MICHAEL SEAN STRICKLAND

Words to Make a Story Out of

Tenth Pod

Violets and music

§ 440 | Sugar

"Gradually overtaken by slumber, his flaxen head drooped, his whole lamb-like figure relaxed, and, half reclining against the ladder's foot, lay motionless, as some sugar-snow in March, which, softly stealing down over night, with its white placidity startles the brown farmer peering out from his threshold at daybreak." [Melville, Confidence Man, ch. 1]

“Hussein, T., familiar with the berdiwar’s alien and contrary natures, changed the [sugar].” (A. Powell, Books do furnish a room, ch. 2, p. 87)

§ 441 | Sprawl

"what could have been cohesive arguments sprawl in all directions" [B. Swaim, rev. of Women Writers and the Edinburgh Enlightenment. TLS, 15 April 2011]. "And should I hang this apiform sprawl of grainy light?" [Divastigations § 270] "That particular form of writing you lay claim to, according to which a scribbling scrawl, or graphomanic sprawl, of syllabic, vocalic, consonantal, and modal transposition is brought, you know, to maturity by a natural picking and culling, a notional paring and cutting of combinatoric thought-blossoms." [Divastigations § 209] "Moonmad sprawl of quaking thighs." [Divastigations § 205] "Slutty sprawl of cowgirl tunic snap by snap unsprung. That child I was cracking a cunt-proud squat all dollish and slapfully awkward." [Divastigations § 96]

"There, on the soft sand, a few feet away from our elders, we would [SPRAWL] all morning, in a petrified paroxysm of desire, and take advantage of every blessed quirk in space and time to touch each other: her hand, half-hidden in the sand, would creep toward me, its slender brown fingers sleepwalking nearer and nearer; then, her opalescent knee would start on a long cautious journey; sometimes a chance rampart built by younger children granted us sufficient concealment to graze each other’s salty lips; these incomplete contacts drove our healthy and inexperienced young bodies to such a state of exasperation that not even the cold blue water, under which we still clawed at each other, could bring relief." [Lolita, I, 3] "Her legs twitched a little as they lay across my live lap; I stroked them; there she lolled in the right-hand corner, almost a[SPRAWL], Lola the bobby-soxer, devouring her immemorial fruit, singing through its juice, losing her slipper, rubbing the heel of her slipperless foot in its sloppy anklet, against the pile of old magazines heaped on my left on the sofa—and every movement she made, every shuffle and ripple, helped me to conceal and to improve the secret system of tactile correspondence between beast and beauty—between my gagged, bursting beast and the beauty of her dimpled body in its innocent cotton frock. Under my glancing finger tips I felt the minute hairs bristle ever so slightly along her shins." [Lolita, I, 13] "A combination of naïveté and deception, of charm and vulgarity, of blue silks and rosy mirth, Lolita, when she chose, could be a most exasperating brat. I was not really quite prepared for her fits of disorganized boredom, intense and vehement griping, her [SPRAWL]ing, droopy, dopey-eyed style, and what is called goofing off—a kind of diffused clowning which she thought was tough in a boyish hoodlum way." [Lolita, II, 1] "I had just retracted some silly promise she had forced me to make in a moment of blind impatient passion, and thee she was [SPRAWL]ing and sobbing, and pinching my caressing hand, and I was laughing happily, and the atrocious, unbelievable, unbearable, and, I suspect, eternal horror that I know now was still but a dot of blackness in the blue of my bliss; and so we lay, when with one of those jolts that have ended by knocking my poor heart out of its groove, I met the unblinking dark eyes of two strange and beautiful children, faunlet and nymphet, whom their identical flat dark hair and bloodless cheeks proclaimed siblings if not twins." [Lolita, II, 3] "As she [SPRAWL]ed there, biting at a hangnail an mocking me with her heartless vaporous eyes, and all the time rocking a stool upon which she had placed the heel of an outstretched shoeless foot, I perceived all at once with a sickening qualm how much she had changed since I first met her two years ago." [Lolita, II, 14]

§ 442 | User

§ 443 | GI

§ 444 | A

During the wee hours linking the thirty-third evening with the thirty-fourth morning following the fêtes du solstice d’hiver of 2009 held here in Tixpu, the electricity in the fourth-floor piso of the building I occupied (and still do, pero, solo now, solo) with R went out. Listening in (likewise peering through l’œil-de-bœuf of our studio’s triply locked front door) on the unlucky neighbor’s futile request for help, somewhere, I knew, the cells — those of kidney, liver, spleen, lungs, muscle, bone, the very neurons, even — of someone close to me, more or less, were snuffing out, were snuffed, were, in terms of life function, gone — not just singly, but in convulsive synchronic bursts of voluminous bundles of tissue. For when someone dies, the excess current, or exergy, expelled from the body’s cells, of necessity throws the entropic equilibrium of the surrounding system briefly out of joint, resulting in the fusion of the then with the now, the here with the there, the long with the short, the up with the down, the inside with the outside, the length with the width, the height with the — you get my drift, I’m sure. Upon rising three or four hours post-the-incident-of-our-neighbor’s-blown-fuse, R informed me, “He hecho un sueño. Il est né pour nous un fils. Too difficult for me to remember. Trop difficile de m’en souvenir. The process of giving birth. Eight winters from then to now. Pero su pelo, ni roux comme toi, ni moreno como yo.” “The color of your pelo, love, of your cheveux, is not brown, but blond.” “Por supuesto, no. Lo de nostre nen. Plutôt noir comme —, pero nero come —, but bl—” But utterly, completely, lividly, vividly, corvidly, inkily, ebonly, murkily, nigrescently, fuliginously, iridescently blue like — like her. Not R, of course, but — her. “Toujouuuurrrrrs with your first cup in there! Must you be so —?” “But I like to sit y sip y —” “Enough! Go!” But, if her, why then the short circuit one floor up in our neighbor’s piso, not here, in ours? Should I impute her poor direction to the spin of the globe, the different time zones? Or did she just die like she lived, with skewed sights? “¿Querés une omelette?” I shouted from the kitchen. Indistinct rumbling from the little room, signifying, if not nothing, then definitely something. Which put me in mind of something. Precisely eight winters, to the hour, or even, more or less, the minute before the moment our neighbor’s electricity went out, J died during mon séjour lutètien. Je me souviens du lumignon in my desktop sconce suddenly bursting, “Pop!” Glistening hot limpid slivers of it showered my Chicken Street studio. One of them cut the knuckle of my scribbling thumb. Within moments, or less even, the light over the stove went out too. Did she think I didn’t love her like I loved J? But listen to me! How pitiful I’m being — but how could I be different? For I’m not someone else, but me. Pity’s my livelihood, exile my medium. My, but if I’m not the little bon-motitiste, this morning, hein? “C’est servi, le petit-dej!” I shouted whilst dishing out the grub. She flushed the toilet, opened the door, closed the door, took her position on the sunny side of the nook [I elide her sockless steps from there to here]. But let me think, let me think... If, like everything in this universe, the scope of exergy is restricted in its degrees of freedom by the speed of light, then it would be impossible for the dying to fire it with the intent to hit some specific thing or person. Exergy, thus, like light and entropy, is indifferent to will, to pity, to, in short, sociophysiology. Or, to put it differently, sociophysiology is beyond the scope of biocosmozeology. Pero — je ne cherches it nunca, siempre est-ce que je trouves it! To wit: ¡¿Et si le rêve d’R repousse, refoule, rejète l’exergie d’elle?! If, in the words of Upper Engush, R’s REM-induced sleep visions could somehow repel, repress, reject her expelled exergy?!! I must find out where she is, where she’s been living, where she’s just died! The morning sunlight burned through the onion-whorls of the worldly disguise s/he wore. While its recto shouted, “Minion, sexy whore!”, its verso whispered — but must every perception be smirched with the moribund emery of memory? Filling his or her polluted cup with coffee (the second dose of this god’s or godess’s elixir), I sobbed. “¿Porque llorés vos, mon petit chou?” For once, I couldn’t tell her. Or him. Or it. Or something.

