Body

 

The shutter of the eyelid, second by second permits entry of the global other. The clarity of the retina holds up half the sky. 

The whirlpool of the ear airily early distinguishes every creek of phonemes. The tenderness of eardrum pronounces a million years of pitch perfect. 

The arcades of the nose time the air time and time again, in ideal intakes. The bridge is a mountain is a cavern is an atrium the perfumes of the Earth impel. 

The unmask of the mouth, secrets and surprises and solicitations and sworns betray with grimace or smile or pucker or gape. The instant of lips as occasion befalls, befits, then another wonder of words transmits, sounds right. 

The release of hair, an example to us all of us, rising and racing as week grows to months, wet to mop, wavelets to mohicans. Outflow becomes overflow becoming, a silken slipping memory for the bald. 

The upright lift of the head, mind concealed that yet reveals, intent facing one-way imagining other ways, turning small semi-circles, blood speaking. Expressions of a face only others know and recognise, electricity of brain behind all of that. 

The contortion of torso, proportion and relation, straightens up of necessity, the heart not stopping for explanations. Oceanic ribcage breathes a proportion, out relation, in straight, out necessarily, in self-explanatory. 

The around of arms, minute gathering, ours hours grabbing. Some days are all elbows or shoulder to the wheel or a flick of the wrist or only embrace. 

The handsome span of hands, made to work the hard science of chore. And the fabulous fingers, count on them, writing out to a nicety the sort of thing you read now, an acceptance we have no say in the making of our bodies, but do have a say in giving thanks. 

The pragmatism of the diaphragm, well aware of bare mutability. Midriff acting of its own accord for our accord. 

The originality of our sex, organised for the occasion, its cosmic possibilities and ofttimes comic outcomes. The lift and line and launch and limp of it, the lay of the land and longing and belonging met in good time. 

The shift of hips and roll of rump and through of thigh go back and forth and up and down the town. All shapely forms of us that move through spatial distance to their desired object, home. 

The long stride of legs, the little shuffle of legs, languorous hauteur or unlimited left-right-left holds us up yet to the world. The awe of all that pushes knees to the ground. 

The finesse of feet balances tallness, transports weight, points in the next direction. They arch and pirouette that are sole and heel, all the time feel. 

The turn-in of toes recalls their grip on ancient branches, their twitch a warm-up to a long walk. The turn-in at night as off is switched the light and from slowing toes right through to split ends rest comes to all that restless persist of anatomy. 

 

The shutter of the eyelid, second by second permits entry of the global other. The clarity of the retina holds up half the sky. The whirlpool of the ear airily early distinguishes every creek of phonemes. The tenderness of eardrum pronounces a million years of pitch perfect. The arcades of the nose time the air time and time again, in ideal intakes. The bridge is a mountain is a cavern is an atrium the perfumes of the Earth impel. The unmask of the mouth, secrets and surprises and solicitations and sworns betray with grimace or smile or pucker or gape. The instant of lips as occasion befalls, befits, then another wonder of words transmits, sounds right. The release of hair, an example to us all of us, rising and racing as week grows to months, wet to mop, wavelets to mohicans. Outflow becomes overflow becoming, a silken slipping memory for the bald. The upright lift of the head, mind concealed that yet reveals, intent facing one-way imagining other ways, turning small semi-circles, blood speaking. Expressions of a face only others know and recognise, electricity of brain behind all of that. The contortion of torso, proportion and relation, straightens up of necessity, the heart not stopping for explanations. Oceanic ribcage breathes a proportion, out relation, in straight, out necessarily, in self-explanatory. The around of arms, minute gathering, ours hours grabbing. Some days are all elbows or shoulder to the wheel or a flick of the wrist or only embrace. The handsome span of hands, made to work the hard science of chore. And the fabulous fingers, count on them, writing out to a nicety the sort of thing you read now, an acceptance we have no say in the making of our bodies, but do have a say in giving thanks. The pragmatism of the diaphragm, well aware of bare mutability. Midriff acting of its own accord for our accord. The originality of our sex, organised for the occasion, its cosmic possibilities and ofttimes comic outcomes. The lift and line and launch and limp of it, the lay of the land and longing and belonging met in good time. The shift of hips and roll of rump and through of thigh go back and forth and up and down the town. All shapely forms of us that move through spatial distance to their desired object, home. The long stride of legs, the little shuffle of legs, languorous hauteur or unlimited left-right-left holds us up yet to the world. The awe of all that pushes knees to the ground. The finesse of feet balances tallness, transports weight, points in the next direction. They arch and pirouette that are sole and heel, all the time feel. The turn-in of toes recalls their grip on ancient branches, their twitch a warm-up to a long walk. The turn-in at night as off is switched the light and from slowing toes right through to split ends rest comes to all that restless persist of anatomy.

