I’m spending too much of my voluble life thinqing about the duo ditty by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. with the line “Then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid like ‘I love you.’” In the song, they mean “saying something stupid like” meaning for example; NOT analagously. Yet, analogies are traditionally connected to “like.” I say Flying is like a double ferris wheel when the top wheel is coming down and rotating at the same time.” Ferris wheel riding is NOT an example of flying; not a form of flying; it is analagous to it. I’m wondering about the meaning if they had sung”… by saying something stupid-like: I love you.” With the colon, it’s not analagous. The writier is saying “Here is something stupid-like: I love you.” But with a period, the phrase is something else. “by saying something stupid-like. I love you.” With the hyphened “stupid-like” the phrase means stupid-ish; resembling stupid; giving evividence of stupidity..
So let’s return to the duo. The lyric says I spoil the warm mood we share when I say something stupid-like. It could be “I wonder if a coffee can of ground coffee weighs more than a coffee can of lake water.” (and by the way, on another, unrelated subject)
I love you. or
….then I go and spoil it all by saying something stupid.
(new paragraph indent because I can’t indent on this blog) I love you.
So in the example sighted just above this paragraph, we have totally different monologue. Does my explanation reveal the fascinating consequences of subtle vagaries of our language to you? I hope so. Does my explanation of a point many consider trivial reveal a clue to the state of my mind? It’s not a bad state necessarily. It’s a passing state.
I went to bed last night a little after 4 am, re-reading near the end of that fab Mark Twain bio, eating crunchy peanut butter from a knife and sipping a young Burgundy, first wine into the house in weeks. True, I had napped after dinner from about 8:00 to midight, so my hitting the sack four hours after a four hour nap seems to even things. It’s not like I slept instead of being productive. If I hadn’t napped I would have osst productive time watching PBS until 11:30, worked in the office until probably 1:30 and then gone to bed, but I was all work in the aviation collection after the nap until peanut butter time. At 10:30 am in the office after awakening to Car Talk and listening pronely for 40 minutes, and grabbing coffee dose #1, I’m still not on top of the world as I would have hoped as my aviation book passes into the “sprint to the finish line” stage.
Got a certified letter from my roofing contractor’s lawyer. I’m in deep stuff. Haven’t even read the letter, and I likely won’t until Sunday. I am in deep distress over this. I’d like to avoid it until I send in the manuscript. This is no way to finish a book.
I want to chuck the whole visual arts business. As the tension mounts with the approaching “sprint,” and likely court action, I want to chuck the whole Central Illinois Visual Artists Galleries “schtick.” AND the separate arts domain I cannot pay for. I’m sad and angry that it hasn’t worked out, that the dollars haven’t come in as I had hoped, and I’m fully aware that some of this was my doing. As the support diminished, so did my zeal for maintaining it. Ultimately the loss of visual artists’ presence, if it happens is all my doing, but it is my doing following input and reactions from good people I like and respect. The web presence is no different from any brick and mortar gallery except that it has been cheaper to establish and maintain. Galleries fail all the time, lemonade stands go belly up all the time. Look at what happened to Weiner Dog across from the ALPL downtown: great idea; never dined there. And cheap though it is, my incapacity to make CIVAG pay for itself is almost beside the point. My time, my heart, is so wrapped up in the airplane action that I sadly envisage a time when the CIVAG leaf will fall from my tree, and sadly, that I will be “the one” who lets it fall.
I’ve not talked with my web client and visual arts people in two weeks, and it will be AFTER the book goes to the publisher when I spend more than 10 minutes of my day engaging responsibilities and commitments connected to them. I feel terrible about this: leaving their realm without saying “I’ll be right back” because I anticipated I’d be back sooner than I will have proven to be.
It seems my business for the rest of my life is aviation, mostly. I hope it will be education if things develop with a potential EMPLOYER as I hope they will, and as a journalist/singer/poet. But until I put the CDs into a Federal Express mailer and post them off to Arcadia, marking the end of my deadline work on the book, my hours are a litany of future aspirations, mostly about what I want to do with aviation web, while finding a way to include my writing/musical interests and those of friends, associates and strangers who MIGHT support them. There will be more work to do with Arcadia and the book, but none of it will be deadline work with the weight of the key enchilada I will deliver in little more than a week from not.
My challenge now is to ride this tiger, hope friends I’ve said nothing to for most of the time I’ve been involved with this book will forgive my silence, and consider my being as more than “the vanity snow ball rolling down the hill and getting bigger every day” — which I fear it has appeared to be since January.
That “..” by the way is not an analogy. That is a metaphor.
Live long . . . . . . and proper.
