"Spooning" - and "Prufrock" (updated)

The conventional definition involves sentimental love, but the photo source also offers this comment:

The word also had homosexual connotations, as in Stoppard’s The Invention of Love. Says old A. E. Housman to young A. E. Housman: “Centuries later in a play now lost, Aeschylus brought in Eros, which I suppose we may translate as extreme spooniness; showers of kisses, and unblemished thighs. Sophocles, too; he wrote The Loves of Achilles: more spooniness than you’d find in a cutlery drawer, I shouldn’t wonder.”

Found at Modern Foppery, via. 

Addendum: I originally posted this back in 2010.  This week I encountered the photo again while browsing the web, and decided to search for more information on the unusual imagery.  When I Googled several key words, the #1 hit was...

The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock

I have to admit that was a bit startling, especially since it was one of my favorite poems when I was an English major in college (never could quite memorize it all, but I can still call up key passages).  And the connection to the photo? - just the coincidental presence of the keywords I selected ("women," "spoons," "behind," and "back.")

So I'm going to use this serendipitous event as an excuse to post the poem.

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	5
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….	10
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,	15
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,	20
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;	25
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;	30
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	35
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—	40
(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	45
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,	50
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—	55
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?	60
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	65
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	70
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!	75
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?	80
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,	85
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,	90
To have bitten off the matter with a smile,
To have squeezed the universe into a ball
To roll it toward some overwhelming question,
To say: “I am Lazarus, come from the dead,
Come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all”—	95
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,	100
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:	105
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.” .      .      .      .      .      .      .      .	110
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,	115
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 …	120
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.	125
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	130
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.

Composed by T.S. Eliot (1888–1965), and published in Prufrock and Other Observations (1920).

Addendum:  Here's a very interesting and perhaps relevant observation by reader frenchfarmer:

"Spoon" in french is "cuillère" and is pronounced "quee-er."

Addendum #2:
Reposted once again (August 2015) because this year marks the 100-year anniversary of "Prufrock."

When T.S. Eliot’s “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” made its first appearance in print 100 years ago, it did not in any way disturb the universe. Having languished in a drawer for four years, the poem was finally first published in the June 1915 issue of the Chicago journal Poetry, placed toward the back because the editor didn’t much like it... The reviews were a mix of indifference, confusion, and disdain. The Times Literary Supplement remarked that Eliot’s “observations” were “of the very smallest importance to anyone—even to himself.”...

Of course, it’s now clear that “Prufrock” is one of the great poems of the twentieth century. It is widely taught in schools, and its strange and subversive incantations are freely released into the unformed souls of adolescents without any regard for the consequences...

The nature of Eliot’s personal hell during his time in Paris was complicated and multifaceted, but the fact that he was still a virgin was undoubtedly part of it. Eliot suffered from a congenital double hernia, which meant he wore a truss from an early age. His cadaverous bookishness and universally remarked-on shyness didn’t help his cause with women at Harvard or anywhere else...

Continued at the link.

Reposted in 2026 because I ran across this old post while looking up stuff about Dante's Inferno, and wanted to make sure I had already blogged Prufrock.  Nothing to add now - just wanted to revisit the poem (and reader Elagie's salient comments).

An interesting art installation

Credit to Antti Laitinen for "Broken Landscape, 2021" which I found posted at the oddlyterrifying subreddit.  The discussion thread there is trivial, but I appreciate the demonstration of how trees adapt to their location.  I have a wall of tall cedar trees facing west along a driveway.  They fill every space capable of capturing sunlight with foliage, but behind that wall of green is a maze of poke-you-in-the-eye broken branches.

I'll close with this cross-section of a hedge that I posted back in 2020.  

Bob Dylan - Forever Young

I'm a "boomer," and Bob Dylan is one of the musicians who define my generation. "Forever Young" was written as a lullaby for his eldest son and released in the mid-70s; it appeals to an older crowd than those who were attracted to him earlier for his "protest"-themed songs.

There are lots of choices of venues for hearing the song. I've embedded the one from The Band's performance in The Last Waltz.