§ 445 | RER

la Rhapsodie Electroniquement Ravitaillée; the rapacity of the Electronic Rhapsody

§ 446 | Enervates

§ 447 | Erautist

erautist (descending, through the female line, from ειρος, ‘wool’ and ειρω, ‘to say, speak, tell’ (this latter having a maternal uncle, ερεω, ‘to say; to ask, inquire, question), and, through the male line, from εραω, ‘having to do with love’ and (my personal favorite) εραω, ‘to vomit, pour forth;’ a second patriline also managed to insinuate itself when, ερευγομαι, ‘to spit, spew out, disgorge, belch; to surge, break in foam; to bellow, roar,’ the paternal uncle of ειρος, incestuously dandled his elder sister’s daughter (by his brother ερεω or εραω), ερεβος, ‘a place of nether darkness,’ on his knee).

[8.4.1] IV. After the death of Nyctimus, Arcas the son of Callisto came to the throne. He introduced the cultivation of crops, which he learned from Triptolemus, and taught men to make bread, to weave clothes, and other things besides, having learned the art of spinning from Adristas. After this king the land was called Arcadia instead of Pelasgia and its inhabitants Arcadians instead of Pelasgians.
[8.4.2] His wife, according to the legend, was no mortal woman but a Dryad nymph. For they used to call some nymphs Dryads, others Epimeliads, and others Naiads, and Homer in his poetry talks mostly of Naiad nymphs. This nymph they call Erato, and by her they say that Arcas had Azan, Apheidas and Elatus. Previously he had had Autolaus, an illegitimate son. [Pausanius]

§ 448 | Nyctonosticist

§ 449 | Enkylistse

ἐγκυλίνδησις rolling among; ἐγκύκλιος circular, rounded, round; revolving in a cycle, recurrent; ἐγκώλεος (from κολλάω bind together)

§ 450 | RD

§ 451 | Velasto Prastier

Intrussyan tsarist exile from Norlia, currently living in an old vicarage outside Blorhn, Wyoming. [It was on VP’s property, actually, where, with financial assistance from VP himself, that Ada Romer established herself in an abandoned stable, where she met her demise.] Although his command of the Norlian language is far from what one would call fluent or even proficient, he is the founder of the Society of Norlian Exiles (SNE). His first novel, Sautez!, he wrote in his first abri bien d’exilé, Lutèce, and composed it in the language of that city. Upon reaching the Tetrastics, he wrote Depreccata, a sort of murder mystery, in Ityalian, the lingua franca of Wyoming’s Sihlaucal Coast. His third novel, La Cuna, he wrote in New Lexican. For his next three novels, Lance, Sprawl, and Exodus — all dealing with Norlian themes, the latter a fictionalized account of his own flight from the destroyed city — he reverted to his native Intrussyan. He has written two works of “non-fiction,” both in Appalachian Upper Engush: Their Loose Ideas, a screed attacking basically everyone, literay critics and other writers in particular, and Into My Grave, a “memoir” of his lost Norlian years, chock full of allusions to Hamlet. This latter work forms the core of my study, Prastier's Infernos (PI), which is why our eventual encounter in Agua Prieta, so devoutly wished on my part, was marked by such heat.

§ 452 | Arist

§ 453 | Taste

§ 454 | Este

§ 455 | Star word

§ 456 | PSI

Ψ, ψ; wavefunction;

§ 457 | Eurynderast

εὔρις, εὔρινος with a good nose, keen-scented ῥίς nose ῥινάω lead by the nose; ἐρρινώμεθα we were led by the nose ῥιναυλέω, ῥιναυστέω blow through the nose, snort (from anger) ῥινεγκαταπηξιγένειος with a nose reaching to the chin δειρή neck, throat δεράγχη collar δεραγχής throttling δέραιον necklace δέρω flay δηρός long, too long δῆρις fight, battle, contest ῥινόν skin ῥίνη a file (as in lime) ῥινάω to file, fine down (as in Fr. limer); “ψῆγμα ῥινηθέν” metaphorical filings of a iterary work ῥινάριον small file; a sort of eye-salve [?!] εὐρυδίνης wide-eddying, wide-whirling; from ῥύδην flowingly, abundantly, and ῥοία flow, flux; as in παρ᾽ εὐρυδίναν Ἀλφεόν, Ἀλφεὸν παρ᾽ εὐρυδίναν by the wide-whirling Alpheus [stock phrase in Bacchylides's Odes] ῥυντάκης, ῥυνδάκη an Indian bird of the size of a pigeon εὖ well, thoroughly, competently; right, good; abundant, prosperous; etc. εὐρυ, εὐρύ̣ wide, broad εὐρυφωνία broadness of sound εὐρυχαίτης with wide-streaming hair

§ 458 | Urdostoist

Not merely a more elegant way of saying wordist, but more rigorous too, entailing, as it does, the primordiality of words words words.

