a real treat for word lovers

Roy Blount has a new book coming out called Alphabet Juice: The Energies, Gists, and Spirits of Letters, Words, and Combinations Thereof; Their Roots, Bones, Innards, Piths, Pips, and Secret Parts, Tinctures, Tonics, and Essences; With Examples of Their Usage Foul and Savory.

In it, Blount writes:

To me, letters have always been a robust medium of sublimation. … We're in the midst of a bunch of letters, and if you're like me, you feel like a pig in mud. What a great word mud is. And muddle, and muffle, and mumble. … You know the expression "Mum's the word." The word mum is a representation of lips pressed together. … The great majority of languages start the word for "mother" with an m sound. The word mammal comes from the mammary gland. Which comes from baby talk: mama. To sound like a grownup, we refine mama into mother; the Romans made it mater, from which: matter. And matrix. Our word for the kind of animal we are, and our word for the stuff that everything is made of, and our word for a big cult movie all derive from baby talk.

What are we saying when we say mmmm? We are saying yummy. In the pronunciation of which we move our lips the way nursing babies move theirs. The fact that we can spell something that fundamental, and connect it however tenuously to mellifluous and manna and milk and me (see M), strikes me as marvelous.

information overload

I'm swimming in information here at my desk today. In my ongoing equine diet research, I've got everyone very happily on soaked beet pulp, alfalfa pellets, rice bran, and their supplements. I'm very much wanting to add whole oats to the menu. Not all of our horses/donkeys get all of the above, but having the whole ingredients on hand means everyone gets what they need.

Right now we're rotated off all supplements except for the seniors who are getting a joint supplement in between their Adequan courses.

And Cody is getting BOSS.

They're all getting psyllium and pro-bios this week.

It's time to re-order the custom flax mix, but I'm signed up for a class in equine nutrition and I keep thinking what I learn there will affect what I do with the custom mix.

I need to send off grass and hay samples for analysis so I'll have our numbers in front of me when the class starts.

I'm thinking I should re-order the general vit/min supplement next. But which one? The one I used previously turned out to be soy based, so I'm switching. The one I like best among the new possibilities is too similar to the flax mix I get. More reading, more info.

Meanwhile, I've been researching de-worming protocol and determined I have probably been underdosing. While reading about that, I stumbled onto a de-worming schedule that addresses the adult Onchocerca and supposedly, with many positive anecdotal results, is also ridding a number of horses from various types of itching and deep sulcus thrush among other things.

I did a test on my herd, and have seen some results that bear out what I've read, so now I'm rethinking my entire de-worming strategy.

Add to this the kinesiology test results and herbs and you see that my brain is boiling over with data. It's all faithfully written down in my barn calendar. Who got what when, and what resulted. But sometimes I feel like buying a hundred acres, planting it with grass and adding what the soil needs to be complete for horses, and doing wild horse style turn-out.

Keil Bay and Salina would be happy until the magic hours of mealtime, and then they'd both beat a path to my back door. And there would be Rafer Johnson, Cody, and Apache right behind them, loyal herd members that they are.

I would miss mixing the feed tubs every morning, because truly, I love the scooping and the customizing and the ability to tweak things on a daily basis.

Sometimes though, I have a secret longing for the whole "ignorance is bliss" approach to ... I was going to type horse care, but really, it would have to be to life in general.

Which is of course not at all my style. But it would be nice to be able to turn the switch for a few days a month.

Knowledge database OFF. Ignorance Is Bliss Over-ride button ON.

more signs of autumn

I went out on the front porch just now to take a photo of the fog. It's lifted already, and it's cooler out than I expected on this gray day. Immediately I noted the trees - several are changing colors to gold and red already, and even the green ones are a duller green. Autumn is happening around us.

There are three dead garden spiders on the front porch. They have lived and died, and I believe the perfect egg sacs I see hanging in various spots up near the porch ceiling belong to them. I am both afraid of and fascinated by spiders, especially the yellow and black ones, the ones I grew up knowing as the "writing spiders."

They represent writing in all its glory: the mystery, the brightness, the sticky web, the creativity, and the fear, too. I think if we as writers don't feel a little fear as we write, we probably aren't going deep enough. We are staying in the zone of our own comfort. The novels and poems and stories that touch us deeply are the ones that go further. Readers can feel the journey of the writer between the lines of the story.