And if you don't care for the music, at least accept these lyrics as my wishes to you.

May God bless and keep you always,
May your wishes all come true,
May you always do for others
And let others do for you.
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May you grow up to be righteous,
May you grow up to be true,
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you.
May you always be courageous,
Stand upright and be strong,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

May your hands always be busy,
May your feet always be swift,
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift.
May your heart always be joyful,
May your song always be sung,
May you stay forever young,
Forever young, forever young,
May you stay forever young.

Originally posted in February of '08.  Reposted now in response to today's announcement that Bob Dylan will receive the 2016 Nobel Prize for literature - in recognition of his skills as a lyricist rather than as a singer or musician.

Reddit Books discussion thread re the appropriateness (or not) of this award.

Addendum:

Dylan has sculpted iron pieces for family and friends for the past 30 years, but it wasn’t until 2013 – at London’s Halcyon Gallery in an exhibition called Mood Swings – that his metal artwork was first viewed publicly. His works feature found objects, vintage scrap metal and industrial artifacts collected from junkyards. Dylan collects everything from farm equipment, children’s toys, kitchen utensils and antique fire arms to chains, cogs, axes and wheels. He then welds these curiosities into thoughtfully juxtaposed masterpieces. Commissioned by MGM National Harbor to envision an open entrance, Dylan hand-selected unique objects and will weld a stunning composition into a soaring archway.

Text and image from MGM National Harbor, via Minnesota Brown, the definitive blog about northern Minnesota's legendary Mesabi Iron Range.

Reposted from 2016 to add a recording of my favorite Bob Dylan song -

What did you do when you were 4 months old?

This 4-month-old godwit flew 8,000 miles across the Pacific from Alaska to Tasmania.

"The journey set what the agency described as the longest documented non-stop flight by any animal... The record-setting trip wasn’t a lucky guess based on sightings... To follow B6’s route, researchers used a 5-gram, solar-powered satellite transmitter attached to the bird’s rump... what makes this story stand out is the combination of distance, duration and the bird’s age. B6 was only about four months old when it completed the crossing..."

Vector math demonstration

This is a long (20-minute) video designed to be both entertaining and instructive.  For those in a hurry (which is most of us), here's a reminder that you can find the best parts of videos by viewing the video at You Tube and hovering your mouse over the timeline at the bottom to find the peaks of viewership that typically denote the interesting parts.

Sometimes The Onion says it best

The CIA confirms it overthrew Iran's Prime Minister, Mohammed Mosaddegh

Reposted in 2026 from 2016 to remind readers once again of what can happen when the United States (and Israel) decide to institute "regime change" in another country.  For the TLDRs - Mossadegh was democratically elected by Iranians, overthrown by the CIA in order to gain control of Iran's oil, replaced by the Shah, who unleashed the torturers of SAVAK on the people of Iran, which eventually led to their rebellion and the institution of their current authoritarian theocratic anti-Western system.

This was FAFO writ large on an international scale.

For those hopefully few who have doubts about whether the U.S. interferes in other countries to change regimes, I would recommend browsing just the paragraph headings in chapter 17 of William Blum's Rogue State.

[Reposted in 2016 from 2013 to serve as a counterpoint to all the recent hullabaloo about the possibility/likelihood that Russia influenced the most recent U.S. presidential election.]

Excerpts from an article at the National Security Archive:

Washington, D.C., August 19, 2013 – Marking the sixtieth anniversary of the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq, the National Security Archive is today posting recently declassified CIA documents on the United States' role in the controversial operation. American and British involvement in Mosaddeq's ouster has long been public knowledge, but today's posting includes what is believed to be the CIA's first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup.

The explicit reference to the CIA's role appears in a copy of an internal history, The Battle for Iran, dating from the mid-1970s. The agency released a heavily excised version of the account in 1981 in response to an ACLU lawsuit, but it blacked out all references to TPAJAX, the code name for the U.S.-led operation. Those references appear in the latest release. Additional CIA materials posted today include working files from Kermit Roosevelt, the senior CIA officer on the ground in Iran during the coup. They provide new specifics as well as insights into the intelligence agency's actions before and after the operation...

The issue is more than academic. Political partisans on all sides, including the Iranian government, regularly invoke the coup to argue whether Iran or foreign powers are primarily responsible for the country's historical trajectory, whether the United States can be trusted to respect Iran's sovereignty, or whether Washington needs to apologize for its prior interference before better relations can occur...

While the National Security Archive applauds the CIA's decision to make these materials available, today's posting shows clearly that these materials could have been safely declassified many years ago without risk of damage to the national security...

But all 21 of the CIA items posted today (in addition to 14 previously unpublished British documents — see Sidebar), reinforce the conclusion that the United States, and the CIA in particular, devoted extensive resources and high-level policy attention toward bringing about Mosaddeq's overthrow, and smoothing over the aftermath.  

The aftermath included the return to power of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi ("The Shah of Iran"), and the establishment of the SAVAK (secret police), whose torture methods included "electric shock, whipping, beating, inserting broken glass and pouring boiling water into the rectum, tying weights to the testicles, and the extraction of teeth and nails."

One can't emphasize enough that Mosaddeq had been democratically-elected by the people of Iran.  The U.S. and Britain had him overthrown in order to gain access to Iran's oil resources.

Does anyone still wonder why many Iranians distrust and/or dislike the U.S.?

Additional details in the relevant Wikipedia entry.  Via Reddit, where other relevant coups are listed.

Addendum:  An article this week in Salon emphasizes the same point -

None of this gives Vladimir Putin a pass. We don’t see enough reporting on the repression of religion and the media inside Putin’s Russia. But failing to acknowledge our own dark side when it comes to internal and external covert operations to twist political outcomes makes us look hypocritical in a world where so many nations have been victimized by our covert machinations, often with deadly consequences.

Evidently, this is the real-world meaning of “American exceptionalism,” where only we are exempt from the requirement to respect other nations’ sovereignty. There’s no better example of this than the 2014 Edward Snowden revelations that the U.S. had spied on many other countries, even allies like Germany, France, Italy and Japan...

For decades both Democrats and Republicans working for Washington law firms and global crisis management outfits like Hill & Knowlton or Black Manafort & Stone have helped the world’s most brutal and oppressive regimes hang on to power and marginalize their opponents, all while continuing to get U.S. military aid...

The U.S. has manipulated the internal domestic politics of other countries with escapades in Africa, Asia, Central and South America, the Caribbean and even in Europe...

We rarely get a glimpse behind that black curtain unless an Edward Snowden or a Daniel Ellsberg puts everything on the line to pull it back for us. None of that excuses the Russian attempt to meddle in an American election, but we should not feign innocence Trying to shape world events and our own politics through fake news, disinformation, deceit and deception are as American as apple pie.

Offered without comment

A brief history of "chestnut blight" in North America

Pages 12-13 from The Overstory, by Richard Powers, which I have briefly reviewed in a separate post.  There are of course entire books on this subject, but I thought this page brought the disaster into sharp focus.  The chestnut blight was one of the greatest ecologic disasters ever to hit North America.

And I've just discovered that the world's largest remaining stand of genetically pure, mature American chestnut trees is near West Salem, Wisconsin.  I believe that's the town where one of my aunts was born.  Perhaps I can find an excuse to visit the trees this summer.

Factoids and bon mots in "The Overstory"

This is one of the books I read during my "blogcation."  I won't offer an extensive review here, because it is already well-known, having won the Pulitzer prize back in 2019 (and shortlisted for the Booker Prize).  This is a book about trees, but it's not the book to read if you just want to learn the facts about tree communication and mycorrhizal networks; for that there are a number of excellent popular science books.  The Overstory presents nine wildly-different characters whose lives are influenced by trees, then brings all of them together in the American Pacific northwest where they participate in activism for the protection of old-growth forests.  Some will find that latter part of the novel "preachy" and the methods of the tree-huggers to be repellant, but I do admire the knowledge base about trees that Powers utilized, which I've excerpted below in a series of "factoids" and bon mots.