§ 459 | RE

§ 460 | Arrack

§ 461 | Ass

§ 462 | Lista

And should I dresser, comme on dit, a list of my souffrances?

§ 463 | Arts

“What applies to music applies to the other arts.” “‘I hate all the arts!’ you say.” [A. Bennett, How to live on 24 hours a day. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1910. Ch. IX, Interest in the arts.] “And, my dear sir, perhaps you happen to be an estate agent’s clerk, and you hate the arts, and you want to foster your immortal soul, and you can’t be interested in your business because it’s so humdrum.” “You need not be devoted to the arts, not to literature, in order to live fully.” [A. Bennett, How to live on 24 hours a day. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1910. Ch. X, Nothing in life is humdrum.]

"At such times, by unobserved, but subtle arts, the devoted family attendants, had restrained his wife from being present at his side." "Cases there are where it becomes soberly advisable, by direct arts to convert some well-wishers into foes." [PIERRE: OR, THE AMBIGUITIES. BY HERMAN MELVILLE. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 1852.]

“A handful of objects are especially fine, little masterpieces of the applied arts.” [J. Davidson, Crowning controversies. Star exhibits from the tombs of Aegae — but to whom do they belong? TLS, 20 May 2011, p. 18]

“As with corporate identity in legal systems, there is good reason to think that authorial anonymity in the creative arts, and in the rest of culture, is not unusual across the breadth of human societies.” [N. J. Enfield, Credit tests. TLS, 18 February 2011, p. 13.]

"But I have no definition except that it seems a word of insult, a word applied to people in the arts at this moment." [A. Ginsberg]

"It's a group of young people, interested in the arts, not interested in the society as we currently have, who travel around in automobiles with a lot of addresses, and the men generally have beards." [M. Mead]

"It is a testament to the vision of both artists that the resulting whole is greater than the sum of its parts." [K. Grovier, Checked mates. TLS, 11 March 2011, p. 18]

“I may turn up yet, on another campus, as an old, happy, healthy, heterosexual Russian, a writer in exile, sans fame, sans future, sans audience, sans anything but his art.” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, note to line 1000)

[Words-01.html#003] a savvy gambler, a cunning sage, a wise thief learned, like Arjuna and Odysseus, in the ways of guile and gauntlet — antique virtues, archaic arts.

“the arts have always been with us. And so have ideas of beauty, sublimity, and transcendence, along with the verities of the human condition: love, death, memory, suffering, power, fear, loss, desire, hope, and so forth. ... the subject matter of and occasion for the arts throughout human history.” [E. Dissayanake, 1992, Homo aestheticus, p. 41] ::: The subject matter of WORDS is “and so forth.”

§ 464 | Tawrim

§ 465 | Duty

§ 466 | Aster

[Story of China Aster in Melville, Confidence Man?] "At these words, recalling the sad end of his worthy parent, China Aster could not restrain some tears." [p. 329

§ 467 | W

§ 468 | Asso Toloste

Sometimes mistakenly spelled Tolôte. Lutèce-based Intrussyan biopictorialist whose eponymous work IV was all the rage my second or third year in this tintone urb. Many of the more lurid scenes of this film were shot in the ATD Den, and show me romping haptically with IV herself.

“Attolite portas principes vestras, et elevamini portae aeternales: et introibit rex gloriae.” [Spurious addition to Psalm 23 (i.e. does not exist in Hebrew)]

§ 469 | Sarprostium

A viola da gamba of sorts.

§ 470 | OS

an “obscure syndicalist [...] organizing strikes” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, note to lines 17 and 29)

ontological stratum; ontological structure; ontological situation; Our Sea (Mare Nostrum)

§ 471 | W

§ 472 | Law

“The archives of my case against the law, snatched up and out of the tale-telling files by my high important friend” [D. Barnes, Nightwood. New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1937].

"that natural law which ordains dissolution equally to the mass, as in time to the member." [Melville, Confidence Man, ch. 2]

"necessity knows no law, and heeds no risk." [ibid., ch. 4]

"Now, my dear fellow, how can you have the conscience to say that, when it is as much according to natural law that men are social as sheep gregarious. [Melville, Confidence Man, ch. 24]

"Tell us what hidden law regulates their flow?" [Melville, Mardi, v. 1, p. 102]

§ 473 | Aerolexist

§ 474 | Asinist

§ 475 | PO

Maori: te Po, ‘the Night’ : “at the beginning of time, there stood te Kore, the Nothingness. Then was te Po, the Night, which was immensely long and immensely dark...”

§ 476 | Portraits

“My only quibble with this valuable and accessible book is that Shepherd rather overstates her claim that portraiture, not drama, was Richardson’s principal influence, for what is a play but portraits embodied, set in motion, with added sound, and enacted in real time?” [J. Harris, Brushstrokes. [Review of: L. Shepherd, Clarissa’s painter: Portraiture, illustration, and representation in the novels of Samuel Richardson. 288pp. Oxfird University Press.] TLS 25 February 2011, p. 23.]

“Here, certainly, large allowance was to be made in any careful, candid estimation of these portraits.” [PIERRE: OR, THE AMBIGUITIES. BY HERMAN MELVILLE. NEW YORK: HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 1852.]

“In the raftered entrance hall a series of begrimed family portraits leaned out at a sharp angle from the walls as if to allow their startled subjects a better view of these recent incomprehensible comings and goings in the family home.” [Banville, The untouchable]

"But there are few, if any, memorable character portraits of the more famous figures of A's past — largely because K seems too dependent on the scholarship of others to be fully convincing." F. Bongiorno, Causes for convicts. TLS, 11 March 2011, p. 27.]

§ 477 | Erartsos

A book about “the Arts in Eros,” by Cratti D’Aruntles.

