Today I spent another full day at the Thrift Store---my third in a row---and I am physically zonked.
I cashiered in the AM, and it was fun to ring up about half of the things Julia and I had put out last night.
Eating cookies on break in the workroom, I said to my fellow volunteers something like,
"I'm worn out, but nevertheless I feel such unalloyed joy being here with you all!"
And one of them, Eric, looked at me and said [with affection],
"Unalloyed. Nevertheless. You just used those two words in one sentence."
Along with putting out a parrot candelabra, this made me feel like Edward Lear--a quirky, amused person tinged, nevertheless, with just a bit of . . . poignant displacement (?), like nutmeg on egg custard.
You know Edward Lear?
I'd thought he was almost as well known as fellow Victorian Lewis Carrol, but now I think not. Though maybe people sort of know his most famous nonsense poem, "The Own and the Pussycat"?
When I was falling in love with my Latin professor, or falling in love with Latin, or with Augustine's Confessions (in Latin), or all of the above--I can't even untangle it now--when I was thirty-two, one of the things I did was translate "The Owl and the Pussycat" into Latin and give it to him.
Ha!
Talk about overshooting the mark.
I had no idea that someone translating Edward Lear into Latin for fun would be an aphrodisiac to a Classics prof...
I was so naive.
Much mayhem ensued.
Anyway, I grew up loving his Book of Nonsense,
< this edition,
which our mother [of course our mother] gave me and my sister.
I especially loved Lear's animals, which were like my own stuffed animals, in my mind. [Alive, but on their own terms.]
Lear could be a patron saint of SNARP (stuffed needy animal rescue project).
When I was looking up Edward Lear, I came across this illustration of his work by Gabriella Barouch.
I don't even remember any bears at all in Lear, and this doesn't quite fit him (and I can't imagine illustration his work because his own illustrations are so perfectly part of his written words),
but I've been thinking about bears lately because I'm surprised at how much I like some of my stuffed bears, when I've never cared about bears before, and I really like this.
Is the bear protecting the person, or is the person part of the bear? Is that a boy? A woman?
Both?
Something else?
Oh, my. I am tired. I need to go take a hot bath...
I cashiered in the AM, and it was fun to ring up about half of the things Julia and I had put out last night.
Eating cookies on break in the workroom, I said to my fellow volunteers something like,
"I'm worn out, but nevertheless I feel such unalloyed joy being here with you all!"
And one of them, Eric, looked at me and said [with affection],
"Unalloyed. Nevertheless. You just used those two words in one sentence."
Along with putting out a parrot candelabra, this made me feel like Edward Lear--a quirky, amused person tinged, nevertheless, with just a bit of . . . poignant displacement (?), like nutmeg on egg custard.
You know Edward Lear?
I'd thought he was almost as well known as fellow Victorian Lewis Carrol, but now I think not. Though maybe people sort of know his most famous nonsense poem, "The Own and the Pussycat"?
When I was falling in love with my Latin professor, or falling in love with Latin, or with Augustine's Confessions (in Latin), or all of the above--I can't even untangle it now--when I was thirty-two, one of the things I did was translate "The Owl and the Pussycat" into Latin and give it to him.
Ha!
Talk about overshooting the mark.
I had no idea that someone translating Edward Lear into Latin for fun would be an aphrodisiac to a Classics prof...
I was so naive.
Much mayhem ensued.
< this edition,
which our mother [of course our mother] gave me and my sister.
I especially loved Lear's animals, which were like my own stuffed animals, in my mind. [Alive, but on their own terms.]
Lear could be a patron saint of SNARP (stuffed needy animal rescue project).
When I was looking up Edward Lear, I came across this illustration of his work by Gabriella Barouch.
I don't even remember any bears at all in Lear, and this doesn't quite fit him (and I can't imagine illustration his work because his own illustrations are so perfectly part of his written words),
but I've been thinking about bears lately because I'm surprised at how much I like some of my stuffed bears, when I've never cared about bears before, and I really like this.
Is the bear protecting the person, or is the person part of the bear? Is that a boy? A woman?
Both?
Something else?
Oh, my. I am tired. I need to go take a hot bath...