It was sad seeing the spiders curled on the porch, legs unnaturally bent, color already fading.

There is one huge one left, just outside the porch but perfectly visible through the railing. She had a gigantic horse fly in her clutches. I'm glad there is still one living out there, writing until I get the keyboard and take up where I left off with the books.

I tried to take a photograph and the little icon flashed - the battery was dead. Fitting on this autumn morning when the end of so many little seasons are all around.

ergonomically speaking, with a jungian twist

I now have about one-half of my ergonomic set-up in place. My laptop is on the bigger desk in the living room, with a new chair that adjusts every which way you can imagine. I have the sapphire blue wrist rests. I've picked out the new keyboard and once that's plugged in I will raise the monitor and get a foot rest.

I can feel the difference with each change, which is a good thing. Maybe I can finally get back to the books!

In the midst of this ergonomic upgrade, my laptop has been acting up (it's old, and has been great, but I think it's on its last legs). I'm replacing it with a desktop, as the portability issue is much less now that it has been in the past.

I'm looking forward to the big screen and the ease of typing.

All that said, not writing for these past few weeks is turning me into the Grinch. I've said before that when I don't write, I start to feel like the top of my head is going to blow off, much like a volcano erupting.

I've been feeling that way lately. The horses keep me from getting to the far edge of blowing, but it's like having my energy at low boil. I'm ready to move on and get back to the page.

Last night I dreamed I was going into a department store. I was shopping for exercise equipment, shoes, and clothing. The exercise stuff, you might guess, represents the need to write. Between the ergonomic stuff and the not writing my body is feeling all out of whack. So in my dream world I was heading out to fix it.

I was very excited. Hopeful. I stepped into the elevator and while trying to figure out which button to push - floor 2 or 3? - women kept getting on the elevator. It ended up being packed. And when we pushed the button, finally, the elevator didn't move. There were windows, and we could see we weren't moving. Stuck!

But then something happened and the elevator began to lift. There was a moment's relief and then we all realized something was wrong. The elevator was buckling. That word - buckling - was the word used in the dream, and we all kept shrieking it. "It's buckling!"

I'm not quite sure what that means yet, but I'm sure it carries its own message. (I just read that in engineering, buckling is a "failure mode." Exactly how I've been feeling with regards to writing!)

So the elevator was buckling and then the bottom dropped out. Another moment of panic. Then I realized as long as I kept my arms and feet in the right place, (aha! hands and feet!) I wouldn't fall out. I was safe.

Someone managed to call for help on the phone, and they said "is the elevator buckling?" Duh - but they also said they were on the way.

By this time the elevator had left the building and was twisting and turning out over the parking lot. We could see all the workmen and machinery gathering to help us. They managed to get the elevator to go back into its "tunnel" and we were able to step out into the second floor.

Right where we had been heading all along.

However, I realized it was the wrong floor. I had misremembered where the exercise stuff was, so I needed to go up to the third.

Obviously I took the stairs! But this too had its own danger. Every stair step was piled with big bags of food, spilling out. Beans and cookies and flour - all the ingredients anyone would ever need to create pretty much anything. It was all out of place, too much, unusable in the way it was being stored. I stepped around it and made my way up to the third floor.

Which was flooding!

There were pools of water everywhere and a clear, perfect stream of water was spilling in from a high-up window, like a fountain. The sales clerks were walking in circles, trying to figure out what to do.

I decided to head back down to the first floor.

I navigated the stairs full of ingredients. I got caught up in a crowd of women trying to get to the first floor and realized in the crowd, with all the junk on the stairs, I had lost my shoes.

There was no way I was going back to find them. I felt sad for a moment - I liked those shoes - but then decided I would buy new ones, better ones, and it would all be fine.

Then, as I walked toward the first floor, down a long passageway, I realized my shoes had miraculously found their way back onto my feet.

Back in my own footprints - this is one of my images of being centered. I use it for myself and with clients. Get in your footprints. Get centered.

And then I woke up.

we hit a category 5 here tonight with Hurricane Rafer

Latest report from the barnyard:

Rafer Johnson bucked tonight when it was time to go back to his stall!

Wouldn't it be fascinating if we could have radiographs that matched his progressing activity?

It's pretty clear he is ready to be back to a normal donkey routine.