"Each of the world's seven hundred and fifty species of Ficus has its own unique wasp tailored to fertilize it... The foundress laid her eggs and died.  The fruit that she fertilized became her tomb." (81)

"... growing conviction that the greatest flaw of the [human] species is its overwhelming tendency to mistake agreement for truth.  Single biggest influence on what a body will or won't believe is what nearby bodies broadcast over the public band..." (84)

"... the word beech becomes the word book, in language after language... beech bark played host to the earliest Sanskrit letters." (116)

(in preparation for winter) "Sap falls.  Cells become permeable.  Water flows out of the trunks and concentrates into anti-freeze.  The dormant life just below the bark is lined with water so pure that nothing is left to help it crystallize." (118)

"It’s a miracle,” she tells her students, photosynthesis: a feat of chemical engineering underpinning creation’s entire cathedral. All the razzmatazz of life on Earth is a free-rider on that mind-boggling magic act. The secret of life: plants eat light and air and water, and the stored energy goes on to make and do all things. She leads her charges into the inner sanctum of the mystery: Hundreds of chlorophyll molecules assemble into antennae complexes. Countless such antenna arrays form up into thylakoids discs. Stacks of these discs align in a single chloroplast. Up to a hundred such solar power factories power a single plant cell. Millions of cells may shape a single leaf. A million leaves rustle in a single glorious gingko.  

Too many zeros, their eyes glaze over." (124)

"She produces her loupe from her key chain and applies it to one stump to estimate the number of rings. The oldest downed trees are about eighty years. She smiles at the number, so comical, for these fifty thousand baby trees all around her have sprouted from a rhizome mass too old to date even to the nearest hundred millennia. Underground, the eighty-year-old trunks are a hundred thousand, if they’re a day. She wouldn’t be surprised if this great, joined, single clonal creature that looks like a forest has been around for the better part of a million years.

That’s why she has stopped: to see one of the oldest, largest living things on earth. All around her spreads one single male whose genetically identical trunks cover more than a hundred acres. The thing is outlandish, beyond her ability to wrap her head around. But then, as Dr. Westerford knows, the world’s outlands are everywhere, and trees like to toy with human thought like boys toy with beetles." (131)

"You and the tree in your backyard come from a common ancestor. A billion and a half years ago, the two of you parted ways. But even now, after an immense journey in separate directions, that tree and you still share a quarter of your genes. . . ." (132)

"She stands in the clearing at the top of the rise, looking out over a shallow gully. Aspens everywhere, and it boggles her mind that not one of them has grown from seed. All through this part of the West, few aspens have done so in ten thousand years. Long ago, the climate changed, and an aspen’s seeds can no longer thrive here. But they propagate by root; they spread. There are aspen colonies up north where the ice sheets were, older than the sheets themselves. The motionless trees are migrating—immortal stands of aspen retreating before the latest two-mile-thick glaciers, then following them back north again." (133)

"Her trees are far more social than even Patricia suspected. There are no individuals. There aren’t even separate species. Everything in the forest is the forest. Competition is not separable from endless flavors of cooperation. Trees fight no more than do the leaves on a single tree. It seems most of nature isn’t red in tooth and claw, after all." (142)

Chlorophyll and hemoglobin are nearly identical molecules (143)

"Lit by the streetlamp in front of her house is a singular tree that once covered the earth - a living fossil, one of the oldest, strangest things that ever learned the secret of wood [gingko].  A tree with sperm that must swim through droplets to fertilize the ovule." (146)

"Oak veneration at the oracle at Dodona, the druids’ groves in Britain and Gaul, Shinto sakaki worship, India’s bejeweled wishing trees, Mayan kapoks, Egyptian sycamores, the Chinese sacred ginkgo—all the branches of the world’s first religion." (215)

"La ruta nos aporto otro paso natural" is a palindrome

"In that dream, the trees laugh at them.  Save us?  What a human thing to do." (329).  [reminds me of a scene in After Yang when robot says man's question whether Yang wanted to be human is "such a human thing to ask."