§ 478 | AM

§ 479 | OD

§ 480 | DWI

Descent with impetuosity.

§ 481 | OR

§ 482 | Rim pot stop word

“Rim pot stop word / Strip to mop word / Imp to sport word / Pimp or tot’s word. // Rim pot stop word / I prompt sot word / Pop its mort, word / Storm it word — pop! // Rim pot stop word / I stomp port word / Primp word’s toot / Strop word-tip: om. // Prim word opts to trim word post-op; stop word import (mot: wordist prop); posit tromp word (mors: tiptop word); prod Wort’s imp to top word: tropism; drip worst mop to prism word: potto. // Rim pot stop word / Strip to mop word / Imp to sport word / Pimp or tot’s word” (“Rim Pot Stop Word,” a rime agile, by Romer’s Samba).

§ 483 | OAS

Other authors.

§ 484 | Ostiose

“An ostiarius, a Latin word sometimes anglicized as Ostiary but often literally translated as porter or doorman, originally was a servant or guard posted at the entrance of a building. See also gatekeeper. Porter denoted among the Romans the slave whose duty it was to guard the entrance of the house. In the Roman period all houses of the better class had an ostiarius, or ostiary, whose duties were considered very inferior.”

“OSTIARY, n. [L. ostium, mouth.] The mouth or opening by which a river discharges its waters into the sea, or into a lake.”

“Ostic (?), a. [From North American Indian oshtegwon a head.] Pertaining to, or applied to, the language of the Tuscaroras, Iroquois, Wyandots, Winnebagoes, and a part of the Sioux Indians. Schoolcraft.”

“Ostiole: a small pore especially one in the reproductive bodies of certain algae and fungi through which spores pass.”

“Ostium (?), n.; pl. Ostia (#). [L.] (Anat.) An opening; a passage.”

§ 485 | Mom

§ 486 | Me/élès/zes

Le rond des Mélèzes dans le bois de Boulogne, situated almost exactly in the center of the Bois, between l’hippodrome dr Longchamp in the west and l’hippodrome d’Auteuil in the east: the very glebe where Ecadence sits; with horses and horse-smell to both east and west, confusion for Swopes... tu me lèses...

§ 487 | RI

§ 488 | Tsarist

§ 489 | EL

§ 490 | Ostiesa

[Related to hawthorn plum; pole, axis: see Osnak.] "ОСТИСТЫЙ, остие и пр. см. ость." [Spinous, ostie etc. see spine.] "ОСТЬ ж. резкая грань, острый бугорок на кости; | щетинистый усик на плевеле каждого зерна колосовых растений. На ячмене самая долгая ость. | Долгий волос в пушном товаре, ость или ось меховая; в мехах различают: пух, подшерсток, подсед, или подсаду, за нею шерсть или мочку, затем подось, и наконец долгую, темную или седую, редкую ось, вернее ость. Соболь дурен, когда подсады много, подость рыжа, а ости мало; соболь хорош, когда подсады мало, подость сера, ость черна, густа, с сединою. | Ость, тевр.-осташк. Острога, для боя рыбы: вообще ость острее кончиком, иглой, шилом. Остяна ж. ость, щетинка на колосе. Остистый, обильный остием, остью, во всех знач. Терн дерево остистое. Остистая пшеница, порода. Остистый или осистый мех. Остить иглу, шило, точить, править ость, жало; -ся, быть точиму на ость, на острее, на тычок; | пускать из себя ость, поростать остью, о мехе, колосе и пр. Острячить, пск. твер. острить словами, отпускать остроты. Остритель, острильщик, точильщик, кто острит, точит ножи, ножницы, топоры. | Остритель, острила м. остряк м. острячка ж. человек острого ума и охочий острить, говорить остроты, шутливые либо едкие насмешки. Острило ср. пск. твер. точило, орудие, чем точат, острят. | Арх. узкий и острый мысок, коса. | Остряк, оструха ж. оструша, об. острушка, острый, резвый, бойкий человек, ребенок; остренок, острыш, то же. | Остряк, острый конец чего-либо: остряки, острые концы наискось отрубленных полен. Ткнуть остряком, острым концом. * На остряки попал, на беду наткнулся. Длина полена меряется без остряка. Остряки кровли, стреха, застреха, нижние концы тесниц, потоки. Не клади дрова в печь остряками - ссора будет. | Остряк и острячок, пск. твер. мелкий окунь, окунек. Остречье,. Чуд. оз. невод на мелкую рыбу, частоячейный. Острех (от стреха) вят. водосточный желоб под остряками; в этом слове сходятся производства от острый и от стреха. Остряковый, острячный., к острякам относящ. Остряковатые дрова, недомерные, с долгими остряками. Острец м. вострец, растен., из семьи злаков, Саrех саеspitosa; | сиб. кормовая трава, близкая пырею, Еlymus pseudoagricum. | олон. рыба окунь. Острица ж. растен, Sagina, пониклица, мшанка, горица. | растен. Аsperugo? | Нутрячок, Ascaris, едкая, крошечная глиста, от коей бывает невыносимый зуд. Острый, вострый, резучий, резкий, колючий, колкий, с тонким, проникающим лезвием или жалом, противопол. тупой. На крепкий сук острый топор. Как острым ножом обрезал, отказал наотрез. Пила остра, не смычку сестра. Жало остро, а язык острей того. Остер язычок, что бритва. Острая лодка, башня, остроносая или остроконечная. Острое словцо с языка, что пуля с петли срывается, о насмешке. Острый ум не на глум. Остро глядит. Острые глаза, зрение, зоркое. Острый звук, голос, резкий, пронзительный. Острое колотье, острая боль. Острый ветер, холодный и резкий. Острые яды, противопол. одуряющие; едкие, б. ч. ископаемые. Острые соки в теле, худосочие, коему приписывают множество хронических болезней и сыпи. Острая горечь, острая кислота, едкая, жгучая, палящая. Острая водка, крепкая водка, селитряная (азотная) кислота. Ты больно остер, боек, дерзок. Острый угол, меньше прямого, противопол. тупой. Острый чугун, лучший для отливки, плотные, мелкозернистый, Гол, как сокол, а остер, как бритва. Держи ухо остро. Топор острее, так и дело спорое. Мал ноготок, да остер. Это щучка остренький носок (хитрец). Это остренький мальчик. Остренько сказано. Однако ты остренек; ты остер на язык, боек. Наточил ножи острехонько, острешенько. Остро точишь, выщербишь, не доводи дела до крайности. Острая сущ. ж. грамматич. острое ударенье над слогом, где повышается голос, надстрочный знак ('). Островатый, несколько острый; -тость, свойство, качество это. Острота иногда острость, острина ж. свойство острого. Острота ножа, лезвея, иглы, острота щелочи, кислоты; острота ума, шуток. | Остроты, мн. острые слова, шутки и насмешки. Это удачная острота. | Остроты, острые, болезненные соки. ОСТЬ, см. острить."

