Writing a rhyming poem is different from writing anything else because you know in advance where the line has to go (that it has to end, for example, with "blue" to rhyme with "construe"), but you still have to figure out how to shape the preceding phrase to get it to join with the last word. It's almost writing in reverse, usually one searches ( Read more... )

Things fall into place in very strange ways. Last Friday I was approached by a woman with a business card. It seems I will be gainfully employed this summer both as a research assistant continuing the cognitive science experiment I've been helping to design this semester, and as a model of gothic clothing(Read more... )

I have just found the single slim volume that I believe will sum up my entire semester. It is by Gertrude Stein, whose essay "Composition as Explanation" rearranged my mind and defaced my writing style. It is also about saints. Word to my saint-obsessed livejournal homies (I know there are at least two of you), read Four Saints in Three Acts if ( Read more... )

II ( Read more... )

In the past, whenever I've tried to learn the guitar or ukulele, I've stuck with it right until I began to develop the left-hand calluses necessary for pressing string to fret for long periods of time. I've never liked the idea of being hardened to anything. Or the idea that there was some portion of the human sensation spectrum that I wouldn't ( Read more... )

Mistakes compound. They multiply like rabbits.

I ( Read more... )

Today I stripped blossoms from the lowest branch (my height is truncated) of a flowering magnolia tree, and gave them to people. Magnolia flowers smell strong and white, which they are. I love the sound made by the separation of a woody stem, it is like the sound of biting into an apple.

Today I finished an essay, a novel, a large cup of coffee.

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At a certain point in a young lady's life, she will have acquired all the "elemental" kissing experiences of her life. That is to say: all the main types will have been catalogued, and can be plotted out on a periodic table--the strontiums, the hydrogens, the heliums, the gold. After this point, all that remains is either recurrence of known ( Read more... )

In regards to language acquisition and the creation of lexical "entries":

Sexual euphemisms are a particularly interesting example of words/phrases whose meaning is inferred almost entirely from context. Additions to the mental dictionary are generally presumed to occur through some sort of question and answer sequence, wherein the child/ ( Read more... )