Words from the Arabic

A Facebook friend posted a great word list from the Arabic. Apparently an Arizonan was offended by the word haboob. He snidely said, We don't use Arabic words in Arizona. I had to laugh. There was a habūb in Death Valley once, took the enamel right off my teeth. He said, What we need now is a good monsoon. She should tell him it's monsoon season in Arizona. Words from the Arabic: haboob and mawsim.

But many of the words my Facebook friend posted were actually loanwords into the Arabic, not words FROM the Arabic. So I looked up each word from her lengthy list and came up with these solid Arabic contenders. Candy, cotton, lemon, magazine, mattress, alcohol, sugar, soda, sofa, zero, safari, sirocco, haboob, monsoon, zenith, azimuth, nadir, alchemy, alcove, assassin, adobe, tariff, tabby, sash, ream, mascara, cork, artichoke—all words from the Arabic. 

There was mixed etymological origins on of many so-called Arabic words listed, though. Most words were originally from the Persian, which is an Indo-European language. Moon and wine are Indo-European (IE) words, not Arabic. Chess is from the Sanskrit (also an IE language). Basil is from the Greek basilius (king). Guitar, Gr. kithara, music, Gr. mousa. 

Queen is also an IE word cwēn. There’s a lot of variation on that word, from incanabula to c*nt to quim. I was trying hard not to be a wordc*nt, and I tried to make it interesting but I couldn't let those errors stay—stet. I was on a roll. I wish I had kept the original word lists too. But se la vie. What I noticed on the many wordlists I looked up, was that people play fast and loose with word origins. 

Borax is interesting, Medieval French, from the Arabic, BUT from the Persian burah, (in other words, also an IE word by way of Arabic, call it a double borrowing.) Orange, from the Persian nārang, to Arabic, to Spanish naranja. Ditto that with scarlet: Persian to Arabic to French… Race and rest have Germanic/ Norse origins. And solar is from the Latin, solus. 

Many of our Latin plant names are roundabout travelers by way of the Arabic. And roundabout cloth names are also loaned or derived from Arabic: tabby, satin, possibly gauze, from Gaza. But taffeta is Persian, for woven (tāftah) with Arabic intermediation. Mouth-watering Arabic food names: Baba ghanoush, kibbeh, tahini, falafel—but fattoush is a compound word, Arab + Turkish, halva, is both Persian and Arabic. Neck-and-neck root word origins. 

Any Spanish words that begin with al- are, of course Arabic in origin. Alfombra, alcorque, arsenal, alhambra, algodon, albondigas, algebra, alcohol, amber, admiral, azucar, aciete, achofa, etc., of course are from the Arabic. But sugar is from the Sanskrit, she said sweetly. 

Maybe I'll get back to this list, but for now, it stays stet. A placeholder.

See Spanish words from the Arabic

• Nothing rhymes with… On the origin of oranges. Old Persian, purteghal, or narang, which is derived from the Sanskrit for the orange tree: nāraṅga. In Greek, the word for both the color and the fruit is portokali. In Romanian the fruit is portocala and the color, porticaliu.

SMALL RELIEF

I awaken to the alien sound of rain on the roof,
a passing fancy, a fleeting thought,
a last-minute hurrah clapping in an empty hall. 

At least this time there’s no lightning.

Small relief. No wildfires on the horizon.

AFTER HEARING BILLY COLLINS READ BAGS OF TIME

AFTER HEARING BILLY COLLINS READ BAGS OF TIME

    —after Billy Collins

I'm enamored by a seanfhocal from South Uist:

bags of time. When did we put time in a bag? 

I envisioned bags of wool, three bags full, to be exact. 

One black, two white. Double tax on the black bag.

And none for the little boy who lived down the lane.

Once upon a time, the great wool tax 

was levied by Longshanks and the peasants revolted. 

I had to sing the nursery rhyme, 

as my Irish baby name is invoked. 

Black sheep run in the family. 

And no, it's not a racist nursery rhyme.

That's a bad case of presentism at work.

My Corkonian grandmother cursed Longshanks 

and Cromwell daily. I thought the antiChrist 

would come and get me like the big bad wolf. 