[Arista Well. sharp boundary, sharp bump on the bone; | bristly mustache on the weeds of each grain cereal plants. On barley longest spine. | The long hair in fur product, spine or axis of fur; in furs are distinguished: a feather, an undercoat, grease, or hoisted, her hair, or lobe, then podos, and finally a long, dark or gray, rare-axis, rather spine. Sobol bad, when hoisted many podost ryzha, but little spine; sable good when hoisted little podost sulfur spine thick, black, with white hair. | Arista, tevr.-Ostashko. Burg, for fighting fish: generally sharper than the tip of the spine, a needle, an awl. Ostyana there. arista, bristle at the ear. Spinous, abundant ostiem, awn, in all means. Thorn tree spinous. Awned wheat breed. Spinous or osisty fur. Ostit needle, awl, sharpen, edit, spine, thorn;-hsia, be tochimu on spine, on the island, dig; | let out a spine, porostat awn, about the fur, ear and other Ostryachit, CPM. solid. sharp words, let acuity. Ostritel, ostrilschik grinder, who makes jokes, sharpen knives, scissors, axes. | Ostritel, the point m m wit ostryachka there. a man of sharp mind and witty hunt, saying jokes, humorous or caustic ridicule. Spearhead Wed ACCs. solid. sharpener, a tool than sharpen, sharp. | Arch. narrow and pointed toe, spit. | Wit, ostruha there. ostrusha, vol. ostrushka, sharp, spirited, lively man, a child; ostrenok, ostrysh, the same thing. | Wit, the sharp end of something: a witty and sharp ends obliquely severed logs. Poke wit, the sharp end. * At wits got, unfortunately stumbled upon. The length of a log is measured without the wit. Wags the roof, eaves, Zastrekha, the lower ends tesnits, streams. Do not put wood in the stove wit - will quarrel. | Wits and ostryachok, CPM. solid. small perch, okunek. Ostreche. Miracle. Lake. seine for small fish, chastoyacheyny. Ostreh (from the Siberian Crane) vyat. eaves wits, in which the word converge on the production of acute and Siberian Crane. Ostryakov ostryachny., To wit otnosyasch. Ostryakovatye firewood nedomernye, with long hearts. Ostrets pm Aneurolepidium to grow., From a family of grasses, Sareh saespitosa; | Sib. forage grass, close pyreyu, Elymus pseudoagricum. | Ohlone. fish, perch. Well pinworm. grow, Sagina, poniklitsa, bryozoan, Gorica. | Plants. Asperugo? | Nutryachok, Ascaris, fretting, a tiny worm, on the way is an unbearable itch. Sharp, sharp look, rezuchy, sharp, prickly, prickly, with a subtle, penetrating blade or sting, counterfield. obtuse. On a strong bough a sharp ax. As a sharp knife cut, flatly refused. Saw island, not the bond sister. The sting is hot, but the tongue sharper than that. Sharp tongue that razor. Acute boat, tower, sharp-nosed or pointed. Nifty from the language of the bullet with the loop breaks, the mockery. Sharp mind is not on the Gloom. Keenly looking. Sharp eyes, eyesight, keen. Sharp sound, voice, sharp and penetrating. Sharp prickling, burning pain. A sharp wind, cold and biting. Acute poisons counterfield. intoxicating, pungent, b. h. resources. Acute juices in the body, cachexy, to whom is credited with many chronic diseases and skin rashes. Acute grief, acute acid, acrid, burning, scorching. Spicy Vodka, strong vodka, saltpeter (nitric) acid. You're painfully sharp, bullet, bold. Acute angle, less direct, counterfield. obtuse. Acute iron, best casting, dense, fine, Gaul, as the falcon, and sharp as a razor. Keep an ear keenly. Ax sharper and business disputes. Small nail, but sharp. This sharp little pickerel socks (tod). This sharp little boy. Sharp little is said. However, you ostrenek thou witty language, the firing pin. Sharpened knives ostrehonko, ostreshenko. Acute sharpening, vyscherbish, not to bring things to the extreme. Acute noun. Well. grammatical. an acute accent above the syllable, which raises his voice, accent marks ('). Acutate somewhat sharp, toast, property, and the quality of it. Acuity sometimes ostrost, Ostrin there. Property acute. Sharpness of the knife, lezveya, needle sharpness of alkali, acid, sharpness of mind, joking. | Acuity, pl. sharp words, jokes and ridicule. It is a good visual. | Acuity, sharp, painful juices. Arista, see the tip.] [ost' = arista, bristlelike process near the tip of the antenna of certain flies]

"ОСТ м. морск. в(о)сход, утро, восток; остовый ветер." [OST m. of the sea. in (a) assembly, morning, east, the skeletons of the wind.]

The eastern gate of the steppe before the mountains on the approach to Norlia; a flashflood.

