Running After My Hat

Ridiculous pursuits, matters solemn and less so

Things You Don’t Want to Hear
(or Make) Someone Say

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Back from a three-day beach weekend with spotty Interwebs access…

On Saturday — scattered amongst dog-walking, sightseeing, storm-dodging, and various other activities — The TV Network Whose Name I Cannot Type offered some sort of monsters-of-the-deep marathon: maybe six or eight films about giant sharks, reptiles, squid, etc., threatening the lives and livelihoods of people living in waterfront communities. Only a couple of these movies had been made for theatrical release; the quality, therefore, was a little uneven.

I had no notebook at hand, so I can’t  swear that the following snippets of dialogue are verbatim. But in each, the central phrase remains intact.

  • If you’re familiar with this genre, you know there’s often on hand a seen-it-all, weatherbeaten old veteran of combat with exactly the sort of beast now threatening everyone. (The template for this role: Robert Shaw’s character Quint, in Jaws.) In one of Saturday’s films — it might have been Super Gator, or perhaps Croc — this character gives the others an example of the monster’s extraordinary toughness. A disbelieving bystander says, approximately, “Can these creatures really do that?” The grizzled old guy replies:

    Yep. Why, I seen one o’these things run five miles across a rough road just to—

    [I didn’t notice what the thing meant to do after its nightmare steeplechase; my attention kept returning to the first part of the sentence.]
  • In another film, off the coast of California, severe underwater tremors have caused two very unpleasant events:
    • They have disturbed a school, or pack, of prehistoric sharks, called goblin sharks (there really are such things), bringing them to feed near the surface instead of at their usual great depths; and
    • they have launched a tsunami.

    With no operational radios, cell phones, or land lines, two groups of survivors of the tsunami must deal with the sharks on their own. At one point, some of these survivors are wading around the lower floor of a building under construction, and they meet up with the rest of their party, whom they’d feared lost. They compare notes on their experiences, and Guy A from one group asks Guy B from the other if they can escape by going out the way they came in. Says Guy B:

    No. There’s a shark in the parking lot.

Were I a screenwriter, I’d live for the experience of building a script around a line like “There’s a shark in the parking lot.” Just once, though.

Art Forms

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[Above, the trailer for the short film Lost and Found, an adaptation of the children’s book of the same name by Oliver Jeffers. For stills from the movie, visit the Cartoon Brew link above, and STUDIO aka.]

From whiskey river:

Recipe for an Ocean in the Absence of the Sea

You have the ingredients on hand,
Get to the edge of something,
yourself best of all, and take
yourself in hand. Take, I mean, your hand,
trace out the blue menaces
released and lapsing there,
watch closely around the wrist: they will
remind you what you must do,
They are what you must do. Be
them, until there is nothing but them,
then you are ready. Now take
time, all there is in the house —
it does not have to be yours. Take time
and never for a moment
losing track of what changes
back into yourself, bitter enough
so that you will need almost
no salt, mix well and then leap
over the edge. Wait there. When you can
wait no longer, it is done.
Serve at once. It does not keep.

(Richard Howard [source])

…and:

The world of the arts is by no means always comfortable, but neither is it likely ever to be boring. It is full of surprises, humor, traps for the unwary, and challenges to smugness. It is a world of moods as well as of revelation, of beliefs and fears, of unpleasant truth as well as of delicious fantasy. Perhaps it is arrogant to say that anyone who does not venture into this world is only half-interested in life. I say it, nonetheless.

(Russell Lynes, The Fine Edge of Awareness)

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Feedback to Stop the Heart

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I hope anyone reading this, or any of the other posts here, knows how dearly and sincerely I long for your approval as a reader; I want you to like my writing, and — just as importantly — I’ll never rarely ask for evidence of any of that. (I’ll just want you to keep coming back.)

That said, whoa, for a writer to get touched by a god, as it were — touched unbidden…

On this day in 1855, Ralph Waldo Emerson penned a little note to Walt Whitman. Emerson had apparently just finished reading the first printing of Leaves of Grass; he was so overcome by the experience that he had to sit down and just lay it out there for the poet. Here’s the full text of the letter (RWE being notably more pithy than, say, the average blogger):

21 July Concord Masstts. 1855

Dear Sir,

I am not blind to the worth of the wonderful gift of “Leaves of Grass.” I find it the most extraordinary piece of wit and wisdom that America has yet contributed. I am very happy in reading it, as great power makes us happy. It meets the demand I am always making of what seemed the sterile & stingy nature, as if too much handiwork or too much lymph in the temperament were making our western wits fat and mean. I give you joy of your free brave thought. I have great joy in it. I find incomparable things said incomparably well, as they must be. I find the courage of treatment, which so delights us, & which large perception only can inspire. I greet you at the beginning of a great career, which yet must have had a long foreground somewhere for such a start. I rubbed my eyes a little to see if this sunbeam were no illusion; but the solid sense of the book is a sober certainty. It has the best merits, namely of fortifying & encouraging.

