Your Source for 'Ff'lo

I've been thinking about that notion, and word, today. What it is to be dedicated, and what one dedicates when one dedicates in a transitive fashion. One dedicates reflexively, in a way. Dedicates one's self (to someone/thing) or dedicates something of one's creative production (to someone/thing). There's definitely something of one's attitude toward one's self in the mix. Something that takes itself seriously. And asks to be taken seriously.

Of course I know by now that thinking about a word in a linguistic way is often, in me, a squirreling off away from something else. This kind of observational self-consciousness can be good, helpful, though it can introduce unpleasantness of its own. But ultimately I'm not ambivalent on the wisdom of pursuing it, applying it. I was just e-mailing from a self-examined place to one not in that place, at least with regard to the subject at hand, with the realization that we may not be able to have the conversation I was hoping for at all. 'Slike different languages entirely.

Not looking inward may well be the better choice for some folks sometimes, or always, and for me, sometimes---but not always. Right now I aim to stick with paying attention.

Vague shit, I know. Sorry. It's kind of vague time mentally with me, this afternoon, post b-fast & ReUse & postcard flipping through; now at my library branch, where someone had left a brochure in the ladies' room stall for Girl Scout summer camps, inside the back cover of which was a list of 11 things for girls to do to build/bolster self-esteem (#11 being "Go to Girl Scout camp this summer!"---who knows how good that suggestion might prove). I thought all of the others savvy/legit enough, save #7 or 8---whichever one said to listen to your inner voices, cuz they'll steer you in the right direction in this regard (or words to that effect).

Are there not many of those Girl Scouts who have fucked-up inner voices already? Maybe not. It just stood out as disputable, vs. things like choosing to be around people with positive attitudes, or taking care of yourself physically, or saying "no" to doing things that aren't good for you. Perhaps I'll write to suggest they replace that inner voice one with "Two words: 'Thin Mints.'"

Yes, I've been a free agent of experience and thought today, floating around, seeing what meets me in the world, going with the fflo. The world has stuff to show me today.

That Bob Seger song "Main Street" is about a place that used to be on Ann Street in A².

Will I visit the Great Thistle Patch this afternoon? Paint the sign? Just keep wanderin'? I know not. I care not. Having the kind of freeform Saturday the inner voices never seem to want me to have, anymore, in the post-traumatic-shock days... So fuck #7 or 8. And I'll be drinkin' tonight. Two days in a row. Wooo!

Grelling's Paradox is the paradox which results from considering whether heterologicality, the word-property which a designator has when and only when the designator does not bear the word-property it designates, is had by "heterologicality".

way too trippy for me at 10 a.m.

Grelling's Headache is the headache you could get from pondering that one before the coffee kicks in. Grelling's Demise is what happened when Grelling, having failed to enunciate his Paradox in a fashion until now clearly distinguishable from the better-known Liar's Paradox and Russell's Paradox, died like everybody else, not knowing the end of his own story.

Well, I'm not miserable or anything, but dang if I didn't get a/the cold. If there were nobody else at work, I'd go in & work, albeit perhaps with a pinch less pizzazz than I sometimes bring to my duties. Does "pizzazz" really have 4 Zs? It does today, anyway.

I take some comfort that I'm not miserably stopped up (which always sounds like "stomped up" when people who are stopped up report it, messing with how it seems it should be spelled), and so far there's been no headache or exhausting coughing or such. It's the most pins-and-needles-y sneeze cold I've had in years.

I can't really complain. I was on quite a good roll of not being sick, and this isn't so bad. Achoo. It just looks like I'm crying all the time. And CPAP use is compromised. And I haven't brought in the trash can from yesterday morning, so I could be in trouble with the neighbors. Guess I'll make that my goal for the day.


"though" banishing report: I deleted three of 'em during the composition of this post. [A person shouldn't need any directive transition as much as I employ that one.]

I guess the computer gods didn't want me doing another old movie post again tonight---I was a good way's* into it when I was hit by Mozilla freeze-up and sudden closure. Maybe I'll tell you about it tomorrow, though. In the meantime...

[Poll #660918]

Based on online lookups, the #1 Word of the Year for 2005 at Merriam-Webster Online was:

1. integrity

Rounding out the Top Ten:

2. refugee
3. contempt
4. filibuster
5. insipid
6. tsunami
7. pandemic
8. conclave
9. levee
10. inept

"Integrity" resonated with me a bunch this past year, as some of you know. I know someone for whom "contempt" has had a lot of significance, too. #5 and #10, no doubt, had to do with someone whose cronies neglected the #9s and tried to end the right of the opposition to #4.

 
I have been finding notes from you

Tonight a postcard in a book of poems,
Norman Rockwell painted Huckleberry Finn,
January '84:  "Our phone is being installed
on the 11th"       "Hello to the Boys"

The other day in the Shakespeare
a coffee-stained legal sheet---
Bob Melvin finally hit a home run
as all day of a Sunday with Chet
you were waiting for me

And in a box for special things
a Social Security card I was after
and the red card poem, 8-13-88, Carroll County


Surprise:  not the us they recall
that is other, but the places,
pictures of the gone    or not yet    world

You'd think I'd planned it,
like scraps hidden in Laura's room,
perfect plants for moments like these
poignant comings-across in a future
with or without you still around
---or, as it turns out, both


Yeah, this entry is about finding an old piece of paper with a poem on it that's about finding old pieces of paper (one of which has a poem on it). And that ain't the only way it's regressive.


P.S.  I just saw a clip from the upcoming Gwynneth Paltrow movie in which her character quibbles with the notion of "healthy" hair (at which I've bristled for many moons) and then chides the woman she's talking to (as I might well feel the urge to do in the same circumstances) for contrasting "organic" with "chemical". The only other thing I know about the film is that it's called Proof, but that's enough to suggest it could be a little close for comfort. And thus potentially utterly compelling.

I always think that Hal Hartley film Trust was called Proof, even though I've memorized that it wasn't.

"Proof" is quite a word. And it's in the pudding, too.

Pudding. Mmmmm. How long since you've had pudding?

[Poll #566470]