"... as friendly as a retriever covered with ticks..." (415)

“The Greeks had a word, xenia—guest friendship—a command to take care of traveling strangers, to open your door to whoever is out there, because anyone passing by, far from home, might be God. Ovid tells the story of two immortals who came to Earth in disguise to cleanse the sickened world. No one would let them in but one old couple, Baucis and Philemon. And their reward for opening their door to strangers was to live on after death as trees—an oak and a linden—huge and gracious and intertwined. What we care for, we will grow to resemble. And what we resemble will hold us, when we are us no longer. . . .” (498)

"... when the songs are finished, he adds, Amen, if only because it may be the single oldest word he knows,  The older the word, the more likely it is to be both useful and true...: (501)

"...the word tree and the word truth come from the same root." (501)

I also encountered two uncommon words that drew my attention:

"There are ancient prophecies that scry the seeds of time and say which will grow and which will not."  To "scry" is to supernaturally predict the future by using crystal balls or other magic items.

",,, where your horse stops to slather a drink from icy water..."  An uncommon usage of a verb that usually denotes applying something thickly, like jam on toast.  Also used as a noun to mean "drool."  Odd usage here seems to conflate those two.

"I am somebody!"

An iconic 1963 speech by Jesse Jackson.  A decade later PBS invited him to do a reprise of that call-and-response to introduce the letter "I" on Sesame Street.

"...what they are being told is that they are people. They are not learning to be people. They are not playing at what it will be like to grow up and become people. They are people already, with the same entitlement to dignity as any towering grown-up....  Here, he does not speak with the fire of a protest leader or a politician. He’s like a hip teacher or youth group leader. He engages and encourages the kids in the tones of a classroom. 

The message of Jackson’s litany is the beginning of education, and the beginning of democracy. It says that you have worth as a person, simply because you are a person. It says that you have a voice. And it says that your voice is most powerful when it joins with other voices.

Jesse Jackson (1941-2026) was a memorable force for those of us coming of age in the 1960s.

Urban tree risks in a snowstorm

The media will be flooded with pix and videos from the current "snowpocalypse" hammering New England now.  The article in the New York Times that incorporated this image did not discuss the mechanics behind the windfall, but I think the cause is obvious.  Urban trees, like those on the perimeter of forests or woods, overgrow toward available light.  The uneven distribution of weight following snowfall is enough to bring them down.  I have no doubt there will be lawsuits for incidents like this, but I believe most city ordinances apply fault to owners of dead trees left standing, not living trees.

The title of Finnegans Wake

Found on Facebook and fact-checked as best I can.  Apparently this is true.  Interesting (not that I'll ever read the book, but interesting nevertheless).  Posted for other English majors and copy editors, who are the only people who will care.

Capitalle - new online geography game

I found this game today I think via Metafilter.  The game chooses a random world capital city and invites you to guess it within 6 tries.  After each guess you are informed whether your guess involved the correct continent, the correct hemisphere, whether the city is coastal or inland, how far off your guess is in term of distance, and whether the correct answer is a larger or smaller city.

So, in today's game my first guess was Kinshasa.  I then guessed Lima for a southern capital in another continent (forgetting its coastal location).  The final stage was to use the distances (see map at top of embed).  Sucre was closer, Asuncion even closer, but Buenos Aires further away, directing me to Brasilia.

I had to use a map for assistance.  

Sorry for providing a spoiler for today's answer, but you can go to the Capitalle app home page and click the "practice" button for a different random capital city.

My other posts about online geography games (with links): Geoguesser, Where in the U.S.A. is this?, Worldle, and Ghent University's test.  Several of these links are decades old and I haven't checked to see if they've undergone linkrot.

A guaranteed win for a "bar bet"

Bet someone they can't name the country with which France shares its longest border, and give them three or four guesses... "Germany? Spain? Belgium? Italy?..."

The answer is Brazil (on the border with French Guiana, which is as much a part of France as Alaska is part of the United States).  Map of "constituent lands."

Reposted from 2020 because I found it while browsing my old geography posts.