I did not know until I, last night, saw the book advertised in a newspaper, that I could trust the name as real and available for a post-office. I wish to see my benefactor, & have felt much like striking my tasks, & visiting New York to pay you my respects.

R. W. Emerson

Mr. Walter Whitman.

(Love that my benefactor, eh? Emerson saying he’s not Whitman’s benefactor, but vice-versa!)

Whitman — not really a fool, but maybe just a tad bit, um, well, brash — immediately put this private letter to good public use, even going so far as to quote from it on the spine of a later edition (without asking Emerson first). I can’t imagine, even remotely, having the temerity to do something like that. Even assuming I could sufficiently gather my wits anytime in the succeeding months to try, y’know? I’d just be so flattened, immobilized, by a letter at all like this.

Which made me wonder: what author living today would have this effect on me? What author looms so large either in my own head, or in the culture at large, that I’d just about fall over, stunned, if I got a letter like this from him or her?

I don’t know. Toni Morrison, maybe? Stephen King? John Irving? J.K. Rowling? Michael Chabon or Jeffrey Eugenides? Thomas Pynchon? Ghostly writing, in mid-air or on lavatory wall, signed by E.B. White, Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut?

I’m not talking career here — not “Of whom could I make the best use?” but rather, “Whose unsolicited, whole-hearted and unambivalent approval would send me into swooning ecstasy?”

Who’d do it for you?

Your Favorite Bookish Blogs?

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I first read about this on Twitter last week, via Travis Erwin: the second annual Book Blogger Appreciation Week, sponsored by Amy Riley of the My Friend Amy blog. Among other details at the site are these raisons d’etre:

WHAT A week where we come together, celebrate the contribution and hard work of book bloggers in promoting a culture of literacy, connecting readers to books and authors, and recognizing the best among us with the Second Annual BBAW Awards. There will be special guest posts, daily blogging themes, and giveaways.

WHY Because books matter. In a world full of options, the people talking about books pour hard work, time, energy, and money into creating a community around the written word. I, Amy, the founder of Book Blogger Appreciation Week love this community of bloggers and want to shower my appreciation on you!

Now, I don’t know what Running After My Hat is, exactly. But it would be a stretch to say it’s “about books.” So I feel perfectly non-conflicted — well, as much as I ever am, anyhow — in recommending that you stop by to (a) nominate your own favorites in any of the many different categories, and (b) register your own blog. (Registering makes you automatically eligible for the BBAW “grand prize,” whatever that is. I went ahead and registered RAMH just in case they use it to validate votes, minimize or eliminate ballot-stuffing, and so on.)

No idea what prizes or giveaways will be offered. And after a grand total of, uh, well, one previous prize year, we’re probably not talking about all-expenses-paid trips to tropical paradises, brand-new hybrid SUVs, kitchen makeovers, and so on.

But hey, who wouldn’t want to recognize and support the best blogs about books? We’ve all got favorites, right? Let ’em know!

A Useful Typo

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…just now encountered, although I myself can’t use it this exact moment. Permission granted to do with as you will. Definition supplied free of charge:

fumor (fyoo’-mor), n. A rotten mood; a silent stewing of one’s psyche in frustrating but unalterable circumstances. E.g., Dealing with the idiots in her bridge club always put Madge in a fumor, but what could she do? They were her friends.
fumorous (fyoo’-mor-us), adj. Tending to induce or having already induced a fumor. E.g., Ack! The line to get a book signed by the famous author formed a fumorous, two-block serpent stretching down the rainy street.
fumor, fumored, fumoring, v.t. To regard a frustrating situation balefully, often wishing the most ill of wills upon the persons or other entities which have put one here. E.g., With his fully pregnant bride enduring contractions in the back seat of his car, Jerry could do little but fumor the officious traffic cop. The sonofabitch was standing in a pile of excrement left by a passing farm animal, but Jerry was damned if he’d share the information.

(Also feel free to localize the spelling as appropriate: fumour, etc.)

Looking Glass

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This week, a little something different: Usually, I start my Friday post by pulling something at random from the last seven days’ selections at whiskey river. Then I go on to include a handful of poems, quotations, film clips, and/or songs to which the whiskey river snippet led me (by whatever inscrutable chain of thoughts).

Today, I’ve already got some poetry which I encountered elsewhere (scroll down to see ) in the last week, poetry which I really liked.

With that already rustling in my head, then, I stopped by at whiskey river‘s archives, called whiskey river’s commonplace book, and just started to browse.