Opinion

 The theme of ‘Belonging’ was set this year for schools by the State poetry competition. The Dorothea Mackellar Prize subject was ‘In my Opinion’, an unusual change from previous years, when our imaginations were invited to think about for example ‘I Can Hear Music’ (2010), ‘Wheels and Wings and Marvellous Things’ (2012), or ‘Rich and Rare’ (2021), a phrase from the national anthem. ‘In my Opinion’ presented a quandary for the teacher, me. To begin with, do we make poetry expressly to express an opinion? More to the point, do children? I raised this question with colleagues at the school. It seemed to me that the objective of learning to write poetry is complete freedom with words, emotions, thoughts, experiences. Both intellect and feeling are at work together and for the child this freedom is not inhibited by expectations of the right thing to say or the right way of saying it. Saying what they want to say using all available vocabulary, that is place where they find themselves. Correct spelling is attended to later. This led to the question of whether children are aware that they have opinions and when that awareness awakens. It was put that children simply parrot the opinions of their parents and elders, which is proper for the moment. It was observed that debating, the formal practice of arguing different sides of an issue, begins around the age of ten or eleven, at a time when children learn for themselves how contradictory opinions can remain valid. Puberty arrives. Debates are rarely conducted in rhyming couplets. While children may have opinions about favourite food, popular destinations and 101 other sensations, these are not matters of dispute. Nothing hangs on it. On the face of it ‘In my Opinion’ is an interesting theme, with philosophical intent. But are opinions enough? Children are unlikely to want to be identified by their opinions; they must wait for adulthood and a general election to experience that sort of objectification. To learn poetry writing is to engage in play, not personal agendas. It is enough to find their way with language and what words do and say. After all, poetry is imitation of what they conceive to be poetry, which is more than enough content for one lesson. They could spend a lifetime at that sort of game and never lose interest. Is a poem written just to express an opinion? Adults might, while children want to express whatever’s going on right now, with little thought for making an impression, or a performance, or sending a message. Even adult poems, which may be premised on an opinion, are usually wishing to say more, as the opinion itself sets the argument or acts as a ghost in the machine. For these and other reasons, ‘In my Opinion’ was thought not to be a good starter for teaching the child’s word game called poetry.

Belonging

 

The theme of poetry this year is belonging. My first thought for a reading at Meeting was A. A. Milne, but I didn’t know what at first. There’ll be something. “No man is an island” rose quickly to the surface, not a poem but poetic prose in one of John Donne’s meditations. On the morning I open, as always, with ‘Twinkle, twinkle little star’, familiar surprise, which I explain to the students as about us belonging in the universe. We see it, we say it, we know it. This nursery rhyme is linked to ‘Friends’, a late Bruce Dawe poem where he says we see friends more brightly as we see stars “from a deep well at night”, friendship being an “unblinking beneficence.” More friends poems follow, ‘Girl Friends’, by Shirley Hughes (“Marian, Lily and Annie Rose … sometimes grubby, sometimes clean, Often kind, though sometimes mean…”; then ‘The Four Friends’ of A. A. Milne, “Ernest was an elephant, a great big fellow...”, a rhyme in which Ernest, a lion, a goat, and a snail do their own thing, all very different, the only hint they are friends being in the title. They belong. We then hear about the world from the dog’s perspective as she gazes at her humans in ‘Reverie of Dora Pamphlet’ by Chris Wallace-Crabbe, a poet who lives in Brunswick, in close vicinity to some of the students: “Those bipeds reckon that I dream/ but I don’t entirely know/ what they could mean by that.” It was a delight to introduce ‘Auntie Dot’ by Elizabeth Honey only to be told that this very poem chosen was being memorised by a couple of the year levels. Um, what? Unfussed, unphased, we decided that I would lead a recitation and everyone could join in. Belonging accepts difference, so it was right to read the traditional “Monday’s child is fair of face” followed by its mischievous counterpoint, “Monday’s child is red and spotty,/ Tuesday’s child won’t use the potty …” by Colin McNaughton. Any rude words get a reliable chorus of laughter from small children. Another and essential place of belonging is school. It was therefore good to have a recent acrostic to read out, written by Fitzroy students Jibrail and Audrey. Transcribed horizontally their poem goes “Fun 100 percent Incredible Totally inspiring Zoo of kids Radical Original Yak (because we couldn’t think of another word) Community One of a kind Magical Mathematical Unbelievably good Never blue Individual Totally unique Yummy food Supportive Cool Happy Odd Out of this world Learning community.” Later in class we will revisit the acrostic concept. Everyone writes their own poem, inspired by what they’ve heard, though none of them will write poems like those, rather the one they’ve been carrying around ready to write out in copperplate. Meeting didn’t get to hear ‘No Man is an Island’ by John Donne because we had run out of time and the acrostic sort of said it all.

