Hermenautic Circle blog

I quit smoking ten years ago, but before that I smoked for thirty years, starting at age 13. Like junkies and alcoholics, I'm a lifer. I quit because I was afraid of dying, but that's about the only thing that could have made me quit, and I continue to have a deep and convoluted relationship with nicotine and the forms and guises under which it travels.

I first heard Picayunes mentioned in Frank O'Hara's 1964 poem "The Day Lady Died." It's July 1959 and he's preparing to go to Easthampton for the weekend, back when the Hamptons contained more poets and painters than rich people. He's buying supplies and hostess gifts here and there in midtown Manhattan--recording everything in his seemingly casual diaristic way that's really as meticulously arranged as a collage by Braque, down to the all-caps names that are after a fashion glued in--and then he sees the NEW YORK POST with her face on it. The pleasantly hectic course of the day, ticking away like a taxi meter for 25 lines, is abruptly flicked off and he's thrown into memory. Billie Holiday has died.

He buys the Post from the tobacconist at the Ziegfeld Theater along with a carton of Gauloises and a carton of Picayunes. For years I had no idea what Picayunes were. By the time I was a teenage poet reading that poem again and again, wishing I could write like that and for that matter live like that, the New York of the poem seemed like a vision of glamour from the deep past, even though it was little more than a decade gone. I did smoke Gauloises when I could afford them, but there was no more tobacconist at the Ziegfeld and nobody I knew had ever heard of Picayunes.

Then, years later, I met George Montgomery, who had been O'Hara's roommate at Harvard. I learned many things from him--he was a fount of every kind of lore and custom and means of appreciation. One of them was that the perfect way to end a meal was with a cup of black coffee, a piece or two of crystallized ginger, and a Picayune. He bought his at Village Cigars, at the head of Christopher Street. They were made in New Orleans, where they shared a name with the local newspaper, and they were the only American cigarette still at that time made, like Gauloises and Gitanes, from black caporal tobacco.

I didn't visit New Orleans until many years after that, and even though I had by then quit smoking, I went off in search of Picayunes, but they were no longer manufactured. Their absence was conspicuous, because they went along with the city and its Afro-Franco-Hispano-Italo- Caribbean style, with the chicory coffee and the lagniappes and all the rest of it. It made sense that the most culturally distinct city in the lower 48 would boast a distinct local cigarette. Picayunes in their day were another symbol of the elegant separateness that would eventually provide the federal government with its excuse for sacrificing New Orleans. Anyway, nowadays local pride is reserved for team sports.

Thanks to Joshua Clover for reminding me.

Our Building (In Center). Photo by Ivan Gilkes

I admit, living in the middle of Manhattan, in a rather small apartment with two rambunctious boys, a husband and a home office, does get tedious at times. There is the fact that I work mere inches from where I sleep, and that there is only one bathroom, which often offers a nice whiff of urine, as the boys are not yet adept at getting the pee in the bowl--Sebastien, our youngest, just started potty-training (today he even "dropped a duce" in the toilet, go Seb!)--and that our kitchen is so tiny two people cannot operate in it simultaneously. And the living room is strewn with toys and about 2000 books belonging to my husband and all they do is collect dust.

But don't feel too bad for me. Because small can be grand. When I vacuum the house, which I admit is more rare than it should be, I can reach every corner of our space without unplugging the cleaner. How's that for convenient? We never have to do yard work and if the toilet is clogged or the sink won't drain, our maintenance men come within the hour to fix it. We don't even own our refrigerator, so when that broke down, they brought us a loaner fridge until ours was fixed. There are five other families in various forms on our floor, so if we ever need a cup of milk or someone to watch the kids for five minutes while we run to the store, we just knock on the door. Our carbon footprint, living in the city, in a large building like we do, without a car, is smaller than if we lived upstate on some idyllic farm. Call me crazy, but I think raising a family in a high rise in the middle of a big chaotic city is where its at.

I know, I know, the poor children never get to play in the backyard. Instead we go to our local park when its warm, and the kids get to actually socialize with their neighbors. Or they play soccer on the grass in front of our building or ride their scooters around the fountain at Washington Square Park. While our apartment is heavily subsidized by Steve's employer, NYU, I don't know that the suburbs would be a less expensive option. Factor in the car payments, insurance, mortgage, transportation costs, extra childcare needed because of the commute and the additional alcohol and drugs we'd take to counterbalance the alienation, and I think it would cost us more money to move to a nice house that we owned.

