Mid-morning.
You had breakfast and read the Cincinnati Enquirer as usual and contrary to
what you thought you are enjoying the expanded paper that now includes two
sections of USA Today. – Amorella
0851
hours. I didn’t think I would like the addition because I couldn’t envision how
it was going to look. I like it partly because it adds bulk to a newspaper
about the size of a local paper, and sometimes it wasn’t even that large. I
didn’t think I was going to like it when about a year ago the paper was cut
down to the size of a tabloid and included more pictures, I suppose to entice
people who don’t like or don’t have time to read. The paper is much easier to
manipulate than the old broadsheets that have been around since the eighteenth
century if my memory serves me correctly. I erred in judgment. I am still tired
and need a nap.
Mid-afternoon. You and Carol both took a nap
then had sandwiches for lunch. Afterwards, you drove down to Good Samaritan
Hospital across from U.C. campus and to the north of Hebrew Union College. The
trip took forty minutes from the house and is about twenty-five miles. When you
go down for the surgery on Monday Carol will wait and drive you home. Carol is
reading a new book, The Eye of God by James Rollins and is on page 37
while you are sitting at the west side of Rose Hill Cemetery facing east under
that shade of the large fur (thirty feet high) you thought might tumble down in
the wind a couple of weeks ago. - Amorella
1552
hours. The sun is bright and the snow slowly melting. Patches of grass are
visible already, a good sign this snow will be gone in a couple of days. Spring
will be heaven sent.
I know it is a figure of speech orndorff. –
Amorella
1557
hours. I don’t know why these things come up in my head. It is not easy to
always be making adjustment for a ‘foreign-like’ personality to be in my head
with me all the time.
Mostly
when you are writing boy. – Amorella
I’m
going to work on that final pre-copy.
2110
hours. I finished all the proofreading I can do online. I thought I could do
more but my mind won’t function. A screen is not a piece of paper. I don’t
think I could ever grade a paper from a screen. I like the feel of the paper. I
like to turn the page. The words are more tangible.
Make changes with a red ink first; then blue
ink if need be. Read like you would read the book. You will catch more errors this
way. One segment at a time, not by the chapter. Once you have gone over the
final in this way, pull the pages so that you can read twenty-one chapters one
segment at a time. – Amorella
2118
hours. This is a good idea. How about if I read the segments separately first
for a change of pace; then read the final as a whole?
Either way as long as you do both. We are looking
of continuity in the stories separate chapter segments. The readability is
already there. Think ‘short stories’ with setting, characters, plot and
conclusion. Later, when we go over the book as a whole we will look for
transitions from chapter to chapter. Now, before bed, read over the statistics
again. This should reinforce a sense of continuity in style with length of
sentences for example. When in doubt simplify or delete if the work does not
flow to your satisfaction. Look for a rhythm and or cadence within the word
flow and eye movement while reading. – Amorella
2128
hours. You want this to read like free verse, for example (from dictionary dot
com):
** **
Free Verse
While it is easy to think that poems
have to rhyme, free verse is a type of poetry that does not require any rhyme
scheme or meter. Poems written in free verse, however, do tend to employ other
types of creative language such as alliteration, words that begin with the same
sound, or assonance, the repetition of vowel sounds.
Some people find free verse to be a
less restrictive type of poetry to write since it doesn't have to employ the
form or the rhyming schemes of other types of poetry.
The free verse form of poetry became
popular in the 1800s, and continues to be popular among poets even to this day.
TS Eliot was one of the masters of the form, as best seen in his poems The Waste Land and The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.
**
**
The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock
By T. S. Eliot
S’io credesse che mia risposta fosse
A persona che mai
tornasse al mondo,
Questa fiamma staria senza piu scosse.
Ma percioche
giammai di questo fondo
Non torno vivo alcun, s’i’odo il vero,
Senza tema
d’infamia ti rispondo.
Let us go
then, you and I,
When the
evening is spread out against the sky
Like a
patient etherized upon a table;
Let us go,
through certain half-deserted streets,
The
muttering retreats
Of
restless nights in one-night cheap hotels
And
sawdust restaurants with oyster-shells:
Streets that
follow like a tedious argument
Of
insidious intent
To lead
you to an overwhelming question ...
Oh, do not
ask, “What is it?”
Let us go
and make our visit.
In the
room the women come and go
Talking of
Michelangelo.
The yellow
fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow
smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes,
Licked its
tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered
upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall
upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by
the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing
that it was a soft October night,
Curled
once about the house, and fell asleep.
And indeed
there will be time
For the
yellow smoke that slides along the street,
Rubbing
its back upon the window-panes;
There will
be time, there will be time
To prepare
a face to meet the faces that you meet;
There will
be time to murder and create,
And time
for all the works and days of hands
That lift
and drop a question on your plate;
Time for
you and time for me,
And time
yet for a hundred indecisions,
And for a
hundred visions and revisions,
Before the
taking of a toast and tea.
In the
room the women come and go
Talking of
Michelangelo.
And indeed
there will be time
To wonder,
“Do I dare?” and, “Do I dare?”
Time to
turn back and descend the stair,
With a
bald spot in the middle of my hair —
(They will
say: “How his hair is growing thin!”)
My morning
coat, my collar mounting firmly to the chin,
My necktie
rich and modest, but asserted by a simple pin —
(They will
say: “But how his arms and legs are thin!”)
Do I dare
Disturb
the universe?
In a
minute there is time
For
decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
For I have
known them all already, known them all:
Have known
the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have
measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the
voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath
the music from a farther room.
So
how should I presume?
And I have
known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes
that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I
am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am
pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how
should I begin
To spit
out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And
how should I presume?
And I have
known the arms already, known them all—
Arms that are
braceleted and white and bare
(But in
the lamplight, downed with light brown hair!)
Is it
perfume from a dress
That makes
me so digress?
Arms that
lie along a table, or wrap about a shawl.
And
should I then presume?
And
how should I begin?
Shall I
say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And
watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely
men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows? ...
I should
have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling
across the floors of silent seas.
And the
afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed
by long fingers,
Asleep ...
tired ... or it malingers,
Stretched
on the floor, here beside you and me.
Should I,
after tea and cakes and ices,
Have the
strength to force the moment to its crisis?
But though
I have wept and fasted, wept and prayed,
Though I
have seen my head (grown slightly bald) brought in upon a platter,
I am no
prophet — and here’s no great matter;
I have
seen the moment of my greatness flicker,
And I have
seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,
And in
short, I was afraid.
And would
it have been worth it, after all,
After the
cups, the marmalade, the tea,
Among the
porcelain, among some talk of you and me,
Would it
have been worth while,
To have
bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have
squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it
towards some overwhelming question,
To say: “I
am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back
to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—
If one,
settling a pillow by her head
Should
say: “That is not what I meant at all;
That
is not it, at all.”
And would
it have been worth it, after all,
Would it
have been worth while,
After the
sunsets and the dooryards and the sprinkled streets,
After the
novels, after the teacups, after the skirts that trail along the floor—
And this,
and so much more?—
It is
impossible to say just what I mean!
But as if
a magic lantern threw the nerves in patterns on a screen:
Would it
have been worth while
If one,
settling a pillow or throwing off a shawl,
And
turning toward the window, should say:
“That
is not it at all,
That
is not what I meant, at all.”
No! I am
not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be;
Am an
attendant lord, one that will do
To swell a
progress, start a scene or two,
Advise the
prince; no doubt, an easy tool,
Deferential,
glad to be of use,
Politic,
cautious, and meticulous;
Full of
high sentence, but a bit obtuse;
At times,
indeed, almost ridiculous—
Almost, at
times, the Fool.
I grow old
... I grow old ...
I shall
wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
Shall I
part my hair behind? Do I dare to eat a peach?
I shall
wear white flannel trousers, and walk upon the beach.
I have
heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not
think that they will sing to me.
I have
seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing
the white hair of the waves blown back
When the
wind blows the water white and black.
We have
lingered in the chambers of the sea
By
sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
Till human voices wake us, and we
drown.
** **
2141
hours. I have to include the whole
poem as an example. It has long been one of my favorites. I don’t know that it
is possible to copy this free verse throughout.
Just use it as an unconscious standard. If
the work is alive to you it will be open to be alive to the reader. You have
nothing to lose but your chains, dear boy. – Amorella
2147
hours. Don’t hype this for me Amorella. I want this to remain at tombstone
level throughout. Death is something people understand. This is a ghost story.
We keep the humor in the graveyard.