In America, we say oodles of time. 

What are oodles, exactly? Rhymes with noodles.

A Tennessee slant rhyme, perhaps to accompany caboodle, 

as in kit & caboodle, perhaps lost cargo from the Dutch, 

as in boedel, or property. Open-ended portmanteaus of time. 

But those medieval bags, morphed from a hunting term 

to a race or an appointment. As in fixed time.

Boris Johnson said there was 'bags of time' for the Brexit exit. 

But it was Halloween and you know how mischief runs amok 

when the gates to the Otherworld swing open on rusted hinges.

When did we swap bagging game for bagging time? 

It all comes down to timing and knowing 

when your race is run. It's in the bag.

7/22/21

Getting it into gear

I’m having trouble shifting into gear this morning. Have you ever downshifted, only to have a stickshift come off in your hand? Old story. Apropos metaphor for the day. My first car, a 1958 Volvo panel van was always a mechanical surprise, but holding the stickshift up my hand like a crowbar as I was downshifting off the freeway was a bit much. I had to limp it along in second gear from San Rafael all the way to Larkspur to my mechanic Johnny Google’s autoshop on Main Street. 

I was really irritated when I found out later I could’ve just stuck a screwdriver in the gearbox to downshift. Or just re-screwed the gearshift back in, but I didn’t know that. I was just so freaked out, afraid to kill the engine, I cow-hopped and lugged it along to the garage in second gear without stopping, running stop signs and red lights, etc. 

That old Volvo was such a great teaching tool. This was circa 1970, no idiot's manuals. That old car taught me more about mechanics than I care to admit. I did have to use a humongous screwdriver to start the car as well, I crossed the connections on the starter which eventually melted it. We were MacGyvering everything long before MacGyver was invented. 

Don’t even get me started on alternator stories. We were coming back from San Francisco from an Irish music concert one moonlit night, and the alternator died on the Golden Gate Bridge. We figured out that if we turned off all the lights we could still keep driving. And so we did—all the way out to Forest Knolls—without lights. Without getting busted by the cops. By the time we got to Arroyo Road—there were no street lights—it was impossible to see. So I got out of the car and held my grandmother’s white piano shawl up like a beacon and Bob followed the shawl home like a moth to flame. 

Driving that car was always an adventure, so when one of the pistons blew, I never resurrected it. Because it was a rare car, it was far too difficult to find parts for it. Luckily the turtleback Volvo had the same parts. I always thought I would fix that car. David Best wanted my car to make it into a junk art car. I should’ve given it to him. It would've been immortalized.

The event was real, but, yes, I do speak metaphorically, I just couldn’t get into gear all day. I practically had to kick myself down the road. So I fixed myself a strong doublewide mug of coffee. I discovered there is a God after all who lives in a large coffee mug.

Remembering Barbara Scott

Barbara Davenport SCOTT, age 85, of Forest Knolls, California passed away on Thursday, July 8, 2021. Barbara was born July 19, 1935. Neptune Society I could not find an obituary for Barbara anywhere.

 

Barbara Davenport Scott, someone I’ve known since childhood, has transitioned. I found out via Facebook, how harsh. Not the usual transmission lines, or a note from the family. The first clue that she was no longer with us, was her old French blue velvet davenport couch by the side of the road across from my old alma mater, Lagunitas School, now the SGV Art Center. When the round poker table with its peeling oak veneer showed up by the side of the road too, I had a sinking feeling. All the funky furniture she wanted me to have—by the side of the road—did not bode well. Barb didn’t like being alone at night—I was ordered to stay overnight up to ten nights a month, and she thoroughly chastised and upbraided me if I neglected my duties and didn’t use up my monthly allocation. The times when I couldn’t visit, my cousin dropped in on Barb, took up the flagship. It was never a chore, it was like spending time with an aunt—it was a deep, abiding familial bond. She was also a part of our childhood, part of our past. We got to hang out with Barb, and to cook dinners for her. We had marathon scanning sessions, movie nights, paint nights, giggle nights. We took her on outings, went on hikes. She had never been to the Nicasio Reservoir. I was gobsmacked, and vowed to take her on more outings. We entered her art into the Vitrual Spring Art Show. She had never been in an art show. We remedied that.