Weekend

 

Saturday morning, sunlight through cherry tree leaves yellow and green, it is a bright morning after lovely days of heavy rain. The rain has softened the ground, so first thing is to pop more of the broad beans into pop-holes wrought by a bamboo stake. Wrinkled green, smooth brown and tiny black oblong broad beans drop by odd numbers of three or five into moist earth. Meditation is easy while raking long nectarine leaves that have scattered everywhere, meditation for example upon leaf-blowers, happiness not to have a leaf-blower, extraneous nature of the instrument, stupidity of said apparatus, unmusical features of same. Strawberries are transplanted into new pots, mixed with compost, their knotty straggle clipped and roots pivoted into fresh pop-holes with aid of a buckled saucepan of water. Compost bins need turning over and the cat watches closely, the bin at the back fence an historic site for jolly little mice. Transplant of herbs and pot-bound flowers into larger containers, everything dragged from shady summer locations to sunny winter locations where warmth is optimal. The front is a jungle, such that the meter person left a bureaucratic letter stating he couldn’t read the gas, which is not inaccessible but bureaucracy must be heeded, so wild correa bushes are turned into a topiary of a wombat for easy sight lines. Trimming the cootamundra fronds lets several trees and bushes breathe towards the sky, hacking out of intrusive callistemon branches gone mad, likewise a chance for other species to reach forth. Dinner of roasted pumpkin and moghrabieh couscous with Pyrenees red. Listen to jazz. Sunday morning, fog clearing as the fennel stands are cut back, the hint of aniseed in the air. The thousand garden pots are rationalised and stored in the handmade rabbit hutch, while the terracottas are refilled with best foundation for planting of herbs next weekend. Clear the dead wood under daisy bushes and lavender, the aftermath of recurrent once-in-one-hundred year heat events. Prise apart jammed pot-bound tiger orchids for propagation in fresh orchid mix. A neighbour starts up a chainsaw to cut timber, but blessedly it only lasts a quarter hour. Pleasant lack of motor mower choruses in the vicinity. Shake out the little yellow leaves fallen into the cacti and succulents, ruining their Monet dapple, before shifting the lot into a warm vista for winter, and some behind windows. Weeding tedium but what’s to be done, teeding wedium needing medium seeding freedom the mindless hum as this continues. Maybe clear the gutters if someone’s here to help with the ladder. Later in the day, retire to read Etty Hillesum and write letters. Dinner will be vegetarian shepherd’s pie with sweet potato mash and the other half of the bottle of Pyrenees red.

Scott

 

Photograph: the Hygiene Team at Ivanhoe Railway Station, 

the 12th of May 2021, 9.06 am.

