Category Archives: Words + Words of The Day

Tales of Brave Ulysses

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We finally had rain AND thunder! In the middle of a downpour, I absolutely forgot how to turn on my windshield wipers. I had to pull over and search for the owner’s manual to figure it out. That’s exactly how long it’s been since we had sky water! From last night to this morning, there was more than an inch of rain. More is on the way.

For some reason, it seems like a Cream kind of day, and I can’t exactly explain why I feel like this…

Ulysses, also known as Odysseus, is a character of Greek mythology. Homer wrote The Odyssey about Odysseus, king of Ithaca, who wanders for ten years (although the action of the poem covers only the final six weeks) trying to get home after the Trojan War.

When the original Angel Boy was young enough for nightly bedtime stories, we read The Odyssey to him (truth!) and think, in some small way, that it helped to encourage his professorial and writing talents.

Tales of Brave Ulysses

You thought the leaden winter
Would bring you down forever
But you rode upon a steamer
To the violence of the sun

And the colours of the sea
Bind your eyes with trembling mermaids
And you touch the distant beaches
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing
For the sparkling waves are calling you
To kiss their white laced lips

And you see a girl’s brown body
Dancing through the turquoise
And her footprints make you follow
Where the sky loves the sea
And when your fingers find her
She drowns you in her body
Carving deep blue ripples
In the tissues of your mind

Tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter

Her name is Aphrodite
And she rides a crimson shell
And you know you cannot leave her
For you touched the distant sands
With tales of brave Ulysses
How his naked ears were tortured
By the sirens sweetly singing

Tiny purple fishes
Run laughing through your fingers
And you want to take her with you
To the hard land of the winter

Background: The lyrics are inspired by Homer’s Odyssey, an account of the adventures undertaken by Ulysses. This can be seen in the song’s reference to “naked ears … tortured by the sirens sweetly singing,” an event from Homer’s epic. When interviewed on the episode of the VH1 show, Classic Albums, which featured Disraeli Gears, lyricist Martin Sharp explained that he had recently returned from Ibiza, which was the source of many of the images in the song (e.g. “tiny purple fishes run laughing through her fingers”) and the general feeling of having left an idyll to return to “the hard lands of the winter” https://www.lyricinterpretations.com/cream/tales-of-brave-ulysses

A live version…

Pythagoras Knew

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“As long as Man continues to be the ruthless destroyer of lower living beings, he will never know health or peace. For as long as men massacre animals, they will kill each other. Indeed, he who sows the seed of murder and pain cannot reap joy and love.”

In other words, don’t kill or eat animals. Be kind. Be VEGAN.

The Adventitious Line Up

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Adventitious: associated with something by chance rather than as an integral part; extrinsic.

I didn’t realize until I checked the photo that all of those seagulls were lined up because my eyes were only focused on the waves. The gulls were an unexpected happenstance.

The term “line up” is usually associated with a row of surfers in a spot where they anticipate a good wave break, in their attempt to catch that elusive best ride of the surf sesh.

Adventitious; an unanticipated word of the day.

Searching

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“I am out with lanterns, looking for myself.” — Emily Dickinson

Curated from Pinterest. Unknown. Credit to the artist.

Satori: Word of the Day

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In Zen Buddhism, satori defines the inner, intuitive experience of enlightenment, perhaps similar to having an epiphany.

Satori is said to be unexplainable, indescribable, and unintelligible by reason and logic.

It is comparable to the experience undergone by Gautama Buddha when he sat under the Bo tree and is the central Zen goal.

It’s a moment of total presence, of no mind and no thought but a flash of insight and awakening of the light of our own consciousness.

I also discovered that in Japanese folklore, Satori are mind-reading monkey-like monsters said to dwell within the mountains of Hida and Mino. That sounds pretty scary to me, so I’ll stick to the other definition of satori as instant enlightenment.

Have you experienced satori?

“Satori is the sudden flashing into consciousness of a new truth hitherto undreamed of. It is a sort of mental catastrophe taking place all at once, after much piling up of matters intellectual and demonstrative. The piling has reached a limit of stability and the whole edifice has come tumbling to the ground, when, behold, a new heaven is open to full survey.”

D.t. Suzuki, An Introduction to zen Buddhism

Thalassophile: Word of the Day

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Thalassophile: One who loves the sea.

That would definitely be ME. I love all bodies of water; oceans, lakes, waterfalls, creeks, and ponds. I need vitamin SEA!

Thalassophile is derived from the Greek word thalassa which means sea, and the word ‘phile or philos,’ a person fond of something specific.

The word is also influenced by Greek mythology where Primordial Goddess Thalassa was the primeval goddess and spirit of the sea.

Thalassa was the literal body of the sea and in Aesop fables, manifests as a woman formed of sea water, dressed in seaweed instead of clothing. Check out her hair, which is similar to mine, lol.

This eternal spirit of the sea was sometimes portrayed rising from the water, which is definitely NOT me, as I rarely submerge myself in the briny deep.

