189.366 - 2016 project and muddle

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

muddle

the English language has stolen words from countless languages, but one of the best thefts is muddle.  we weren't satisfied to steal it, we stole it and twisted its meaning and added meanings of our own, twisted those and wound up with the muddle it means today!  when I first ran into it, I was a child trying to understand this mysterious place grownups called "home".  the grownups were mostly UnitedStatesian Baptist missionaries in northeastern Brasil, where I lived, who made it very clear that where they lived and worked was definitely not home.  the other two accesses I had to "home" were Time magazine and the Reader's Digest.  so I may have had a distorted idea of "home".  but in one of them I ran into the word muddle, and looked it up in the dictionary.  I should probably call it the Dictionary.  it was an Unabridged Dictionary with its own wooden stand.  whenever I ran into a word I didn't know, I looked the word up in that Dictionary.  often that helped, but sometimes I would look up some word like hempsquatch, for instance, and be told that it meant a sampbiddle of froombisqutable vornadoes or a hoople of polisidereal formpfnagels. these are not helpful to a foreign child, who can only imagine the beings to whom those mean something.  but muddle wan't like that.  it had half a dozen or so meanings, and I understood each!  better than that, it was like a secret word!  it fit so many things I ran into.  the time after a school assembly was announced but before it started.  what grownups sounded like talking before an event.  my room before my mother lost her temper.  (I never found it.  prob'ly just as well.)  my family when I tried to figure out how anyone ever put us together.  the books in my "library".  what a map of all the ways I had walked home would look like.  what life felt like.  the bicycle I'd seen after a truck ran over it.  I treasured that word!  I'm not sure I ever used it out loud until long after the grownups yanked me out of northeastern Brasil and dumped me into this place called "home".  which was indeed just like Time or the Reader's Digest had described it.

188.366 - 2016 project and walking

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

walking

this is as in "oh, how I miss walking!"  that kind of appreciation.  my ankles hurt.  the balls of my feet hurt.  my knees sometimes hurt.  what I do now is an imitation of walking.  many of the motions are the same, but slower, and jerky.  I can push myself up into a more or less erect stance, then coax one leg and then the other to take a step.  oh, it does make me appreciate walking even like I did it it a coupla (more or less two) weeks ago, but especially walking like I did most of my life.  walking was natural and easy, it took me everywhere.  well, nearly everywhere.  I did ride my bicycle, then my scooter (a Lambretta), I rode in cars, I rode my motorcycle, then my Harley.  But mostly I walked.  or ran up stairs, or skipped down them two at a time.  mostly I walked.  it was easy and apparently thoughtless.  now it is neither, and I still walk, in the apartment, or down to the car.  I walk short distances from the car when we go some place, then I sit down.  and now and then, facing a long walk (two or three blocks) from the car to where I'm going, I balk.  at Kaiser-Permanente, I borrow one of their wheelchairs.  trust me, I really do appreciate walking.

187.366 - 2016 project and Holly Prado

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

Holly Prado

Holly Prado shows up for a poetry reading and turns it into an Event.  she is a Presence, an embodiment of Poetry, at least a representative of the Muse.  if Holly Prado reads, she invites us to hear her as Just Another Person who happens to write poetry, but it is impossible.  she removes all the muddle from English.  she lets us feel what it is to be Holly Prado and wake up in the morning, or to lose a friend to death, or to smell a breeze in spring.  I do not mean she writes anything confessional, but personal and intimate, yes, like Emily Dickinson might if she were alive in 2016, or like Stephen Hawking might if he wrote poetry.

186.366 - 2016 project and the United States of America

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

the United States of America

yes, I do.  and I appreciate them so frustratedly!  ever since I was a school kid and read my American school books, often quickly followed by a Brasilian newspaper or by Brasilian history at school.  how was one to believe both?  in the American books (yes, we don't acknowledge that Brasilians are Americans, not even that Mexicans are), the USA is dedicated and committed to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.  how come Americans don't look happy then?  in picture after picture after picture of Americans, they look like a people who just walked out of a prayer meeting and bit into an onion.  and that's how I remembered Americans from my brief first grade visit:  sour, unhappy, cranky people who quickly put on a smile if you were identified as family, but lost it when you spoke.  "doesn't the child speak English?"  "yes, but with an accent."  "oh.  well then."  sometimes we would try again, the whole smile-and-speak thing.  yes, Americans might pursue Happiness, but they obviously didn't find it often.  and Americans invade other countries - they had to, according to Time magazine - which nearly always meant killing and people grieving.  so much for Life.  unless you meant the magazine.  but, no, they couldn't have known about cameras and slick paper back in 1776!  it was very confusing.  that left Liberty.  maybe the USA stood for Liberty.  but where?  I decided I'd have to figure that out later, when I got older.  I'd love to report to you that I did, but I didn't.  the USA may stand for Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness, but I can't see them in its actions.  nevertheless, I think the American people believe they do.  somehow that gives me hope.  maybe Happiness will show up in American faces.  maybe the commitment to Life will show up.  maybe someone will explain Liberty to me in a way that our commitment to it shows up for me.  but in any case, hurray for America!  hurray for the USA!   hurray for the red, white'n'blue!

185.366 - 2016 project and soldiers

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

soldiers

there's just something clean about soldiers, isn't there?  we train them to kill on command, and to let nothing but being killed stop them from killing until we give the counter-command.  and damn!  they do that!  and of course, we mess it up.  we can't stand that cleanness, that simplicity.  but partly they mess it up too.  they are way more complicated than kill or be killed.  they are at just the right age so that if we hadn't trained them to be killers, they would be sex-hunters.  not that we acknowledge that.  but it's true even if we lie about it.  and they're at that strange age when they decide - I don't know how - that they need an education or that they don't need an education.  I'm not talking about the foolishness we fed them for twelve years.  if they're going to get an education, they have to unlearn that and learn what's really so.  if they're not going to get an education, then they choose to accept that foolishness as a real description of the real world.  yes, their civilian counterparts are making the same decision, but without the simplicity of kill-or-be-killed.  I guess what I mean is that that simplicity, that purity, gives them a nobility the rest of us don't share.  (maybe resenting that nobility is the reason we treat soldiers so shabbily when they become veterans.)  hail soldiers!  thank you for living like you do.  thank you for doing what you do.  thank you for being who you are.

184.366 - 2016 project and midyear, the second

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

midyear, the second

a friend of mine claims that on leap years, which have an even number of days, there is no midyear at all except for the tiny moment of midnight between DoY 183 and DoY 184.  "No, no, no, no, no," I say to him.  "we celebrate midyear for two days on Leap Years."  he remains unconvinced and counters that "we" , whoever "we" is do not celebrate midyear at all.  "Poo," I say to him.  "my blog, my rules.  we celebrate midyear for two days on leap years."  so here it is, DoY 184, July second,  midyear the second.  rejoice!  we begin the second half of our annual trip around the sun!

183.366 - 2016 project and midyear, the first

every day in 2016, write a sentence or a paragraph or a poem that appreciates

midyear, the first

Happy July day!  Happy midyear, the first!  Tonight at midnight we complete half of a full orbit around the sun since we began this calendar year, and since I began this project.  (if this were a regular year and not a leap year, we would complete it at noon today, and there would only be one midyear day.)  no, it's not aphelion.  that's not until about a half-hour past midnight on 5 July.  we didn't design our calendar year to coordinate with astronomical events.  nope, this is just a day like any other day, except that we're about to complete half a trip around the sun.