word of the day: haruspication

word of the day: haruspication

context:

They made love for a long time and finished wet and exhausted. Like swimmers, Browne thought. By the standards of his sexual haruspication, it augured well. He woke briefly, thinking he had heard her in tears. She appeared asleep. He thought it must have been a dream.

definition (Merriam-Webster): an act or instance of foretelling something

Other sources have the foretelling specifically from the examination of animal entrails. 

Ah, the seeking of omens. I wonder what made looking at spilled guts a method of predicting the future. When one “spills one’s guts” these days, it means one is confessing. But then, those are one’s own guts being spilled, not a slaughtered animal’s. I suppose during slaughter the spilling of the animal’s guts can’t be avoided. Presumably the guts fell out in some particularly weird and memorable way one day, then later something else weird and memorable happened, thus the connection. Who knows?

source:

Outerbridge Reach

by Robert Stone

1992. Ticknor & Fields, New York NY

word of the day: nun buoy

word of the day: nun buoy

context:

In mid-harbor he turned his back on the lights and Liberty’s statue. Hard by the Bayonne shore, he skirted a nun buoy and passed under the lighted fantail of an enormous container ship riding at anchor. Three Filipino crewmen leaned against the rail, smoking, looking silently down on him.

definition (Merriam-Webster): a red metal buoy made of two cones joined at the base and usually marking the starboard side of a channel approached from the sea

Another source gives the origin of the “nun” part as meaning a “spinning top.” I learned “buoy” phonetically as “boo-ee,” but apparently it’s also pronounced “boy.” Thus the nun buoy could be a boy nun, which is rather fun. Or maybe none boy? 

source:

Outerbridge Reach

by Robert Stone

1992. Ticknor & Fields, New York NY

The road that didn’t get here

I’ve been dealing with bouts of envy. This is not new, exactly, but I am old now (55) so it just seems more critical. I want my writings collected in books, which are available in bookstores and libraries. I want to go on a book tour. I don’t want to have to do it all myself. My ambitions seem pretty modest. I don’t expect to write bestsellers, or have Terry Gross suck my Fresh Air or sit on a panel at the Big Book Fair (none which I would scorn, however).

When I came across Jesse Browner’s How Did I Get Here?: making peace with the road not taken, I thought, maybe he’ll offer some consolation, this successful writer offering up an essay about how unsuccessful he is — like me, minus the successful part. 

And some of it just made me roll my eyes. Really? He’s complaining about a life that sounds similar to one I dreamed of as a kid. Polyglot, in his 20s Browner got a well-paid and intellectually stimulating job at the United Nations, married and had two daughters and is still married, and is regularly publishing books. Browner thinks he’s a failure because his books don’t pay his bills, he never sees anybody reading his books on the subway, and he’s not a bohemian living only for his art. Browner’s romantic views of poverty are not mine. I always hated being poor, whereas I used to dream of being an interpreter at the UN. That job seemed so important, if unsung. I have studied other languages, not to no avail but well shy of fluency. I don’t know that I ever had particular dreams about kids of my own, but I like kids, and in one of those alternate universe versions of my life (the kind of musing Browner does quite a bit in the book) I imagine myself as a father. 

But I did end up liking How Did I Get Here? Like Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof, “On the one hand … but on the other hand …”, Browner tries out different ways of thinking about his situation. The essay is framed by a discussion of Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken,” and Browner does a good thorough reading of that poem. It’s a far more ambiguous poem than its reputation suggests. “Two roads diverged in a wood, and I— / I took the one less traveled by, / And that has made all the difference.” I like the way Browne even allows that the outcome of that fateful decision might have been terrible. The poet doesn’t really say. The mood of the poem seems wistful and satisfied rather than anguished and regretful, but no concrete result is described. Wealth? Love? Good drugs? The monastery?

So let’s say you are an artist, and underappreciated. What advice does Jesse Browner have for you? Fortunately, it’s less advice and more example. Here’s what I wrestled with in my head, kids. Maybe it will mean something to you?

My favorite line in the book is this one (by “work” he means his writing, not his day job):

My work was there to keep me alive, and it was doing exactly what it was supposed to do, but I was asking it to make me happy, and that was not its job.

With all big dreams of capturing the world’s attention unfulfilled, how then does the work serve? With commitment to one’s art not bringing satisfaction and contentment as one had expected, is there any point in doing it? To live. Really? To live?

Rereading the quote out of the context of Jesse Browner’s argument I see that “work” he’s referring to could also be the day job … so long as it keeps you alive. (Browner does explore this idea when he discusses Franz Kafka’s oft-voiced distaste for his day job, one at which, Browner says, Kafka actually excelled, moving up in the company and garnering much praise from his supervisors.)

And here we come upon one of my rare insights into the notion of the Blues. Why indulge sadness when you could strive to be happy? Well, there’s sadness in everything because nothing lasts forever. Happiness is great. I much prefer it. And I have a nagging tic of suicidal ideation. But for me the writing of a poem is the visiting of a place, and in that place that feels like a nexus many a disparate thread comes together into a cloth, or a poem. Browner also wonders what “meaning” is in the search for meaning. And I think we agree that the meaning is in the meaning, that is, meaning is an action, meaning is in the making of meaning (or maybe the searching). 

Live while you’re alive. 

source:

How Did I Get Here?: making peace with the road not taken

by Jesse Browner

2015. Harper Wave / HarperCollins, New York NY