muhahaha.

would you have porridge with me, dear?

very happy nutshell today. )

little miss tut and the object of tz.

i thought this was one of the OED’s less skillful descriptions:

tut, n

also tutt, -e, 9 Sc. tuts.

. 9 Sc. toot, tout; toots. [A natural utterance; the spelling tut sometimes represents the palatal click (also spelt TCHICK, TCK). Cf. also hut tut, hoot toot, hout tout s.v. HOOT int.] 

An ejaculation (often reduplicated) expressing impatience or dissatisfaction with a statement, notion, or proceeding, or contemptuously dismissing it. (The Sc. toot, toots, expresses mild expostulation.)

note to self.

must write an english sonnet about the common agricultural policy one of these days.

that’s a challenge i would like to extend to all of you. send me poetry of the weirdest kind, and the most unexpected. no toilet humour please that would be boring.

it is pissing down with rain and i would like to curb my wine gum cravings otherwise than having to actually get some, so i write silly blogposts.

avishai cohen’s brilliance is making my head spin. ’structure in motion’ should you ever get your ears on it, will amaze you too. there are little guarantees in this world, but that is one of them.

watch this space! things can only get better.

frumoasa ca o stea…

inspired by masha’s chapter, i was thinking about scale a lot today. i find it intriguing why it is that when writing a thesis in anthropology we are thinking about ’scales’ and what this implies about our perception of the world. walking along in the sun the question occurred to me why, in english, the word is the same to describe the outer shells of a fish and when, later i checked my friend the OED, i had a surprise. the meanings of ’scale’ have varied a lot throughout time, and there are seven entries under the noun ’scale’ in the OED, all covering multiple things and processes.

etymology for beginners (you know i like this kind of crap…)

[a. ON. skál str. fem., bowl, pl. (weighing) scales (Sw. skål, Da. skaal: cf.

SKOAL) = OHG. scâla (MHG. schâle, mod.G. schale):OTeut. *skl, ablaut-var. of *skal, whence OE. scealu shell, hust, drinking cup, weighing scale (see SHALE n.¹), OHG. scala shell, husk (MHG., mod.G. schale); the quantity of the vowel is doubtful in OS. skala cup, and in the ODu. antecedent of MDu. schaleschaal), though it is probable that in Du. as in Ger. two original forms, skâla cup, scales, and sklascealu the inflexion appears to attest the short vowel in all the senses. The WGer. *skla (:OTeut. *skl, skal) passed into OF. as eschale, escale cup (med.L. scala ‘patera’), also husk (mod.F. écale). For the Teut. root *skel-: skal-: skl- to separate, divide, cf. SHALE, SHELL, SKILL. See also SKELE.
Between the first quarter of the 13th c. and the 16th c. the forms (containing the vowel a) represent the northern pronunciation, the forms being midland and southern. In the 16th c., however, the northern scalescale is the prevailing literary form, though scole (with other equivalent spellings) occasionally appears down to the middle of the century.] (Du. husk, shell, have become phonetically coincident. For the OE. seems to have found its way into the London dialect, being used by Palsgrave and later by Spenser and Shakes. In the 17th c.

–> from this the meanings of scale as the apparatus of measure, metaphorical for justice, etc.

[aphetic a. OF. escale (12th c.), mod.F. écale husk, pod, chip of stone:

OTeut. *skal (see SCALE n.¹, SHALE n.). OF. had also escaille (13th c.), mod.F. écaille scale of fish, shell of oyster, etc. = It. scaglia:Romanic (also med.L.) scalia, a. OTeut. *skalj (see SHELL n.) from the same root; this is perh. the source of some of the ME. spellings.]

–> from this the meanings clustering around the scales of fish and other reptiles. entirely different origin and related to nutshell in a nice way

[ad. It. scala or its source L. scla:

prehist. *scansl (scand- + -tl), f. scandre to climb (see SCAND v.). Cf. Pr., Sp., Pg. escala, OF. eschieleéchelle).] (mod.F.

–> a ladder (obsolete), musical scales, and scales as in mathematics, psychology, etc.