Scott Emptiness. Scott Vacancy. Scott Vacant. Scott Robodebt. Scott Oppressor. Scott Moron. Scott Peter. Scott Dutton. Scott Christian. Scott Porter. Scott Barnaby. Scott Joyce. Scott Tony. Scott Abbott. Scott Women. Scott Problem. Scott Britanny. Scott Higgins. Scott Grace-Tame. Scott Murdoch. Scott Payback. Scott Lies. Scott Marketing. Scott Bus. Scott Chin. Scott Rehearsed. Scott Script. Scott Misogyny. Scott Slap. Scott Betrayal. Scott Gender. Scott Misconduct. Scott Probably. Scott Evasion. Scott Evade. Scott Culpability. Scott Blame. Scott Game. Scott Evidence. Scott Integrity. Scott Commission. Scott Package. Scott Jobkeeper. Scott Shouty. Scott Holiday. Scott Honolulu. Scott Bushfire. Scott Hawaiian. Scott Hawaii. Scott Aloha. Scott Ukelele. Scott Hotspot. Scott Pineapple. Scott Shirt. Scott Cobargo. Scott Handshake. Scott Limousine. Scott Rebuff. Scott Doesn’t. Scott Carry-A-Hose. Scott Photo-Op. Scott Presser. Scott Courtyard. Scott Question. Scott Answer. Scott Blot. Scott Not. Scott What. Scott Yacht. Scott Ruby. Scott Princess. Scott Rot. Scott Rort. Scott Rorts. Scott Rorter. Scott Denial. Scott Rollout. Scott Bungle. Scott Cancel. Scott Cancellation. Scott Postpone. Scott Ignore. Scott Mistake. Scott Excuse. Scott Wrong.  Scott Democracy. Scott Sausage. Scott Jab. Scott Phonecall. Scott Indigeneity. Scott Dot-Art. Scott Wilcannia. Scott Neglect. Scott Dust. Scott Erosion. Scott Cyclone. Scott Climate. Scott Failure. Scott Fossil. Scott Baseball. Scott Cap. Scott Icemelt. Scott Lismore. Scott Ignore. Scott Smirk. Scott Bluff. Scott Bully. Scott Economy. Scott Unemployed. Scott Disabled. Scott Blessed. Scott Smug. Scott Overbearing. Scott Money. Scott Billionaires. Scott Lawyers. Scott Threats. Scott Assault. Scott Missiles. Scott Submarines. Scott Chinese. Scott Doorstep. Scott Pentecostal. Scott Hallelujah. Scott Hillsong. Scott Houston. Scott Super-Pastor. Scott Virus. Scott Wuhan. Scott Covid. Scott Vaccine. Scott Hesitancy. Scott Knots. Scott Nots. Scott Not-A-Race. Scott Erase. Scott Posters. Scott Pfizer. Scott Moderna. Scott Astra-Zeneca. Scott Second-Shot. Scott Queues. Scott State-Issue. Scott Scottie. Scott Scomo. Scott Scummo. Scott Worst. Scott Nightmare. Scott Scenario. Scott Swinging. Scott Electorates. Scott Macquarie. Scott Eden-Monaro. Scott Gilmore. Scott Koooooooooyong. Scott Goldstein. Scott Mackellar. Scott Ryan. Scott Page. Scott Suit. Scott Tie. Scott Shoe-Lace. Scott Lapel. Scott Badge. Scott Blunder. Scott Wonders. Scott Indifferent. Scott Indifference. Scott Shrug. Scott Rugby. Scott Sydney. Scott Bondi. Scott Backstabber.  Scott Turncoat. Scott Betrayer. Scott Bum’s-Rush. Scott Gaia. Scott Climate. Scott Inundation. Scott Blindspot. Scott Deluge. Scott Rainbomb. Scott Temperature. Scott Blank. Scott Heat. Scott Heatwave. Scott Hotter. Scott &c.

Cross

Having never been sure how to pass Good Friday, this year is no different. There’s no plan. Sleeping-in a little is followed by holiday breakfast, the kitchen smelling sweetly of coffee and toasted fruit buns. I ponder my first, thinking of how hot cross buns are now common as croissants, 365 days of the year. A contemporary English novelist, slightly Barbara Pym, could have a character who gives them up for Lent. It’s plausible, I think to myself, though everyone knows Good Friday is the one day of the year. Even when they subscribe to No Religion. Once upon a time I put the day aside for domestics, cleaning all the windows, mopping floors, raking leaves. Was that guilt, or just me at a loose end? This year I resolve simply to read relevant passages from books, a form of meditation on the day. The cat Obsidian keeps me company in the backroom, curled up like the night sky. Mervyn Stockwood gives a sermon on the 15^th of April 1956, in Cambridge: “To-night we pass to the one service that Christ gave us, the breaking of bread, or the Holy Communion.” He’s talking about Maundy Thursday. We went there last night. The Washing of the Disciples’ Feet and the Stripping of the Altar is a service I attend whenever in town, the foreshadowing of everything that is about to happen. Perhaps it’s why I stand back from church-going on Friday: the reality is already upon us, too grisly to contemplate. We know it so well, from a lifetime. Who can look at an execution? Isn’t there a journalism policy about that sort of thing? Ronald Blythe shows up, quoting William Shakespeare: “The uncertain glory of an April day.” Seven words about Spring, but is that all? Meanings may multiply. Blythe continues: “Nothing can hide the shocking events of Holy Week, however: the arrest, the trial, the desertion of friends, the selflessness of women, the ancient rite of Passover. And thus the world should have moved on. Execution requires that it should.” An execution that is the ur-story x-ed across our cityscapes, as familiar to the unread as the well-read. Hours pass thinking about these little sentences. “Let go of your plans,” says Edith Stein. Another time she writes, “When you seek truth, you seek God whether you know it or not.” Some trees are turning yellow. The dryness of the earth will soon be covered with rain. In the afternoon we visit friends for open house hot cross buns, 11 am to 4 pm, “just drop in.” Carol will go to Tenebrae and Bridie to usher at the Melbourne Comedy Festival, but I must come home to start sorting for family Easter. Later in the evening I will visit the website of All Saints Margaret Street London to hear the next Holy Week sermon from Rowan Williams. One sermon had to be read out because he was flown midweek to the Ukraine-Romania border to greet those displaced in a refugee camp.  

