Headline Woes

"Mutilated bodies litter bomb site." Courtesy of CNN.com.

Headlines like these astonish and infuriate me. When S. spent a year back home in Karachi before we got married, I read a similar headline reporting on the Bohri Bazaar bomb blast - something about body parts being scattered over the streets and buildings. I remember thinking, No, not parts, not limbs, nails, bones, organs. That could be my love on the street, my whole life, my youth, my old age. He could have stopped off at a paan and juice shop for bhel puri, or accompanied his mother or sister to the cloth market.

How easy it is to be frank and graphic when you don't care, when you don't love what's been lost.

On Second Thought...

Naumachia is not a good word. It's not so much a "mock sea fight," which sounds like a lovely evening of theatrical entertainment, as it is a hideous, sadistic bloodbath: an enormous battle to the death staged for the benefit of Caesar, Claudius, the usual suspects. Thousands of slaves and condemned prisoners were involved. Well, I guess I shouldn't blame the word, but I'm sorry, naumachia, I no longer love you.

Belated Word of the Week is:

Naumachia: a mock sea fight, given as a spectacle among the ancient Romans.

This is a very good word.

Soundtrack of my life

Once I expected a lowing --
the solid footstep presence of a French horn.
Now I only hear bells:
the silver charms of an anklet a-jangle;
a sudden, joyous lift
of the heels.

Far-fetched

Have you ever had this experience? You say a common word or phrase, and suddenly it seems foreign and strange. You repeat it several times; it makes absolutely no sense.

This happened to me yesterday with far-fetched. Far-fetched; fetched from afar, like a crate of spices from Madagascar. Or pearls from the Great Barrier Reef. Or some rogue ganglion plucked from the highways of my bone-hinged mind.

Far-fetched
That you love me.
That I found socks that match.
That ants communicate with their mandibles.
That cows do not rebel against the system.
Fjords.
Bunjee-jumping.
That eggs and flour and sugar make cake.
Lupines.
Hopping on one foot. For fun.
Animated porn.
Parthenogenesis.
The luge.
Jogging.
Roman purge pits.
Honey.
Spongebob Squarepants in German.

Word of the Week is:

Foss: a ditch or moat. "After that he threw their bodies into the foss or great ditch that surrounded the palace." - 1001 Arabian Nights

This word has a lovely sound - far superior to "ditch" or "moat." It is also spelled fosse, like Bob Fosse, but I prefer it e-less. Foss. Foss. Reminds me of sluice; another great word.

Between the lips and the voice...

something goes dying.
Something with the wings of a bird, something of anguish and oblivion.
The way nets cannot hold water.

-- Pablo Neruda, Poem XIII from Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair