Week Snippets

On Tuesday morning, the sun was so bright that despite not feeling absolutely well I just had to chase it - I went along the West Cambridge route and wondered how I'd write my running if I had to, the sensation of it all and how different that sensation is in the morning. One thing I really wanted to put into words is the particular feeling of the top of my running tights just brushing my waist, which always makes me think of men circling the waists of ballet dancers while they pirouette, just brushing their waists with --- and then I realised I didn't know the name of that part of the body, the skin between the pointer finger and the thumb. That question was left unanswered, occasionally re-surfacing to make me wonder, until J googled it and we discovered it's name - purlicue.

I wrote an essay on a poem titled 'a drift', which made me pause for a while and think - what's the difference between 'adrift' and 'a drift' and what do the different meanings mean for each other? Adrift means movement without propulsion or intention/direction, but a drift could be the 'conscious direction of action or speech to some end; the end itself; what one is ‘driving at’; purpose, intention, object, aim' (do you catch my drift?)

The various and contradictory meanings of words is so fascinating - last week I kept thinking of how cleave can mean both cleave to (adhere/cling) and cleave from (sever/split), and the week before the word that kept tumbling around in my mind was 'whatnot', which can mean ‘everything and anything’, which conveys mess and lack or organisation or principle, but it can also refer to ‘an article of furniture consisting of an open stand with shelves one above another, for keeping or displaying various objects’, that is, an organising piece of furniture! 

Wednesday - Valentine's Day. A couple nights before I'd looked at J and asked 'So - Valentine's Day - do you want to do anything or keep it chill?' ('please say keep it chill please say keep it chill please say keep it chill,' I thought) 'I thought we could just keep it chill?' he said. Happy sigh. What did happen on Valentine's day was lentil dahl and playing cards with J and Izzy till late, which made me very content indeed.

This morning I woke up and Hannah's daffodils had bloomed, open and yellow and the first thing that greeted my eyes. I ended the day with something similarly yellow and happy - a big plateful of socca for dinner.