Look, I know there are cool people in the suburbs and great families and that opening your door and letting the kids run around outside is a very good thing. And, I know there are those that will be offended by my suburban slagging (my mother included) and will remind me that not everyone can afford the city. I accept all your criticisms. The city is too, too expensive. But what isn't these days? And yes home ownership is a great safety net, until the bank forecloses on your mortgage. I get that. But answer me this: why oh why does every middle class family in America need so much freaking space? What do you do with all those rooms? Are you avoiding your children? If so, how? My children like to be in the same room as me, even when I go to the urine-scented bathroom, so even if I could go in another room, my two would just follow me around telling me that so and so stole this or demanding juice boxes or begging for TV or telling me their butts itch. What's the benefit in that? All I can think of when I see large living spaces is "Ugh, can you imagine cleaning that humongous place?" and "Damn, what are the heating costs?"

Now of course, sometimes, I worry I might be missing out. Like when I visit my family in Los Angeles, where all my relatives live in stunning homes filled with light and tasteful decor and more than ample space for gardens, multiple TV's etal, accept for my sister Denise, who is a life-long renter like myself, but her apartment is still nicer than ours and almost as big, even though she is just one person. And when I visit them in their suburban splendor, sure I get jealous of the pools and their smug homeownership. And when I come back to NYC, I miss driving to Target and Trader Joe's and filling up the rented SUV with all the stuff, and throwing the kids in the back and listening to KCRW's morning becomes eclectic as I drive around burning fuel at the drive through of In-and-Out Burger.

It's what I know. I grew up in a lovely house, designed by my architect father, in the San Fernando Valley, where family upon family lived out their middle class dreams. My grandparents saved and saved to own a home, their proudest achievement. And here I am, living in rental sin, and loving every minute.

When I was maybe five, this boy my mom babysat knocked teeth with me while we played house. Some people might call that a kiss, but I didn't think it counted.

What did count was that 10 years after a boy in Batman underpants tried to kiss me, Justin actually did. He attended a rival high school where we'd met at a weekend performing arts tournament. He'd competed in One-Act Play and Extemporaneous Speaking; I was the reigning Lincoln-Douglas Debate district champion and a mediocre Poetry entrant.

Between competitions, Justin delivered his smooth line: "I've been wanting to ask you something all day – do you have a phone?"

I sarcastically responded, "Me? A phone? What on Earth is that?!" I was hard on the guy. The truth is, I had classmates who didn't have a home phone. I lived in rural Texas in a town with a weeklong school holiday in honor of the livestock show.

Justin was the first boy who'd shown any romantic interest in me. He also happened to be very cute in that all-American strip mall kind of way. In case you're wondering, he was as good at acting as I was at poetry. The entire school was abuzz when I brought my handsome stranger to the home baseball game for the sole purpose of showing him off. He pretended not to notice.

Justin's school beat mine at the game that night, but I didn't care. After ice cream cones at Dairy Queen, we sat in his pick-up truck in the parking lot of an insurance agency. The Top 40 radio station we loved spat out ditty after ditty. Justin looked into my eyes in a terrifying way, as if he were imitating something on his mom's soaps.

I knew he was going to kiss me, and I didn't know how to kiss back. I also knew I would never admit the latter. We held hands for a bit and he leaned in for a peck during "Uninvited" by Alanis Morissette.

I thought the song was an ironic touch. I concentrated on it as Justin's tongue wiggled past my lips and teeth, bumping my gums and I think, even my uvula, as we kissed for the first time. It was dreadful, and now I suspect it was his first, too. At least, that would be a good excuse.

My friend Achariya posted an entry about how she tends to maintain an association with her real life appearance…With so many creative possibilities and original intentions to explore the world as a furry or dragon, I’m surprised that I’ve tended to stick with a conventional self. I have a folder full of furry avatars but have I pulled them out yet? What you see is what you get – sans wrinkles and a few gray hairs, eyebrows nicely plucked, blue eyes instead of brown depending on mood...hmm...

There are a plethora of phd candidates out there working on theses related to avatar preferences. Who would you choose to be?

Here it is with pretty lights behind it.
(Photo by David Borker.)

MADRID (Reuters) - A Spanish driver who collided with a cyclist is suing the dead youth’s family $29,300 for the damage the impact of his body did to his luxury car, a Spanish newspaper reported on Friday.

Businessman Tomas Delgado says 17-year-old Enaitz Iriondo caused $20,500 of damage to his Audi A8 in the fatal 2004 crash in La Rioja region, the El Pais newspaper reported.

Delgado, who has faced no criminal charges for the incident, wants a further 6,000 euros to cover the cost of hiring another vehicle while his car was being repaired, El Pais said.

The youth had been cycling alone at night without reflective clothing or a helmet, according to a police report cited by El Pais.

His family won 33,000 euros compensation from Delgado’s insurance company after the firm acknowledged he had been driving at excessive speed and this could have contributed to the incident, El Pais reported.

“I’m also a victim in all of this, you can’t fix the lad’s problems, but you can fix mine,” Delgado told the newspaper, ahead of a January 30 legal decision on his suit.

The family said they had previously pitied Delgado for the guilt he must feel at killing their son but were now disgusted that his greatest concern appeared to be money.