§ 491 | Tiliar

§ 492 | TRi

Textualité riante (au sens de ‘gracieuse, agreable à la vue et à l’esprit’). Following Bennett (1910), must be avoided. The be(com)ing text does not exhibit an attractive textuality (textualité riante) in the way that a roman traditionnel (RT) does, but is rather a difficult texte

faire le tri

§ 493 | INTEC

The International Elevenses Conference, held chez Nobe Arinami, 11 cour du Coq, 11th arrond., Lutèce. Some of the papers I took a particular interest in: “Lepastic Conjunctivism and the Yazdehan Line,” by Moéu Noäu Nin: W. C. Williams’s famous hokku (from his mid-period haibun, Appalachian Spring), while typically printed in four couplets of alternating tri- and monolexical lines, is actually a hendecasyllabic distich that owes as much to Catullus, Petrarch, Ariosto, Leopardi, and etc., as it does to the bucolic Lepastic poultrianists to whom it alludes: “So much depends upon a red wheelbarrow / glazed with rain water beside the white chickens.” Likewise, his “You mince, you start advancing indirectly,” as well as the majority of the more memorable lines of the second-tier Conjunctivists, from the tersely evocative “Death is my master and, without light, I dwell” (W. Stevens) to the prepositional slurry of “At the recurrent end of the unending / After the dark dove with the flickering tongue / Over the asphalt where no other sound was / Before the urban dawn wind unresisting” (T. S. Eridzoi) are all yazdehan in structure, an inheritance appropriated by the “callow adepts” of the “vernal imposture” as well as the “cunctatious bulk” of the soi-disant “Nornian and trans-Tetrastic posts” (as in p-wordism, p-uralism, p-raritism, p-nervuralism, usw.), e.g., “If I could write a sonnet of how our eyes / Found calm mooring in each others’ mirrored state / Of tipsy turmoil among that bar crowd’s cries,” etc. (M. S. Litarn), “I’m constantly losing my virginity,” and whatnot (O. W. Johnson), “A cat’s metaphor shears the spine clean in two” or four or six or something (M. S. Strickland), and, last but not least, “Je suis l’unique toxophile exilé, / Le prince poldève à l’atout abattu: / Ma seule étoupe est moite, et mon lut huilé / Pose le sol nul sous le mâle pattu” (D. I. Swopes)!

§ 494 | Lepastic

Lit., ‘like a scaur.’

§ 495 | Piste

(“bordering Kintail, the Falls of Glomach may be reached by the intrepid Sassenach, by means of a difficult piste of several leagues through the wild, remote countryside of Ross-shire, Scotland” [Litarn 1995: § 7.9])

“Il faut rouler une journée entière sur la voie d’exploitation forestière puis une fois au bout de la piste marcher tout droit pendant quelques heures pour rencontrer les Indiens” (M. de Kerangal, Naissance d’un pont).

“Le disparate, l’hétéroclite ne se réduisent donc pas à la « bizarrerie » d’un simple contraste: façon, pour Foucault, de nous suggérer que la piste du fantastique (à la Roger Caillois) ou de la rêverie matérielle (à la Gaston Bachelard) n’est certainement pas la bonne piste à suivre.” [G. Didi-Huberman, 2011, Atlas, ou le gai savoir inquiet, p. 67]

“cette piste circulaire sur laquelle tombe la pure lumière des lampes électriques et d’où monte une odeur aigre de crottin” (Michel Leiris, Biffures, 153).

§ 496 | A star

“Ending his peroration with a sort of trilled verbal flourish, Pinstripe makes a stiff little bow and steps one pace backwards, smugly, like a star pupil at a school speech-day” (J. Banville, The Untouchable, p. 122).

“When Lolita made Nabokov a star in 1958, journalists were delighted to discover his hidden life as a butterfly expert” (C. Zimmer, “Nabokov butterfly theory is vindicated.” Manx Hat Monitor, 25 January 2011).

“Moving from the cool to the hot pool / I follow a star, flashing across the sky; / No, not a star, but an incoming plane / With, yes, there beyond it, the evening star!” [J. Montague, Leisure Centre. TLS, 25 February 2011, p. 19.]

“This personalization of literary history leaves little room for figures below the first rank unless they happen to be women (Hemans and Landon) or provide sturdy support for a star performer (Moore and Hunt)” (C. Wilmer, Forth he came. Review of: M. O’Neill, ed. The Cambridge history of English poetry. TLS, 11 March 2011, pp. 8–9).

“making a pun is unlike logical thought; instead of building up, it fractures, in a contrary way — as we might imagine the birth of a star, or creation itself, as taking place against or outside the order of human thought” [E. Bishop, in J. Bielle, ed. Elizabeth Bishop and “The New Yorker”. The complete correspondence. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011.]

“In the antechamber to the tomb, [Manolis] Andronicos found another gold box with a star, this one merely twelve-pointed.” [J. Davidson, Crowning controversies. Star exhibits from the tombs of the Aegae — but to whom do they belong? TLS 20 May 2011, p. 17]

“The pen stops in mid-air, then swoops to bar / A canceled sunset or restore a star, / And thus it physically guides the phrase / Toward faint daylight through the inky maze.” (J. Shade, Pale Fire, lines 849–852 [V. Nabokov, Pale Fire])

“One palm with fingers spread, / Between a star of trillium and a stone, / Pressed on the turf.” [Nabokov, Pale Fire, lines 256–258]

"You see, she sees herself as [A STAR]let; I see her as a sturdy, healthy, but decidedly homely kid." [Lolita, I, 15] ""You mean you have never—?"—her features twisted into [A STAR]e of disgusted incredulity." [Lolita, I, 29] "Thumbing through that battered tour book, I dimly evoke that Magnolia Garden in a southern state which cost me four bucks and which, according to the ad in the book, you must visit for three reasons: because John Galsworthy (a stone-dead writer of sorts) acclaimed it as the world’s fairest garden; because in 1900 Baedeker’s Guide had marked it with [A STAR]; and finally, because . . . O, Reader, My Reader, guess! . . . because children (and by Jingo was not my Lolita a child!) will "walk starry-eyed and reverently through this foretaste of Heaven, drinking in beauty that can influence a life."" [Lolita, II, 2] "Mr. Humberson, let us put it this way: the position of [A STAR] is important, but the most practical spot for an icebox in the kitchen may be even more important to the budding housewife." [Lolita II, 4]

"For my mind had leaped to a star-cool altitude and grasped a passionless transvaluation of values." (Jack London, The Iron Heel, pp. 327–328)

§ 497 | Saian

Nom d’appui of Inuhka Bloip, viola da gambist of Ishtar’s Hand. Obviously an allusion to her Norlian heritage, for the Saian (or Sayan) mountains of Hamiltonia in Upper Engush (or vice-versa) harbor the valley in which Norlia may be found.

