On a fine Saturday afternoon, the last before the wedding, I reclined in my
garden chair, dog at my side and all right with the world except for the fact
that Mimo is molting. I fell asleep. She was present when I woke.
“I’m falling apart.”
“Your feathers? It’s happened before.”
“I forgot. I remember the most extraordinary things—envelopes, for example—and
forget my own feathers.”
“Old age,” I said. “Why envelopes?”
“I have no idea. Someone said they have a connection with vanilla.”
“Manilla. There’s a kind of brown envelope called that. It’s the hemp, you
know.”
“What’s hemp?”
“I’m glad you asked. Before my nap I was reading the third volume of Toll’s
history of the Second World War in the Pacific. I made a mental note to check
some facts. I’ll add Manila hemp to the list.”
When you start looking stuff up on the web you may discover the discovery of a
tunnel. And then find that all they’ve actually discovered is a hole in the
ground. Doesn’t lead anywhere. Isn’t decorated in an interesting way. It is
near Tintern Abbey, so that’s something, but otherwise…it’s just an old tunnel:
https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20210902-the-mysterious-medieval-tunnel-found-by-accident
Then you feel you’re wasting your time, until you come across something truly
amazing. It turns out we’re all missing a billion years, as in they’ve done
inventory and found that the earth has about a billion years unaccounted for:
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210901-the-strange-race-to-track-down-a-missing-billion-years
<https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210901-the-strange-race-to-track-down-a-missing-billion-years>
Many of you will think, “Why bother clicking on the link.” Do! You’ll be
rewarded by the term, “The Great Unconformity.” And you may find you want to
read about Powell.
Not all of us, I know, are as in love with the weirdness of words as I am.
“There is much one could learn from Somerset Maughan.” Now there’s a sentence
I enjoyed writing, possibly because of its meaning but mostly it’s the sounds.
I am a sucker for the sound possibilities of words. They lead me astray,
making writing slow. I have to write the words I like before I can write words
that mean approximately what I want. And then exactly. Others I guess are
similarly tempted; in the New York Times this week was a sentence, “It is a
history of Manns’ inhumanity to Manns.” I won’t read the subject of the
review, a novel about Thomas Mann and his family, but I shall remember the
sentence.
Did you know his daughter married W.H. Auden? Mann’s?
Some days I don’t even care what the right number is at the beginning of the
Gettysburg address; three score and ten would do me. It’s the sounds. Which is
why I’m worried about the wedding speech. I know I could easily find myself
saying things that are simply fun to say and so lose, or even offend, the
audience. Maybe I should just stand up and imitate a British aristocrat’s
clipped delivery, “Glad you could come. Good things, weddings. Very woody
word, ‘wedding.' Quite unlike ‘marriage.’ Way too tinny. Anyway, charge your
glasses and be upstanding.” And then quickly sit.
Better, like Lincoln, to write it all out. That suggestion, by the way, that
Lincoln scribbled the speech on the back of an envelope? Blither. Piffle.
Not true.
Envelopes? Manila hemp, I explained to Mimo, is derived from a species of
banana.
Good woody word, banana.
Somerset Maughan’s short story, “the Letter,” says nothing at all about
envelopes.
And yet it’s a good read. ‘strawdinry.
Mimo started to sing… “Noooon…rien, rien, je ne regrette…”
That was when I really woke up.
David Ritchie,
Portland, Oregon