Our 50+1 Drake high school reunion cancelled again

Our 50+1 Drake high school reunion is coming up (we caught the Covid bus for our 50th, and here I thought it was a prime number, but I suck at math. Should we join forces with class of 1971?) As I gaze at the photos of my fellow classmates from so long ago, odd feelings arise. I guess that’s probably true for many of us. Seeing all these stilted senior yearbook pages, I realized how I didn’t relate to most of my classmates. Perhaps it was a fear of being bullied. It seems nobody ever talks about that stuff. The overt and covert cruelty of peer pressure. The jockeying for position on the crumbling social ladder. 

I was so glad that the Summer of Love steamrollered in and the resulting societal breakdown had begun.  I really hated high school. I was also painfully shy, which didn’t help. It was time, and it freed us from the fierce conformity of the 1950s, and early 1960s, which was so constraining. I came from an immigrant family, we didn’t fit into the American suburban culture. And of course, we were poor, so we didn’t, or couldn’t buy into it. A blessing in disguise. I would not trade my untamed childhood years growing up in Forest Knolls for the suburban experience that defines American culture.

Wild swan at the Chileno Valley laguna, victim of the drought

I fear this wild swan is a victim of the drought. The Laguna de San Antonio aka Laguna Lake!) in Chileno Valley, in both West Marin, and Sonoma County, has completely evaporated. A first. Technically the laguna is a very large vernal pool, the largest in California, but this is the first time I’ve seen it bone dry. See that swan’s big black foot? It was always suspended above the water line. S/he was constantly grooming under that protruding foot, it stuck out like a small black sail. I’ve observed this particular bird for hours. It could not put that leg down, and the wing too was permanently canted up. That said, it could chug along pretty well on one leg. With only one functional leg, s/he managed fine in this part of the laguna, but never migrated to the other side of the lake with the other swans, or to the Arctic either. No idea if it’s a he or a she—we like to assign gender to things perhaps to personalize our experience—but it never had a mate or any babies. It usually swam alone, apart from the flock. I’m not even sure if it’s a mute swan or a tundra swan. There are both found in the laguna. After hauling out the old photos to post here, I can see it’s a mute swan—an invasive species. Am I supposed to suddenly hate it because it’s not native? But I have unconsciously named it. Its beak is somewhere in between the two species. Tundra swans have yellow embedded on their beaks, this one has scarlet on its beak. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t commute. It doesn’t know where to go. Besides, it probably has been anchored to this spot of the lakebed for so long, it has lost the urge. Mute attestation. I thought maybe that fishing line filament caught up on its leg, but I never could get close enough to see. I thought about calling a wildlife rescue for it, but it seemed to be managing OK. Besides, can you imagine trying to wrestle a swan? I’m no Leda. Now, the laguna is only a mudflat, the lake is gone—and on the opposite shore, I saw what looked like a dead swan. A one-legged swan, stuck in the mud, sans lake, wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. I’d have to seriously trespass across the mudflats in order to cross the lakebed in order to verify it. I wasn’t quite brave enough yesterday. I did walk a third of the way across the lakebed. Yesterday, I found the tip of an old yellow fishing rod in the mud right about where this photo was taken. I imagined a scenario that the swan was anchored to that same spot via that fishing pole. It grew used to its confinement. Maybe that’s why it didn’t join the others when it eventually broke free. It couldn’t. Someone said the leg looks dislocated. Perhaps the bird eventually broke free of its mooring—perhaps dislocating its leg in the process. A one-legged swan, stuck in the mud, sans lake, wouldn’t stand a chance of survival. There used to be a lot of fish in the laguna. Bass, catfish, sunfish. Michael from Petaluma stopped to talk, and told me fishing stories of his youth. The one that got away. How he threw them all back. No fish now. Only the memory of fish. There are several new Turtle Crossing signs. At least the western pond turtles can burrow in the mud and hibernate. Can catfish hibernate too? I didn’t see any fish carcasses in the desiccated and cracked mud. But then I wasn’t looking for them. I could see on the far shore, a dead bird and it looks like a swan just by its girth—whether it’s that swan in question, I have no idea. As I stood in the middle of the lakebed, a white feather came tumbling toward my feet on the breeze. Perhaps a parting gift. And yet I mourn its loss.