“This was the final straw, a kick in the teeth,” the youth’s mother Rosa Trinidad told El Pais.

jay: uh, i got nothing here.

I LOVE the quality of these vintage headphones designed by AM Radio. You can pick up a free pair at The Far Away…they remind me of the enormous pair I used to wear as a teen – listening to Roxy Music and Prefab Sprout while laying on the scratchy burlap-y couch I used to sleep on. Can’t you just feel the soft poofy ear pads? Here I am wearing them as I work on a prim…

Yes, yes, you heard me. But it's for a good cause. (And anyway, I've posted this too late for you to actually sign up to cheat at Scrabble; now you can just go watch other miscreants cheat at Scrabble. I meant to post this Monday ... but I suppose you can just consider this as me being over-protective.)

826NYC.org, a non-profit that encourages young writers, is having a fundraiser Scrabble tournament TOMORROW, January 19, at their offices at 372 Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn.

The tournament is a benefit for their writing programs, and it has a twist: teams sign up and raise sponsorship money. Each team is allowed a certain number of "cheats" that they buy with the money they raised. So the more money a team raises for 826NYC, the more likely they are to win. Genius!

Here's the price list:

1. Trade out a letter—$25
2. Wheel of Fortune: buy a vowel—$50
3. Flip a letter over and make it blank—$100
4. Add 10 to any letter’s value—$150
5. Add Q, Z, or X to any word, anywhere—$200
6. Passport: play a word in any language—$250
7. Consult the dictionary for one turn—$300
8. Consult the Scrabble word list for one turn—$400
9. Reject another team’s word—$450
10. Invent a word (must have a definition)—$500

Obviously, I'm most interested in #s 7 and 10. For #7, which dictionary are they going to use? A big dictionary is going to be much more valuable than a little one, and a dictionary of abbreviations would be excellent for humorous effect ... And for #10 -- I hope they record the new words and definitions!

I'm also very pleased that inventing a word is the priciest cheat. Just as it should be ...

If any of you gentle readers attend, would you leave a report in the comments? I'd go myself, save for the trifling inconvenience of living in Chicago ...

We had some more requests for back articles this week, so two more are available to read online:

Preposition Pollution, by Barbara DuBois, and Up and Down to You, by John Musgrave.

An easy way to see the few articles we have available in html is to check out the Table of Contents -- available articles will show up as links ... of course, that file needs to be updated, too ...

Two new issues are at the printer; I hope to see proofs in the next few days. They'll mail when our mailer has a slot, but with any luck before the end of January!

Interested in a quick peek at the tables of contents for those issues:

Here's Vol. XXXI/3:

Stalin, Marr, and the Struggle for a Soviet Linguistics Neile A. Kirk & Bernard Mees
When is a Word Not a Word? Peter Gilliver
Plurality David Galef
Is There an Information Professional In the House? Rachel Singer Gordon
Man Detained at Supermax Prison For Word Transposition Kenneth W. Cress
What I Told the Student From Brooklyn About Why He Flunked English Louis Phillips
Dogspeak, So to Speak Janice Arenofsky
Senior Glassware Maintenance Engineer Norman Ball
Pimping David A. Cory
Epitaph for Gertrude Stein Louis Phillips
You’ve Got Game IV Gloria Rosenthal
Classical Blather: Pound Hammers (and Toe Trucks) Nick Humez
As the Word Turns: Some Golden Oldies Barry Baldwin
Obiter Dicta: A Sampling of the Genius of Saki Edwin Rosenberg
And a review of Labels for Locals, by Paul Dickson (review by Mark Peters)

And here's Vol. XXX1/4:

Pronouns in Thai Euan Harvey
The Un-History of the Undead Tim Kane
A Car By Any Other Name Keith Hall
The National Report Card Louis Phillips
A Scientific Investigation Into a Linguistic Matter of Some Importance Marvin E. Mengeling
Biotechnologos: Words of the Life Business Michael J. Corey
Book Production Jargon Jaqueline Cangro
Pension Fund Language Joanne Mason
Xmas, Yttrium, & Zwieback: Unusual Initial Pairs in English Paul Anthony Jones
Anyone for Gerunding? C J Moore
Classical Blather: The Wee Folk Nick Humez
and a long-overdue review of
The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English, by Grant Barrett (reviewed by Mark Peters) -- but don't worry! The book's still available.

Des Moines, Iowa (AP) — Pig fetuses believed stolen from a biology lab at a Des Moines high school were found impaled on car antennas at a rival school’s parking lot in West Des Moines. The incident was discovered on Tuesday at Dowling Catholic High School.

The pig fetuses were believed stolen from Roosevelt High School. They were on about 15 cars, along with a pound of biology-class crawfish that were smeared on hoods and windshields.