From whiskey river’s commonplace book (no specific link; it’s about halfway down the page):

Prayer

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
entering and exiting their own unison in unison) making of
themselves a
visual current, one that cannot freight or sway by
minutest fractions the water’s downdrafts and upswirls, the
dockside cycles of finally-arriving boat-wakes, there where
they hit deeper resistance, water that seems to burst into
itself (it has those layers), a real current though mostly
invisible sending into the visible (minnows) arrowing
motion that forces change —
this is freedom. This is the force of faith. Nobody gets
what they want. Never again are you the same. The longing
is to be pure. What you get is to be changed. More and more by
each glistening minute, through which infinity threads itself,
also oblivion, of course, the aftershocks of something
at sea. Here, hands full of sand, letting it sift through
in the wind, I look in and say take this, this is
what I have saved, take this, hurry. And if I listen
now? Listen, I was not saying anything. It was only
something I did. I could not choose words. I am free to go.
I cannot of course come back. Not to this. Never.
It is a ghost posed on my lips. Here: never.

(Jorie Graham [source])

Not from whiskey river:

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Of Double Dactyls, Electric Velocipedes, and Hedgehogs

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Check out this TED video, of lexicographer Erin McKean (note the “View Subtitles” button — an option I wish were available everywhere, for obvious reasons):

Cool, huh?

Especially given that two years later, her new online super-duper improved version of the dictionary concept is actually online now. It’s called WordNik, and it’s very interesting.

I went to the WordNik site, and entered the word touchstone into the blank field. Here are some of the things I found out:

  • I got four examples of the word’s use in a sentence, drawn from Project Gutenberg texts of public-domain works. For instance:

    To answer this, we must consider the argument for conceivability as the touchstone which is to separate the “Knowable” from the “Unknowable.” The Arena Volume 4, No. 19, June, 1891

  • The original, non-metaphorical meaning (per the American Heritage Dictionary) was: “A hard black stone, such as jasper or basalt, formerly used to test the quality of gold or silver by comparing the streak left on the stone by one of these metals with that of a standard alloy.”
  • The word had shown up in Twitter tweets twice (ha!) within the previous 20(ish) minutes.
  • My favorite, this image showing the word’s popularity over time:
    (The caption under the image explains, “Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year. Bubble height: unusualness in that year.”)

I don’t know. Maybe it’s just me. But this sort of thing isn’t just fun and cool; it feels like a leap, y’know?

The Mystery of Misplaceable Modifiers

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According to numerous sources, J.R.R. Tolkien offered this memory of his first story — not the plot, not (really) the characters, not the setting, but the language:

I first tried to write a story when I was about seven. It was about a dragon. I remember nothing about it except a philological fact. My mother said nothing about the dragon, but pointed out that one could not say “a green great dragon,” but had to say “a great green dragon.” I wondered why, and still do.

I wonder that kind of stuff all the time. Sometimes you can sort of make sense of the “rule”; for instance, in an animal breed or species name which includes a modifier, you can’t reasonably separate the modifier from the noun. A friendly wire-haired terrier works. A wire-haired friendly terrier doesn’t — even though it imparts exactly the same information.

Other times, maybe, something just “sounds right” one way but not another. It was the longest, most difficult journey I ever took: yeah, that’s all right. It was the most difficult, longest journey I ever took: if I wrote that sentence, I’d immediately want to revise it.

Even when the two adjectives are of similar lengths and/or sounds, one alternative chimes and the other thuds. A cold, clear morning: ding! A clear, cold morning: whoomp!

I can’t believe I have much of anything in common with Tolkien — and nothing at all uniquely in common. So: What’s up with this? Any theories?

_____________________

P.S. This sort of thing must drive copy editors — and ESL teachers — crazy.

Stories in the Trees

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[The artwork above comes from a fantastic — fantastically rich, but also just literally fantastic — Web site called The Hermitage, from the mind and imagination of artist Rima Staines. She and her companion Tui seem to have a life straight out of fiction, as you can see from her blog. Check out their “wandering house,” which is to a motor home as a cottage is to an office, and her handmade clocks (!).]

From whiskey river:

Generations

Our stories lie down in the orchard,
their time is not now, but something is
coming, something is going away. They

rise to the stars, and wait to be told.
There are listeners who know how little
we know, how much we are feeling.

We had to go our own way, a little off course,
always, no matter how specific the directions
seemed at the time. In this universe if we’re lucky,

we will live in our children’s stories,
their tales that will turn us to legend,
some absurd truth that has nothing to do

with our plans, our meticulous records.
No matter what stories we discard or keep,
they will give us a life we cannot imagine.

(Jeanne Lohmann, from The Light of Invisible Bodies [source])

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