Dear Google (again)

DEAR GOOGLE,

Today I received even more emails from you telling me what was wrong with my blog.
URL is not on Google

This page is not in the index, but not because of an error. See the details below to learn why it wasn't indexed.

Server error (5xx) I GET THIS ONE ALMOST WEEKLY
Indexed, though blocked by robots.txt

First detected: 11/1/18
Status: Warning

The following issues were found on your site:

Viewport not set

Text too small to read

Clickable elements too close together

Redirect error

I am using normal text size, Georgia font, the default font for Blogger so I seriously doubt that my text is too small to read on a mobile device as it is bigger than 12 point. What are clickable elements? Are you referring to URLS? Most of the flagged pages are merely poems. Poems, I tell you. And short prose pieces. No URLS involved. What do you mean, viewpoint not set? The redirect error issue is entirely on you, Google, not me. You don’t even like my use of tags and it’s your freaking system.

Recently you deleted 13 of my posts saying that they went against community standards. They were poems, they didn’t even have swearwords, let alone, any hate speech—so I’m baffled. To your credit, you did re-install those 13 posts. But not the ones you deleted from the previous purge. I won’t mention the fact that you also put a red flag window over my blog so I couldn’t see it, saying that it was a fraudulent site. What do you think am, a Russian hacker? Back off.

At this point, I get more emails from Google telling me whats’s wrong with my blogspot than I do from my friends. I am at my wits end. I can’t take this anymore. I am considering taking down my blog and all 4000+ posts. This is utterly draconian. 

Your redirects and your explanations are useless. Telling me to see my webmaster. You ARE my webmaster. And the irony is that I have been using your software since day one. I am not using any add-on software. Just standard text. June’s myriad posts from you were relentless. Ditto that with May’s posts from you. Do you want to drive me away? Is that your endgame? 

Today, you also sent me yet another email, this time for site overview in order to improve my site, and to get more insights about my content. I don’t care how to improve my site so that more people can discover it. That’s not my goal, nor is it why I write. There is nothing wrong with my content, it doesn’t need improving, but clearly, there is plenty wrong with your software and sniffer bots.

Dear Google, please see my posts…

• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts? I ...
• Dear Google, why do you keep flagging my posts?
• DEAR GOOGLE, Coverage issues have been detected an...
• DEAR GOOGLE, My woodside play is missing, looks li...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Google’s Blogger took down my memoria...
• DEAR GOOGLE, Blogger removed 13 of my blogposts fo...

Synchronicity at work

After an uncomfortable night in my car, as my Berkeley housesitting gig ended a day early, and there were no available post-pandemic couches to surf on in West Marin where I needed to be in the morning (gas @ $4.30 gal), and home bed was more than an hour’s drive north, I made a pot of morning tea with the last of Robin Rule’s looseleaf Yorkshire Gold. My grandmother was always an advocate for a pot of strong tea to make you right as rain, nothing like a strong cuppa to help you to carry on, she’d always say. As I sipped that cup of fierce courage, and massaged my old bones and aches into facing the prospect of the day, and dwelled on the unsettling aspects of the future, I thought of Robin, nestled up north, on a ridge in a handmade caboose house overlooking Willits. I marveled at all the good work she has been doing during the pandemic, with the food bank, and feeding people. Who says that good thoughts and best intentions don’t affect change? I don’t believe in prayer, I believe in doing—my mantra is action and verb. I believe in poetry, perhaps that’s a more tangible form of prayer. I haven’t seen her in decades, yet, we are still in step with each other—our friendship persists—despite a half lifetime of time and distance. Constant poet, the thought of her generous spirit, and very existence on that steep ridge, nourishes me. When I arrived home, there was a care package waiting for me—Robin had sent me three boxes of Yorkshire Gold tea for HER birthday. Such generous bounty. ❤ Thank you Alabama James❤ Synchronicity at work. Happy birthday Robin. Carry on.

• Serendipity 2.0