Universe

“It’s easy to forget that light takes time to travel. But when we see the moon we are seeing it as it was 1.3 seconds earlier; Jupiter we see as it was forty minutes ago; the Andromeda galaxy – the nearest major galaxy to ours, and the most distant object we can see without a telescope – 2.5 million years ago.” I sit trying to imagine how far light has travelled since August 16, 2021, the day this sentence was published in ‘The New Yorker’, but it’s no use. I stare at page 29, relieved just to be able to read these scintillating facts in a cosy corner, undisturbed, in a room of lights moving at a speed something like human. It takes light no effort, but for me quite some effort to understand light. Another sentence I underline in blue biro is this: “Most of the light spectrum is not visible to the human eye.” This leads me to wonder, Bloom-like, if we dream in colours other than those readily available. Who is to say if we do or not? I couldn’t prove it to anyone, even if it happens regularly. Though the light spectrum is everything light makes, radio waves and violet radiation, but it’s still always dark at night. It is fun to read physics, but I cannot do anything about it. Perhaps that’s one thing dreams are doing, emulating the patterns of light in our universe. Then I stumble across the claim that exoplanets are “a young field”, they being planets beyond our Solar System. “The first exoplanet (outside science fiction) was discovered only twenty-five years ago. By 2005, about two hundred exoplanets had been found. Today, more than forty-four hundred are known, and it seems likely that such planets are ubiquitous.” Seems almost obvious really, but then science requires proof. I stare out the window picturing sun systems with my antiquated mind manual of cubist planes and computer graphics. Life on somewhere other than Mars being the dazzling question that reason quickly answers, at the speed of light, in the affirmative. Behind ubiquitous exists the word innumerable. Hence this underlining on page 30: “In 1924, Edwin Hubble had discovered that there was at least one galaxy other than our own; the Hubble telescope revealed that there were billions of them.” It’s when the word billions is introduced into the conversation that the cells in my mind go collectively abstract. Even billion (singular) cannot be countenanced with meaningful equanimity; contemplative acceptance is called on. While I am happy that galaxies are abundant, many of them doubtless irradiating their own colours with no name and waves from monster light sources, it is our own Earth that has a human scale, it’s blue days and dark nights my kind of corner.

Thank you Rivka Galchen:  https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/08/16/nasas-new-telescope-will-show-us-the-infancy-of-the-universe

Signature

 

