Thanks to Reader C. for today’s WORD which, when I started looking for it, turns up everywhere in books I’ve read, some multiple times. And to Reader B. who recommended the book today’s WORK comes from. How much I must unknowingly miss every minute, every day.
WORK
“Or perhaps it is just that George has spent proper time looking at this one painting and that every single experience of looking at something would be this good if she devoted time to everything she looked at.”
—Ali Smith
—from How to Be Both_
WORD(S)
bosky /BAW-skee/. adjective. Abundant with woods, shrubbery or greenery. Verdant. Rarely: tipsy or drunk. Perhaps a variant of busky (same primary meaning), ultimately from Latin boscus (wood).
“Coming down a stony draw through green and well nigh lightless grottoes where lay stones and windfall trees alike anonymous beneath the mantled moss he saw cross through a bosky glen two equine phantoms pale with purpose: one, the next, and gone in the dark of the forest.” (Cormac McCarthy)
“It was a sight to make one bosky out of hand. Indeed, the warming properties of strong drink give it a more seductive appeal at sea than it ever has ashore” (William Golding)
“Hail, many-colour’d messenger, that ne’er
Dost disobey the wife of Jupiter;
Who with thy saffron wings upon my flowers
Diffusest honey-drops, refreshing showers,
And with each end of thy blue bow dost crown
My bosky acres and my unshrubb’d down,
Rich scarf to my proud earth; why hath thy queen
Summon’d me hither, to this short-grass’d green?”
(William Shakespeare)"…The green is a reflective green, a green
in the juicy shadows of leaves—a bosky even green—
a word I will learn to use, and use without self-
consciousness, when at last I go to Germany. I have
holed myself away here, sometimes I am not here
at all, and I feel like the nice clean hole in the leaf
and the magnifying glass above me.
(Patricia Lockwood)
WEB
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A collection of articles based on private journals…including Nina Simone. → The Longform Guide to Diaries
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“But IDEA Books also culls together texts so seemingly strange and obscure, volumes you didn’t think could possibly have existed, that you’ll want them for your own shelves immediately.” A strange book collecting niche. → Paper Chase: In Pursuit of Rare Books
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Typophiles, prepare a drink → ‘Comic Papyrus’ Is Basically Your Biggest Typographic Nightmare Come True.
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Discovery of Long-Lost Silent Film With All-Indian Cast Has Historians Reeling
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Today is International Sunflower Guerrilla Gardening Day. In its 9th year, thousands of participants plant/scatter sunflower seeds in urban spots that would otherwise be bare and neglected. See some of the flowers of the guerrilla’s labor in their flickr photo group. There’s even a helpful instructional video.
WATCH/WITNESS
A reconstruction of a triptych sketched in a letter by Vincent Van Gogh (use the ‘Facsimile’ link to view).
REPRISES/RESPONSES/REJOINDERS/RIPOSTES
- Reader E. votes yes on a contest: “Love the idea of the Cormac McCarthy contest. :-) You should look at the O. Henry story contest and the Bulwer-Lytton contests as models…” — Thanks! It’s going to happen soon. You heard it here first…
Multiple readers had thoughts on on Sherman Alexie’s “Facebook Sonnet.” I love hearing from the Clamor!
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Reader B.: “Arg. I like Alexie. but that’s just more silly tech-bashing. It dates back to Robert Putnam’s foolish insistence that online socialization didn’t count, and now Jaron Lanier’s idiotic but well-paid anti-internet stuff.”
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Reader G.: “Although I didn’t entirely agree with Sherman’s Alexie’s Facebook poem, I didn’t entirely disagree with it either. I have a connection with many of the people from my past after years of moving and the passage of time. I haven’t taken the time to forge the same connection with people in my present. But my friends on Facebook are my friends because I do value them and I want to know about them and I still care about them. Most of them are not from high school for me, but from everywhere I’ve ever lived. I do find Facebook a place of simultaneous connection and loneliness too. Interesting poem. I keep thinking about it.¶ He wrote a nice sonnet about something many people can relate to I think.”
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Reader T.: “I think it is more of an observation than a condemnation or a judgment. As in, there is a lot of loneliness on display and/or being facilitated by Facebook, but it’s not so much Facebook causing it. The loneliness was always there, but now at least we’re able to connect more on SOME level.”
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Reader N. shares a pleasing connection: I enjoyed the Facebook sonnet by Sherman Alexie. It reminded me of the vogue for satire about the too popular watering spots, Bath and Brighton, by Jane Austen and many others. A very popular satire was a full-length book of satirical epistles called “The New Bath Guide” by Christopher Anstey—written in the mid 18th century, several decades before Austen wrote. Here’s a small sample:
Then, O sweet goddess, bring with thee
Thy boon attendant Gaiety,
Laughter, Freedom, Mirth, and Ease,
And all the smiling deities;
Fancy, spreading painted sails,
Loves that fan with gentle gales.—
But hark!—methinks I hear a voice,
My organs all at once rejoice;
A voice that says, or seems to say,
“Sister, hasten, sister gay,
”Come to the pump—room—come away."
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