§ 498 | A surd

“One loses, in the study of cause and effect, that a[b]surd air which so many people have of being always shocked and pained by the curiousness of life.” [A. Bennett, How to live on 24 hours a day. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1910. Ch. X, Nothing in life is humdrum.]

§ 499 | Exist

“The first, known as superposition, tells you that before you look, an object such as an electron can exist in two different places at the same time, or simultaneously hold two mutually exclusive properties—such as having a high or a low energy state. Only when someone measures it are the electron’s multiple personalities forced to snap into one identity, with a single location and a definite energy state. Before measurement, there’s no way to predict with certainty which identity it will choose; the outcome is always random.” [Zeeya Merali, Quantum Mechanics Braces for the Ultimate Test. Science 18 March 2011: Vol. 331 no. 6023 pp. 1380–1382.]

“In this way one may come to exist as in a prison, and one’s life may cease to be one’s own.” [A. Bennett, How to live on 24 hours a day. New York: George H. Doran Co., 1910. Ch. XII, Dangers to avoid.]

“Often it feels like the characters only exist as an alibi for what is really a journalistic and encyclopedic endeavor to list everything American.” [T. Parks, Franzen’s Ugly Americans Abroad. New York Review of Books. May 11, 2011.]

“If honour is unconquerable, it must exist in democracy — but so, too, must aristocracy, in the inevitable ranking by the judgements we cannot fail to make.” H. C. Mansfield, Shame. TLS, March 11, 2011, p. 24.]

“But the source material is too thin and what does exist was written by, frankly, incurious people.” [W. Slater, Good eggs. TLS, 25 March 2011, p. 30]

“Spiritually he did not exist.” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, note to line 949)

“I shall continue to exist. I may assume other disguises, other forms, but I shall try to exist.” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, note to line 1000)

"But his companion suggested whether the alleged hardships of that alleged unfortunate might not exist more in the pity of the observer than the experience of the observed." [Melville, Confidence Man, ch. 11]

§ 500 | Liant soit

§ 501 | A new

"Yesterday I tried on before the mirror [a new] pair of bathing trunks." [Lolita, I, 11] "I bought her [a new] tennis racket for that remark." [Lolita II, 12] "And soon I was to enter [a new] cycle of persecution." [Lolita, II, 19] "Feeling I was losing my time, I drove energetically to the downtown hotel where I had arrived with [a new] bag more than five years before." [Lolita, II, 33]

"Her smile that had been such a contrived thing, thenceforth became the radiance of utter adoration—a radiance having something soft and moist about it, in which, with wonder, I recognized a resemblance to the lovely, inane, lost look that Lo had when gloating over [a new] kind of concoction at the soda fountain or mutely admiring my expensive, always tailor-fresh clothes." [Lolita, I, 18] "The brakes were relined, the waterpipes unclogged, the valves ground, and a number of other repairs and improvements were paid for by not very mechanically-minded but prudent papa Humbert, so that the late Mrs. Humbert’s car was in respectable shape when ready to undertake [a new] journey." [Lolita, II, 15]

"A couple of days after the British Incident, I was sitting in [a new] and very comfortable easy chair, with a large volume in my lap, when Charlotte rapped with her ring finger and sauntered in." [Lolita, I, 21] "But if I could dismiss Trapp, as I had dismissed my convulsions on the lawn at Champion, I could do nothing with the anguish of knowing Lolita to be so tantalizingly, so miserably unattainable and beloved on the very even of [a new] era, when my alembics told me she should stop being a nymphet, stop torturing me." [Lolita, II, 22]

"The dear people were afraid I might commit suicide if left alone, and since no other friends were available (Miss Opposite was incommunicado, the McCoos were busy building [a new] house miles away, and the Chatfields had been recently called to Maine by some family trouble of their own), Leslie and Louise were commissioned to keep me company under the pretense of helping me to sort out and pack a multitude of orphaned things." [Lolita I, 23] "Imagine Yourself picking up and holding: a pingpong ball, an apple, a sticky date, [a new] flannel-fluffed tennis ball, a hot potato, an ice cube, a kitten, a puppy, a horseshoe, a feather, a flashlight." [Lolita, II, 20]

§ 502 | Nopo

§ 503 | S/Zisti

§ 504 | Isnoiuste

§ 505 | Estaurate Peresc

A Poldevian prince from On who served as ambassador to Babur in Kabul 1505–1506 and who wrote under the Ityalian nom de plume of Patrolius.

§ 506 | RE

§ 507 | Stermer

§ 508 | Word

“The word is everything,” writes S. E. Spitmarkx in his Airy arrowscript portraits (1848: § 1.1) “which is the fist (Das Wort ist alles, was die Faust ist).” Although, following this muscular introit, the notion of roof would be the furthest thing from my or, indeed, U Readers’ thoughts, our ontonatatologist from Ruhr-Lülnrar quickly puts paid to the merest possibility of such a possibility in § 1.2 by stating, heedless of the alliterative impact (lost in the Saxo-Frankisch patois in which he composed this tersest of his moults [many moldy] ouvrages) of fist and face, that “the word is the face of doorcracks, not of roofs (Das Wort ist das Gesicht des Türspalts, nicht der Dächer).” There is a moment in Proust in which “le malade, qui a été obligé de partir en voyage et a dû coucher dans un hôtel inconnu, réveillé par une crise, se réjouit en apercevant sous la porte une raie de jour. Quel bonheur! c’est déjà le matin! Dans un moment les domestiques seront levés, il pourra sonner, on viendra lui porter secours. L’espérance d’être soulagé lui donne du courage pour souffrir. Justement il a cru entendre des pas; les pas se rapprochent, puis s’éloignent. Et la raie de jour qui était sous sa porte a disparu. C’est minuit; on vient d’éteindre le gaz; le dernier domestique est parti et il faudra rester toute la nuit à souffrir sans remède.” Against this disillusioning doorcrack of despair we should pose a doorcrack of an apparently variant, though not utterly deviant, nature (and it is no accident that this should be so), that is, one of limitless hope, which grants us entry into Spitmarkx’s qualification in § 1.3 that “the word is determined by the doorcracks, and by these being all the doorcracks (Das Wort ist durch den Türspalten bestimmt und dadurch, dass es alle Türspalte sind),” to wit: “The door of the lighted bathroom stood ajar; in addition to that, a skeleton glow came though the Venetian blind from the outside arclights; these intercrossed rays penetrated the darkness of the bedroom and revealed the following situation. Clothed in one of her old nightgowns, my Lolita lay on her side with her back to me, in the middle of the bed. Her lightly veiled body and bare limbs formed an S or a Z. She had put both pillows under her dark tousled head; a band of pale light crossed her top vertebrae. I seemed to have shed my clothes and slipped into pajamas with the kind of fantastic instantaneousness which is implied when in a cinematographic scene the process of changing is cut; and I had already placed my knee on the edge of the bed when Lolita turned her head and stared at me though the striped shadows” (Nabokoff-Sirin 1958: I, §  29). Through the binocular lenses provided by Proust’s illusory “raie de jour” and Nabokoff-Sirin’s venereally “striped shadows,” we should now readily perceive the immense seed of potentiality contained in Spitmarkx’s dioptric formulation that “the doorcracks in airy smoke are the word (Die Türspalte in den luftigen Rauch sind das Wort)” and that “the word divides into doorcracks (Das Wort zerfällt in Türspalten)” (Spitmarkx 1848: § 1.5 and § 1.6, resp.).