Nowadays the metropolis is signed off unofficially everywhere. The initials and cognomens and pseudonyms and badges of unknown citizens are shown and known on every available surface. They leave their mark with increasing scale and detail and colour and flourish. Letters are turned into artistic platforms, the personal embellishments to words that all too frequently they make unreadable on purpose and by design. They invent fonts yet to be patented, point sizes outside a computer’s dropdown list. The extensive extent of this efflorescence has the effect of a citizens’ cartoon running along railway sidings and over city laneways and across commercial billboards and around factory corners. It delineates its own terms of reference in active hand, its own strident message, at times beautiful, grandiloquent; at other times intrusive, or even grotesque. Someone must push back against the coldness of real estate brain, must escape the disempowered sense left by empty words of politics. Muralists transform concrete walls, work at Sistine proportions, or miniature, or at the human scale. This set of ideograms painted on a power station, for example, is nothing but scribble to the passing eye. Until we take time, rather than our usual leisurely rapid, we cannot apprise their character and potential meanings. The square of shapely lines reads O INSTER TRLAR PIUO I or about that. Google yields nothing. I like the O of the sun, or it could be the moon, rising over the streets below, trees and houses, and the graffitist about their silent work. That person is an I at ground level. It is their private language, a poem thrown against the wall with a few gestures, spatial need easily accommodated. Muralists make concrete, poetry. Further contemplation has the final line morph into PIVOT, which may be a clue. I should watch out for other PIVOTs in the area. Against the ideogram square runs a second line lower left in pale green that reads NOM. Maybe NOME. To the trained Western eye it’s the artist’s signature, literally their nomen, but again a signature no one can trace on a government database. It is theirs and theirs alone, together with every other anonymous sign-off. Their flourish joins the untraceable collective. NOM has a name, at least, dashed in spraycan as scent trace, land claim, a say at belonging, an adventure under cover. For it’s the anonymity of this work, brazenly silver, striking in public places, that is its signature. The only begetters of these anonymous names move unnoticed by any but the most acute closed circuit TV eyeball. Our job is to give them even a modicum of the time of day. Grey men from the council will roll their beige rollers over the poem, one grey old day, slightly overcast, whereupon NOM will strike again with a fresh picture of what is going down.

Rare

 

A list of works uncatalogued in the Rare Books Collection of the Carmelite Library was compiled in March 2022 and sent to the significance assessor for his inclusion in his report. The report, and other documents, will go to the Significance Assessment people at the National Library of Australia at the end of April. ‘1606 Joannis Maldonati. Commentarii in quattuor Euangelistas, in 2 volumes. Venetiis, Apud Sessas,’ is my first entry on the uncatalogued list. Not the oldest book in the collection by a long way (1538) but like all the rare books, a conjuror of imagined time. Juan Maldonado was a Jesuit who taught in Paris in the previous century. His classes were in Latin, like his books. This would have been a standard textbook on the Gospels, published in Venice at the height of its glory, only seven years before the arrival of the composer Claudio Monteverdi in the city. ‘1642 circa Jacques d’Ypes. La vie de la Saincte Mere Terese de Iesvs. Lacks title page and colophon,’ which is not much help, full identification of this biography of Teresa of Avila requiring me eventually to roam online databases, piecing together known facts until a match is secured. This may happen, we will see. ‘1644 Les oevvres de la Sainte Mere Terese de Iesvs. Edited by Cyprien de la Nativité de la Vierge (1605-80). Paris, Chez Denys de la Noüe’ is an example of the arrival of the Order in France after the conclusion of the French Wars of Religion in 1598. The translated works of Teresa were being made available widely for the locals, likewise those of her singular associate known to us as St. John of the Cross: ‘1652 Les oevvres spiritvelles du B. Pere Iean de la Croix. Edited by Cyprien de la Nativité de la Vierge. Paris, Vevve Pierre Chevalier.’ The entrenched Catholicism of 17^th and 18^th century France is visible in the copious volumes of cloth paper, vellum and/or leather, like ‘1693 Collegi Salmanticensis FF. Discalceatorum B. Mariae de Monte Carmeli. Tomus Nonus. Patavii, Apud Joannem Franciscum Brigoncium,’ the ultimate backup position of the Theological School of Salamanca, last word in Tridentine correctness. With, by lively contrast, the combative works of the era’s frontline shock troops, exemplified by this work published in Milan: ‘1750 Libero de Jesus. Controversiarum scholastic-polemico-historico-criticarum. Tomus Quintus. Mediolani, Petri Francisci Malatestae.’ The Library has over 500 pre-1850 rare books that we have been cleaning, identifying, and arranging into chronological octavo and quarto order, for easy access. The process has been most enjoyable, financed with the help of a Community Heritage Grant from Canberra. Spirituality outnumbers polemic in this collection, as you might expect.

