Monday, July 20, 2009

Horse Head Confreres

"Dedman looked up at him
with a benign
flicker of the long curling eyelashes that gave his gaze a starry expectancy. He spoke with his lips hardly moving. 'Go chop some horsemeat,' he said.

Miss Appleton seemed rather flustered and out of breath, probably from the long climb. 'Peter, translate,' she said, and then she read aloud with her impeccable quantities,

' Dixit, et avertens rosea cervice refulsit,
ambrosiaeque comae divinum vertice odorem
spiravere, pedes vestis defluxit ad imos,
et vera incessu patuit dea. '

As she made these words ring, she wore her Latin face: corners of the lips sternly downdrawn, eyebrows lifted rigidly, her cheeks gray with gravity. In French class, her face was quite different: cheeks like apples, eyebrows dancing, mouth puckered dryly, corners tense naughtily.

'She said,' I said.
'She spoke, and ... and ... glowed.'
'What glowed? Not
she glowed. Cervice glowed.'
'She spoke, and, turning, her, uh, rosy
crevice --' Laughter from the others. I blushed.
'
No! Cervice, cervice. Neck. You've heard of the cervix. Surely you've heard of the cervical vertebrae.
'She spoke, and, turning---'
'As she turned.'
'As she turned, her rosy neck blushed.'
'Very well.'
'And, and coma, coma --sleep?'
'Hair, Peter, hair. Surely you've heard of the derivative word comose? Think of comb, as a rooster's comb.'
'And, uh, turning again--'
'Oh no. Dear child, no. Vertice here is the noun, vertex, verticis. Vortex. A vortex, a whirl, a crown of hair, of what kind of hair? What agrees?'
'Ambrosial.'
'Yes, ambrosial meaning, properly, immortal. Applied most often to the food of the gods, and in that sense descending to us with the meaning of sweet, delicious, honey-like. But the gods also used ambrosia for anointment and perfume.' She spoke of the gods with a certain authority, Miss Appleton did.
'And her whirl, her tangle--'
'
Crown, Peter. The hair of the gods is never tangled.'
'And her crown of ambrosial hair breathed out a divine odor.'
'Yes. Good. Fragrance, let's say. Odor rather suggests plumbing.'
'...a divine fragrance, her vestment, her robe...'
'Yes., a flowing robe. All the goddesses save Diana wore a loose flowing robe. Diana, the heavenly huntress, wore of course a sensible tunic, perhaps with leggings, probably of a heavy green or brown cloth such as what I am wearing. Her robe flowed down--" (183-4).





10 comments:

Σφιγξ said...

Nice annotations. The departure of Venus, or the leavetaking of mother?

http://www.romansonline.com/Src_Frame.asp?DocID=Vrg_ae01_25

Σφιγξ said...

http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2015/12/07/teach-yourself-italian

Σφιγξ said...

I like how one beeswax taper of the Mérode altarpiece (see lacuna) is shown missing from the fireplace sconce to light Mary's reading. They were transportable, and pinched at a moment's notice, when one had unqualified free time for scripture.

There may have been some misunderstanding about "the departure of Venus, or the leavetaking of mother", where it meant from my perspective that Aeneas has to depart from where maternal strong-arm holds sway.


Σφιγξ said...

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Centaur/Y6gIqM8qhGsC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=Updike+Centaur+%22wound%22&printsec=frontcover

https://www.nationalbook.org/awards-prizes/national-book-awards-1964/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1XKg_KhN_22r4Qjuf4ieo41cw2iXgxKIG/view?usp=sharing

Friday was my niece, Ava's, first birthday. The mother is objectionable least because she is lazy, and keeps her daughter from Keith. I told Keith when she was born that she should be named Owen Meany (1989), which we read at Foxcroft as seniors. The mad woman that taught me, who wore cinnabar-crimson trousers and ice-blue twinsets, together, at least got that right.

I left him a copy next to the bong on his end table. He wanted to read it, and maybe one day he will.

Σφιγξ said...

I have awakened with terrible hives and itching around my neck and eyes for two weeks, which antihistamines barely manage. I notice when I fast, the symptoms go away.

The colloidal oatmeal topicals for ezcema, the antivirals for shingles, and the suspicion of insidious renal failure with uremic frost...maybe the usual birch-apple cross-reactivity coincides with a bad pollen season?

Apples and nuts are staples of my diet.

https://www.aaaai.org/tools-for-the-public/conditions-library/allergies/oral-allergy-syndrome-(oas)#:~:text=Oral%20allergy%20syndrome%20(OAS),-Share%20this%20page&text=If%20you%20suffer%20from%20hay,allergic%20to%20birch%20tree%20pollen.


The second child, a boy, now, has INGR, which is a symptom of methadone maintenance and pot smoking. In my few words remaining with him, I exhorted not to preempt the world's cruelty of a potential weakling with a name like Atticus.

https://radiopaedia.org/articles/intrauterine-growth-restriction?lang=us






Σφιγξ said...

https://books.google.com/books?id=Kn2Ecsa0rEcC&pg=PA48&dq=Ocyrhoe+Chiron&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&source=gb_mobile_search&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiXmaDN37H3AhU8oHIEHdD0BYwQ6AF6BAgGEAM#v=onepage&q=Ocyrhoe%20Chiron&f=false

Thank you, for refreshing this for me. I will return to The Centaur (1963) sometime, and I will insert Ocyrhoe in a current reading.

I am going to fix my hummingbird feeder, which took three grocery trips to obtain the sugar because I am so against it for human use.

Bedside reading:

https://books.google.com/books/about/Rabid.html?id=J-dvDwAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=Rabid%20A%20cultural%20history%20%22Isolation%20of%20the%20anthrax%20bacillus%22&f=false

https://books.google.com/books/about/The_Thing_with_Feathers.html?id=8kHZCwAAQBAJ#v=onepage&q=The%20Thing%20with%20Feathers%20%22rufous%20hummingbird%22&f=false

Σφιγξ said...

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31250786/

Exercise 90 will go here.

Σφιγξ said...

Yes, I just realized your point about Kelly/Kalki and Theodora/Teddy from the 1978 novel.

I read Gore's early work, with Edmund White's, with uncategorized lust. I sympathized with Gore's insistence on not being classified for acts. What one is is never essential anyway. So many women look to a male or female partner as whoever is on deck, and who next can upgrade one's life, so I am more antagonistic to the fickleness of women, which men display, too. I know it, when I see it, and my instinctual knowledge is not wrong.

Σφιγξ said...

Maybe a revision to this is required: I remember the moment that I made the rebellion against heterosexual love. I do not need to elaborate, but the yetzer hara simplified to trauma distorted every subsequent encounter. I do not need to talk about healing or turning back to some pre-installation setting. For me, I remember the first thought brought on by something, I knew that it was significant, and leading to exploration and pain.


Whether you and I want to emphasize it, we know who we are. That is radical acceptance.

Σφιγξ said...

https://condenaststore.com/featured/somewhere-that-isnt-so-touristy-jeremy-nguyen.html?srsltid=AfmBOoqXBFga62NaUyf688iSSGjZqceiaNv7Y7mdRXxjmGWK7UfG8yKn

I am spending the last three days of Sukkot at the Homestead Omni, soaking in springs and walking in the woods at night.