[ad. OF. scal(l)e, escal(l)e (mod.F. escale, esp. in phr. faire escale to go ashore) or its source It. scala = Sp., Pg. escala seaport, harbour:

L. scla ladder (see SCALE n.³).]

–> this one is also obsolete but i like it.

a. A landing-place; occas. a custom-house. rare. b. A seaport town; a trading port; a centre of trade or traffic; an emporium.

and it occurred to me that we like stars and find them beautiful because they make us think about scale (besides all the modern romantic connotations we tend to put on them). it is an existential problem, and of being human in a world that is huge.

why do you find stars beautiful?

calvin is the hero of the month.

Run Play Horse Run.

The horse may be blind but it is unafraid.

The wasteland is right here, right here.

The dark tower has been turned into a mall.

What else? Nothing to write home about.

It feels like I have been back for years

Yet still I expect you to walk around the corner.

Up in the Air.

I am starting the transcriptions. It is a new way of writing.  Ethnographic writing means to let the data re-emerge, and start from there, and while having the theory help you think. It is a different process of thinking-action than simple essay writing, that I have done many times, and where I just know where to start. The point is always reached where the reading stops and the narrative (argument) pours out.

This, on the other hand, is a difficult and strange act of balance of a tight rope artist weighed down with too much burden on either end of her balancing stick. It is bending from the weight, and she does not look anywhere close to defying gravity. A basket of beautiful, wing-cropped swans panic heart-flutteringly on the one end of the wooden stick. A bucket of precious hydromel is dangerously swaying on the other extremity. As she steps on the rope, her face may remain impassive, but she has the worst kind of belly ache, and is worried about the swans, the hydromel and the timing.

The Battle-Cry

I have been very busy all day doing things I cannot envelop, print out or tick off on my long list. I jumped a lot, and discovered they changed the databases around, and I could barely remember which anthropologists used to be my hero-of-the-week. After dusk a question about messiness in one’s head versus just emptiness was raised in the office. I am hoping it is the first scenario. Wishful thinking that is not just an empty library, but a full library with a catalogue on sabbatical.

I am still frightened of my data. It moves me too much. I also interpret the fright as a result of my continued estrangement with the academic environment. It is a strange world indeed, and I am both afraid to re-integrate into it, or, in turn, not to re-integrate at all. Technical problems are threatening to push the data-interpretation-acts out of the office, a situation which I am still looking to resolve. A harmless-looking word: d a t a. It sounds like a lullaby at this time of night.

I carry a sentence in my belly: ‘this is what you need to write about…’ Its referent indexes the living conditions and limited possibilities of a good part of the people I met. The speaker of the sentence included himself in this category of people.

This is what I need to write about. This is what anthropology can be at its best. The oh-so-quiet rebellion from the departmental margins does not mind phenomenology as such, for it is a pretty thing. The minding concerns rather its discussion at length, and the entangled boredom around the continual reconstitution of the world and the self through involvement, birthing and becoming.

I had a strange dream. It repeated the sentence ad nauseam ‘Our actions do not transform the world; they are part and parcel of the world’s transforming itself’. I woke up, my nose bleeding. Despite temporary angst surrounding the inscriptional results of fieldwork, I am not afraid of the radical empirical approach. What was that about the science of the concrete again? Let us write the stories I was told. Mundane things like fisheries, cooking, Pisa studies, knitting, people stealing, learning, humming, milking, living their lives shall all have a prominent place.

Description. Not of the innocent kind, but of the engaged kind. Two things shall be remembered on this enterprise. First, thou shalt not conflate academics’ points of views and interests with those of common mortals. Second, we need a motto (or, for the less faint at heart, our battle cry)…   

A Sort of Song (by William Carlos Williams) 

Let the snake wait under
his weed
and the writing
be of words, slow and quick, sharp
to strike, quiet to wait,
sleepless.
– through metaphor to reconcile
the people and the stones.
Compose. (No ideas
but in things) Invent!
Saxifrage is my flower that splits
the rocks.