In sky news, the planet now named Thalassa was discovered in August 1989. Thalassa was most likely formed from fragments of Neptune’s original moons, which were smashed by the disturbances caused when the ice giant Neptune captured Triton. Thalassa is unusual for an irregular moon because it is roughly disk-shaped.

Thalassa circles the planet in the same direction as Neptune rotates, and remains close to Neptune’s equatorial plane. Thalassa’s orbit is slowly decaying due to tidal deceleration and may eventually crash into Neptune’s atmosphere or be torn apart and form a planetary ring.

As above, so below…

Word of the Day: Nemophilist

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This is such a great word!

Nemophilist: One who is fond of forest or forest scenery; a haunter of the woods.

Photo by veeterzy on Pexels.com

Oh yes, I’d love to haunt some woods right about now, with the stars above and the full moon to guide a late night hike…

There is a pleasure in the pathless woods,
There is a rapture on the lonely shore,
There is society, where none intrudes,
By the deep sea, and music in its roar:
I love not man the less, but Nature more,
From these our interviews, in which I steal
From all I may be, or have been before,
To mingle with the Universe, and feel
What I can ne'er express, yet cannot all conceal.
George Gordon Byron

(George Gordon was an English romantic poet and peer. He was one of the leading figures of the Romantic movement, and has been regarded as among the greatest of English poets. Wiki)

Word of the Day: Lalochezia

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Are you guilty of doing this, too?

The word of the day is lalochezia. It’s a noun formed from the Greek lalia (speech) and chezo (to relieve oneself).

Maybe that’s where the term “potty mouth” came from??

I have been known to unleash a hearty string of f-bombs and other expletives. To be completely honest, it is, usually, quite satisfying.

Lalochezia: The use of foul or abusive language to relieve stress or ease pain, emotional release through swearing.

Lalochezia describes that moment when you’re so stressed out and angry that you start spurting out the foulest language possible to relieve stress and pain.

Yup, been there, done that…

I’m sure that a few deep restorative yoga breaths — some vital prana — is probably way more soul healing, but in some cases the venting of specific profanity MIGHT be nearly as invigorating.

I guess I have a ways to go before I enter the transcendent state of nirvana, or as my dad would say, “that’s not very ladylike, Rosebud, and I’m sure you can think of more appropriate language.”

Not always.

(graphic from pinterest)

Enjambment | Measure: Robert Hass

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A few years ago UC Berkeley hosted an Eco-Poetics Conference. My son was invited to participate and while there he was honored to meet the poet, Robert Hass.

Hass served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 1995 to 1997. He won the 2007 National Book Award and shared the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for the collection Time and Materials: Poems 1997-2005. In 2014 he was awarded the Wallace Stevens Award from the Academy of American Poets.

I love the way his mind works, it’s as simple as that.

From Hass: “This poem is called measure – I think it belongs to my learning as a young writer as to where I felt poems were coming from.”

Measure 

Recurrences.
Coppery light hesitates
again in the small-leaved

Japanese plum. Summer
and sunset, the peace
of the writing desk

and the habitual peace
of writing, these things
form an order I only

belong to in the idleness
of attention. Last light
rims the blue mountain

and I almost glimpse
what I was born to,
not so much in the sunlight

or the plum tree
as in the pulse
that forms these lines.

FYI: Enjambment…From the French meaning “a striding over,” a poetic term for the continuation of a sentence or phrase from one line of poetry to the next. An enjambed line typically lacks punctuation at its line break, so the reader is carried smoothly and swiftly—without interruption—to the next line of the poem.

Word of the Day: Latibulate

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Latibulate is a word we definitely need to bring back into daily circulation!

It’s the the action of hiding oneself in a corner: verb, 17th century English.

To be in our latibule (noun) means a cozy, safe place, special to you, hidden away from everyone, in an attempt to escape reality; also to lie dormant.

A place to meditate? A she-shed? A man cave? A blanket fort?

I always thought it’d be so cool to have one of those hidden rooms, to be accessed only by those who knew which secret panel to press in a bookcase.

Or if you’re mom to a toddler, it could even be the bathroom, where we can hide for a few minutes of privacy and silence. Maybe. Maybe not.

“Mom/Grandma, are you in there? Whatcha doing? Can I come in? The door won’t open!”

Angel Boy 2.0 no longer joins me in the bathroom. That was a tradition we agreed to stop when he was four and he kept his word. Now that he’s seven, he likes his own private time and we all respect that, too.

Angel Girl, not yet four, is more fluid in her boundaries. She’s in that in between stage; not quite a big girl but no longer a baby. Sometimes she likes company and a chat, sometimes she likes to brush her teeth with me, mirroring all of my actions. Yes, it’s as adorable as you could picture it.

Especially now, we all need a place to latibulate away from civilization, far away from the madding crowd.

“Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
Their sober wishes never learned to stray;
Along the cool sequestered vale of life
They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.”
– Thomas Gray