03.01 Thoughts glom the shoulder of the word. Therefore they cannot be time-cracked. 03.02 If the word had no shoulder, then whether a blessing had a star would depend on whether another blessing was true. 03.03 It would then be inhuman to form a view of the word. 03.04 It is clear that however different from the real one an imagined word may be, it must have an ebb -- a finger -- in common with the real word. 03.06 The shoulder of the word can only determine a finger and not any material ice-shadows. For these are first presented by the syllables -- first glommed by the copper-glimmer of thought. 03.01 Der Gedanke blicken auf die Schulter der Wort. Darum können ie nicht zusammengebrochen sein. 03.02 Hätte die Wort keine Schulter, so würde, ob ein Sege Stelle hat, davon abhängen, ob ein anderer Sege wahr ist. 03.03 Es wäre dann unmenschlich, ein Blick der Wort (wahr oder falsch) zu entwerfen. 03.04 Es ist offenbar, dass auch eine von der wirklichen noch so verschieden gedachte Wort ein Ebbe -- ein Finger -- mit der wirklichen gemein haben muss. 03.06 Die Schulter der Wort  k a n n  nur ein Finger und keine materiellen Eisenschatten bestimmen. Denn dieses werden erst durch die Silbe dargestellt -- erst durch die Kupferschimmer der Gedanken geblickt.

04.02 Only if there are thoughts can there be a fisty finger of the word. 4.04 The thought is the fist, the leafed; the copper-glimmer is the word-accretion, the unleague-dreamed. 04.11 The face of leafed sandpatterns is the word. 04.02 Nur wenn es Gedanken gibt, kann es eine fauste Finger der Wort geben. 04.04 Der Gedanke ist der Faust, Blätternde; die Kupferschimmer ist die Wortaufschüttung, Unbundträumlichte. 04.11 Der Gesicht der blätternden Sandmustern ist das Wort.

05.05 The facing windiness is the word. 05.05 Die gesichte Windigkeit ist das Wort.

07.09 The airy glomming can treat the word. 07.09 Der luftig Blick kann das Wort abhandeln.

09.01 The face of deluded objects is a glomming of the word. 09.04 It used to be said that the glacier could create everything, except waht was contrary to the airy ground uprooted by wild boars. The truth is we could not say of an "unairy" word how it would look. 09.11 The tooth through which we flow out from the object, I sne the blessing tooth. And the blessing is the blessing tooth in its porous picture of the word. 09.01 Das Gesicht der wahnen Gegenständen sind ein Blick des Wortes. 09.04 Man sagte einmal, dass der Gletscher alles schaffen könne, nur nichts, was den luftigen Gebrächen suwider wäre. -- Wir könnten nämlich von einem « unluftigen » Wort nicht sagen, wie sie aussähe. 09.11 Der Zahn, durch welches wir den Gegenständen ausgehen, nässe ich das Segenzahn. Und der Segen ist das Segenzahn in seiner Porenbild zur Wort.

W. Nabokoff-Sirin. (1958). Apropos of Dolores. Herma Ness: Trevi, Pulsar, Nemo & Assn., Ltd.

(S. E. Spitmarkx. (1848). Airy arrowscript portraits | Luftig-Pfeilschriftige Abbildungen. Ruhr-Lülnrar: Spitmarkx Buchfabrik.)

“For a giddy second the notion seized me that I would never again be able to think of another word to say to her, that we would go on like this, in agonized inarticulacy, to the end,” [Banville, The sea]

“But by what could a mute word’s (mot tu) made word (mot faict), be worth more than a said word’s (mot dict) read word (mot lu)?”

“But I have no definition except that it seems a word of insult, a word applied to people in the arts at this moment.” [A. Ginsberg]

"Yet how can this happen in a world in which the word inscribed in a work of art if mostly read as journalism?" [L. Chamberlain, What is and what if. TLS, March 4, 2011, p. 24.] "The most obscene word of all was 'academic'." [T. Eagleton, Fast forward. Future fetishists and artists who don't paint: how the revolutionary aims of the avant-garde led to the 'sick joke' of postmodernism. TLS, March 25, 2011, pp. 3–4.]

“To divine means ‘to foretell,’ by word or by prophecy, to enable to happen what happens by divulging through the word.” [Aveni 1992]

“‘That is the wrong word,’ he said. ‘One should not apply it to a person who deliberately peels off a drab and unhappy past and replaces it with a brilliant invention.’” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, not to line 629)

“Hard to word succinctly a simple fact without having it look like a cryptogram.” (Nabokov, Pale Fire, note to line 741)

"happy if from any honest word he has heard he can derive some hint, which, besides confirming him in the theory of virtue, may, likewise, serve for a finger-post to virtuous action." [Melville, Confidence Man, ch. 15]

“She did not utter a word but, turning from them, walked quickly towards the door.” (A. Powell, Books do furnish a room, ch. 2, p. 83)

“Turned out we’d met before in that night-club of Umfraville’s, though I couldn’t remember a word about it.” (A. Powell, Books do furnish a room, ch. 2, p. 85)