“You could smell the formaldehyde from a block away,” Dowling Assistant Principal Ron Meyers said.

Roosevelt Principal Kathie Danielson said science teachers “can’t be sure” the pigs came from Roosevelt. She said the pig fetuses aren’t labeled and the school doesn’t keep inventory.

jay: this is pretty gross, even for des moines.

AP — HAYDEN, Idaho — A man who believed he bore the “mark of the beast” used a circular saw to cut off one hand, then he cooked it in the microwave and called 911, authorities said.

The man, in his mid-20s, was calm when Kootenai County sheriff’s deputies arrived Saturday in this northern Idaho town. He was in protective custody in the mental health unit of Kootenai Medical Center.

“It had been somewhat cooked by the time the deputy arrived,” sheriff’s Capt. Ben Wolfinger said. “He put a tourniquet on his arm before, so he didn’t bleed to death. That kind of mental illness is just sad.”

[…]

The book of Matthew also contains the passage: “And if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for you whole body to do into hell.”

Wolfinger said he didn’t know which hand was amputated.

jay is it in the AP styleguide that all stories which quote law enforcement officials are required to have an incredibly dry punchline? it would seem that the answer is ‘yes.’

Fairburn, S.D. (AP) — Acting to protect her dog, 80-year-old Martha Smith killed a mountain lion at her home along French Creek near Fairburn. She missed with her first shot, went into the house to call 911, then went back outside with a .22-caliber rifle.

“And he was a spittin’ and a growlin’,” said Smith. “All I saw was flashing eyes and teeth. And I knew I was gonna have to kill him if I could.”

Smith, who lives alone, said she’d like to have the lion mounted, but doubts the state Department of Game, Fish & Parks will return the carcass to her.

jay: i’m with you martha. in fact, i’m so with you that i think i’m gonna make ‘return the carcass’ tshirts and sell them on etsy.

Many thanks to Judah, who just sent me this link to the webcomic Bathos, which includes the new words "Oxfording" and "resoneged". Go. Click.

I suppose it's worth mentioning that for YEARS I had and wore a t-shirt that said "I never should have used the word bathos", huh? It's a long story, but no, I don't have any connection with the folks behind this comic (other than having thoroughly enjoyed it).

I had misplaced the memory of the first girl that I kissed until about 2 weeks ago.

From 1966 through 1970 I attended a summer camp about fifty miles north of New York City. I have nothing but fond memories from my summer years there. The camp closed in 1971 and gradually I lost touch with the almost everyone that had peopled those years. Oddly, the woman I married was an alumnus of this camp but we never knew each other at camp and it is not her that this story is about.

This story is about Celia who I met in 1969. Originally, I was drawn toward her sister who was my age and two years older than Celia. There was an unwritten rule in the camp, though, that boys could only be involved with girls a year younger and therefore Margi was off limits. Celia on the other hand was OK. Celia wasn’t like the other girls; she had a head of curly brown hair in an age where you had to have long straight hair, she also wasn’t going to wait for a boy or anyone to talk to her. She made her own friends and made her own choices. I liked being around her because she was funny and opinionated. We were friends and indeed she may have been the first girl that I was ever friendly with.

When we returned home at the end of the summer I began to correspond to Celia (by mail!) since she lived in The Bronx and I in Brooklyn. My father had a thing about the phone bill and would confront me when there were charges for calls. When we returned to camp in 1970 I came with the assumption that we would be boyfriend and girlfriend. Celia had different ideas. We tried and managed a clumsy kiss in her bunk on one of the first nights of camp but we both found other love interests that summer and, in the end, it was the last summer at the camp for both of us.

Recently I discovered a dedicated group of people who had established e-mail list to share photos and reminiscences about the camp. Perusing the photos that had been posted I found one of myself, that Celia had posted. With trembling fingers I sent her an e-mail asking if she remembered me. Within minutes came a reply saying that of course she remembered me, that she had lots more pictures, and a bunch of letters that I had written her. I didn’t know whether to be flattered or mortified.

Three days later we met for lunch in midtown Manhattan after not having seen each other or spoke in 36 years. Celia brought the letters and photographs and other camp memorabilia. It was a wonderful reunion that I didn’t want to end.

Today is the launch of a new Gawker blog I'm writing for called IO9. It's devoted to sci-fi and futurism and edited by the fabulous Annalee Newitz. It's a really cool site - even for the non-SF inclined, like me. Yep, that's right, I'm not a big SF fan - but I'm intensely curious about it, since I have so many friends who are. Writing for IO9 is an opportunity for me to explore the genre (not to mention get disciplined about daily posting, ahem).

I'll be posting about retro futurism and LOST, both of which I love.
Check it out, and please don't forget to comment.

Paula Wirth posted a new topic:

Thanks for making 2007 chock full of great images!!

Happy 2008!!! And happy flickring!!