Cataloguer

 

Today I found this ‘Cataloguer’s ABC’, written for a conference workshop and left in a file dated June 2004. I cannot even remember writing this ABC. “Amateur expert in software configurations. Bearer of the full depth of the collection. Collator of inconvenient authorities. Defender of enduring standards. Elucidator of erroneous electronic entries. Free floater amidst the free-floatings. Gardener of the right terms. Handler contracted to supervise the products of time. Indexer or rejector of every misspelt name, title travesty, puffed-up publisher, insufferable pseudonym, faulty form division, and variable series you wouldn’t want to meet in a month of Sundays. Janitor of injudicious inclusions. Kleptomaniac of overseas expertise. Light touch with lumber. Master or mistress of the perpendicular or precious periodical, or its impermanent online partner. Nitpicker of the hopelessly incorrect. Overseer of backups, transaction analyses, and program updates. Provider of anything and everything required to keep the place going that has nothing to do with cataloguing. Quoter of other people’s forgotten prefaces. Replacer of commas with colons and colons with semi-colons and dashes with full-stops. Subtle synchroniser of the synonymous see reference. Tracer of a thousand names with odd initials and no death. Undeterred unjumbler of indeterminate jumble. Vanquisher of the viable backlog. Warden of predictable passwords. X-marker of misbindings, printing errors, blank chapters. Yes-man to utterly insignificant no-noes. Zealot for every jot and tittle in a file of fixed fields.” An incomplete second ABC is also in the paper. “Arbiter who distinguishes the controversial from the contrariwise. Bibliographer of revelation and revealer of bibliography. Colander of the old and new calendar. Delineator of deity. Educator in the classification of religion. [F G] Hebraist-cum-Hellenist-cum-Latinist-cum-Americanist. Inquisitor who separates the heretical from the heterodox and the heterodox from the orthodox. Judge and jury of theological context. Keeper of sacred traditions. Lifter of leaning learning. Minister to the ministers of ministry. [N O] Preserver of all the possible holy versions. [Q R S] Tender of the treasures old and new. [U V W] X-ray maker to the bones of the living words. Yearner after the perfect religious thesaurus. Zoologist of papal bulls.” A purpose of the paper was to get attendees to think about all of the unwritten role descriptions of the job. As I say in my 2004 introduction: “One-word roles for a theological cataloguer would include once in a blue moon ‘holy fool’, some of the time ‘neophyte’, most of the time ‘devotee’, fairly frequently ‘angel’, and occasionally ‘saint'.” Longer statements about the role included all the job descriptions listed in the two ABCs. I must have run out of time.

Contranym

 

Recently a list of contranyms was posted online. To sanction, for example, can mean to approve; it also means to boycott, i.e. not approve. France sanctions Germany’s sanctions. Another contranym is ‘apology’, which we usually understand to be a statement of contrition for an action, but it can also mean a defence of an action. When John Henry Newman writes his ’Apologia Pro Vita Sua’, he is not saying sorry for his life, rather he is laying out the case for why his life happily went the way it went, without saying sorry once. Furthermore, the very title of his book sends its own message in unapologetic Latin; some English readers require meaningful translation. A contranym (or contronym) is an auto-antonym. It’s a single word with two contradictory meanings. To dust means to remove fine particles from a surface; it also means to add fine particles to a surface. They are their own opposites. The distinctive meaning is contingent on the context in which the word is used. In the kitchen we cleave the meat for chicken parmigiana, separating with a cleaver, but we want the breadcrumbs and parmesan to cleave, or not separate, from the slice during cooking. A little hour may be spent thinking of contranyms from daily life. One of my favourites is ‘oversight’, a word that once meant not noticing something, or missing something obvious. It now also means having complete notice or control over something, being responsible for knowing all of something, whether obvious or not. To have oversight of an operation can lead to some terrible oversights. Take the captain of the Titanic, who knew too late he was a walking contranym. Nowadays I always have to look twice at which meaning is in play with ‘oversight’. Likewise with ‘presently’, a word that may mean now or then, depending on when it happens. ‘Depending’ is a borderline contranym, it’s very conditionality an assurance or absence of assurance. I meditate on the Australian expression ‘yeah-nah’, whether it is a contranym, a contra-contranym, an ouroboros, or even a known part of speech, at all.  Subcultures make wordplay of contranyms, turning them into grammatical art. ‘Wicked’, for example, means very, very good to many Americans. ‘Wicked’ can mean super cool or hot as. “It’s so bad, it’s good,” is not an ethical proposition with a chance of survival, but for Americans it’s all in the way it’s said, a signature of supreme quality. Likewise, some English folk have the same gift for saying words to mean their opposite. Asked about their outing to the theatre, they will reply that it was absolutely fabulous, and it’s only by their tone or a look that they mean the opposite – it was not absolutely not fabulous not. Dictionaries weren’t devised to register this level of contrary contranym.