08 XI 2002 - 20:25 - verba39

There's a new entry behind this one...

Alchera calls me again. Wouldn't you know.

Sleep deprivation makes me good at word association. It does not however make me good at explaining myself coherently. I will put this up and then I will sink into bed and end everyone else's misery. That is, after all, my duty as a responsible citizen.

embellish - astonish - wonder - marvel - Vergil - Kyle - laughter - Catullus - dinner - Heathcliff - Gypsies - Romania - Black Sea - Crimea - England - Marmite - Vegemite - soldiers - uniforms - Fleet Week - noise - practice rooms - scarcity - water - wrists - skin - sandpaper - wood - Cross - Latin - library - heat - China - food - love - fire - smoke - [iskender]

Most of these references are relatively straightforward, but I'll take you through them in quickened form: embellish to astonish is through the similarity of sound (and perhaps the purpose). Astonish to wonder is verb-noun cause-effect, sort of, and then marvel is by way of a synonym. Vergil uses the word 'miror' which means 'to wonder' in one passage of the Aeneid that I as an AP student had to teach the class, so there's that. Kyle was one of the other AP students that year and although she was sometimes unprepared she completely made up for it by being enthusiastic and vital and incredibly present in a class with two timid Chinese people in the middle of the library. Not unsurprisingly, she has the most infectious laugh I have ever heard and gets completely lost in it (sorry Al). From laughter we get to Catullus because of his use of cacchinis, laughter, in "Cenabis bene, mi Fabulle, apud me" and from Catullus we get to dinner because the same poem is actually a dinner invitation to Fabullus -- sort of. From dinner we get to Heathcliff of Wuthering Heights fame because although I hated that book I did remember the class discussion we had about how dinner is the large meal of the day and supper is the evening meal, and how the city-boy narrator is therefore thrown off by the dinner-as-lunch thing. Heathcliff is supposed to be a Gypsy; from Rom to Romania is not a large leap and of course one cannot forget the beautiful Black Sea coast when speaking of Romania, unless one is speaking rather of Transylvania (but that's an entirely different subject and perhaps one of contention with the Hungarian minority). Also present on the Black Sea (besides, by the way, Colchis probably in the Republic of Georgia, of Jason and the Argonauts fame although the Georgians have a folktale where Medea is virtuous -- as do the Greeks, the Greeks have many versions, I digress again) is the Crimean peninsula. From the Crimea it is not hard to get to England by way of the Crimean War, and from England we get to Marmite and because of the -ite suffix we get to Vegemite. Vegemite I believe was developed by the Australians to ensure its soldiers B-complex during the Second World War (from beer residue) although I may be wrong but the associations developed remain. Soldiers of course wear uniforms which are present throughout the city during our Fleet Week which is when the Blue Angels fly with their fighter jets oh-so-close to Coit Tower which is why they are so damned noisy, scattering everyone's concentration for the week that they're here. Noise also filters out of the practice rooms at the Conservatory of Music (and sometimes one wishes it hadn't) -- and in the current building there is great scarcity of available practice rooms up until about 8 PM (and then the building closes). I live in California; of course water scarcity is an issue (unless it floods). I was threatened with developing wrist problems and was told to use contrast baths to tame the problem -- dipping my wrists in hot, then cold water until... until I felt something. Wrists are of course covered with skin. In physics we did a lab which involved really fine-grained sandpaper (2000 grain count per inch? I can't remember) that began to feel bizarrely like skin (thanks Tiff) so there's that. Sandpaper is most commonly used on wood, not aluminum, however, so there's that, and then the Cross was made from wood, and as for Latin, Crucifixus etiam pro nobis sub Pontio Pilato in the Nicene Creed serves for that association. Latin of course is found in libraries worldwide and I enjoy spending my time with both. The school library is the only repository of heat in the building, I promise you... Chinese summers are terrible in their heat and humidity, but China also means food like no other, and food is love -- no hugs, just a steaming dish of your favorite food placed before you. Love is a fire that burns; where there's smoke, there's fire, and I am ashamed to say how I derived [iskender] from 'smoke.' Perhaps I will save face by saying that smoke represents a hopeless desire where fire is a fierce one. And there I end.

I could have extended it three before my brain petered out -- 'red scarves' for the ones he wears, then 'Communism' the book 'Red Scarf Girl,' which I've actually never read, and then 'exile,' for what it meant to the Nationalists and many who suffered through regime changes...