Vocabulary, word play, and the grains of bigger ideas.
If there is a distant shore strewn far across the vast and endless sea from the righteous land where the fascist and power mad make their camps and hawk their wares, that is where you’ll find I’ve pitched my tent. On the map, you may think it always on your left. And you may be right. But the world is a circle not well served by the illusion of two dimensional cartography.
If you look, I’m always just beside you. So close, and yet so far away.
19 Apr 2025
Leave a CommentSpent his life exposing anyone he could to his art, until he went broke and died from doing it.
Worth every damn minute and every single penny. There’s no Nothing better. And if there was, no one could afford it.
So what’s the point of worrying about that? All that does is pay for a bigger stone to chisel words into like this, so people you don’t know or who don’t really remember what you were like most of the time, can read about you when you’re dead, in one of the few places on earth you can still go and find a little quiet.
And even then, somebody or something is always singing.
19 APR 2025
Leave a CommentNot hearingLeave a Comment
not listening
ignoring
sensing
noticing
hearing
listening
responding
writing
practicing
playing
memorizing
performing
recording
remembering
18 APR 2025
ebullient exuberant, bubbling over with high spirits
Beware the fool, whose loud ebullient laugh
jumps back and forth, like a cracked phonograph.
It’s not a truly happy sign at all;
more like the echo of a cattle call.
éclat conspicuous success, general applause or acclaim, elaborate display
Most public piety, with grand éclat,
convinces fools, while real saints turn away.
ectoplasm a substance supposed to be exuded from a spiritual medium during a trance
we paid our fifty dollars for a reading,
but got no ectoplasm, despite pleading.
emolument a fee received, a salary
What great emolument my service earned
in living costs and taxes was soon burned.
encomium high praise given in speech or writing
Leave off encomium, my cheering thralls;
hard cash seems much more useful, after all.
endogenous growing or originating from within
true moral strength, they say,
must be endogenous;
receiving it through discipline,
it dodges us.
ennui boredom
If you would fight ennui, don’t overtire,
else you just bore yourself ’til you expire.
equivocal able to be interpreted in two ways, ambiguous
Yes, truth and guilt can often seem
equivocal – part fact, part scheme –
designed to trick us from both sides
and leave chaos where they collide.
ersatz serving as a substitute, especially of an inferior kind
Wise men and fools alike believe
themselves led by the truth in things.
One sees a world that cannot be,
while one accepts an ersatz king.
euphemism a mild or roundabout expression substituted for one considered improper or too harsh or blunt
Don’t shuffle on or pass away,
give up the ghost or fade to gray.
Let euphemisms such as these
just die, expire and soon decease.
declivity a downward slope
And so it seems, with very little fuss,
the future’s come: declivity and rust.
defalcation misappropriation of funds, a breach of trust concerning money
If you would find the truth in situations,
follow the money: seek for defalcation.
deleterious harmful to mind or body
His politics weren’t radical or serious,
but how he wielded them was deleterious.
demimonde the world of women of doubtful reputation and social standing
Where are these righteous men in secret found?
Out sneaking to some maligned demimonde.
demotic of ordinary people
It’s more difficult to be despotic
when your clay’s matériel demotic.
digress to depart from the main subject temporarily in speaking or writing
If you would pontificate progress,
stay on point; you’ll lose them with digress.
dissociate to separate in one’s thoughts
It is an easy thing to find support
among the throng who live for hunt as sport:
they disassociate themselves from what they seek,
imagining themselves the strong, not weak.
doctrinaire applying theories or principles without regard for practical considerations
So many think themselves bold doctrinaires,
defending with their dying breath ideals
whose goals are some great future bright and fair,
but need a path wrought out of blood and steel.
donnybrook a wild fight, a free for all
A duck, then a dodge, then a mighty left hook!
Broken chair, busted lip, a damn fine donnybrook.
dybbuk the evil spirit of a dead person that enters and controls a live person’s body
What darkness has the dybbuk found here seen
that fouls with discontent and hate the mind,
and would destroy that good the world has been
in some revenge for what it left behind?
10 FEB 2017
Leave a Commentchaste, n.
The state of being pursued, but not yet within the grasp of the pursuer. For example, it could be said that one is chaste, or in fact chased, until they are caught or captured. Quite often the value placed upon chastity, which is of course the affliction associated with the quarry’s unnaturally extended ability to outrun its would-be captors, is determined by the perceived value of the quarry as a showpiece once it is mounted, or otherwise preserved as a trophy of some kind. Unfortunately, this measure of quality is too often determined only by the pursuer (i.e., beauty in the eye of the beholder) relative to the more or less flimsy, variable and/or whimsical tastes of its own society. As a result, being a worthy adversary with respect to said capture is prized when the object being hunted is pursued by someone else, and decried as unfair when pertaining to the object of one’s own inclinations. But then again, such are the characteristics of double standards, after all.
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