bad. I had to change all his bedding though - and really scrub the poop off the walls.
Dottie: Meanwhile, Dottie is still depressed ever since she spent the holidays with Jon and then had to come back to the shelter. She curls up in a ball and sulks in her cage. Jon's landlord won't let him have her. We all think Jon should move. Dottie will never bond with anyone else.
"Oceans, Janet. Janet, Oceans." Nice to meet you.
Tonight's the night. Class is from 7 to 10. Yikes.
Class ended early. We started with a tape of ocean sounds. Just listening to the waves. Some people got so relaxed they were starting to fall asleep. I was trying to identify what species of gull was mewing in the background.
We introduced ourselves: name, what degree program you're in, why you're taking the course. Janet Egan. None. Because I want to be an oceanographer and had a really cool time on the boat in the Sea of Japan this summer.
Most of my classmates are liberal arts majors taking this to meet the science requirement. One is a 7th grade science teacher. One is a criminal justice major whose family are fishermen.
I want to learn everything at once. Maybe I can read the whole book tonight. Maybe not.
It looks like this will be a fairly easy course so I can learn as much as I want at my own pace. No lab. Possible field trip to the New England Aquarium.