I went to Urgent Care yesterday morning and learned that I have bronchitis. The beauty of Urgent Care as opposed to my primary care physician is not just that someone there will see me on Sunday but that someone there will see me when I’m sick.
Someone recently posted on social media an interview that William F. Buckley did with Jorge Luis Borges. At one point the great Argentinian writer says that English is a finer language than Spanish. Buckley asks him why. Borges says that English is a combination of German and Latin. As a result, it often has, to say one thing, two words that are similar but not exactly the same. He gives as examples “regal” and “kingly,” “dark” and “obscure.” He says that if he writes “Holy Ghost” – “ghost” being a dark Saxon word, it is very different than if he writes “Holy Spirit,” “spirit” being a light Latin word. This makes English a more nuanced language.
Borges also claims English is a more physical language. “Loom over,” he says, is something you can’t really say in Spanish. He mentions other combinations of verbs and prepositions – “live up to something” “live down something” – that make English such a rich and satisfying language.
A recent starred review in Publishers’ Weekly of a work of fiction quoted two lines from the book: The first, a racist comment from a peripheral character and the second, another character’s statement about the prevalence of racial hatred. And I wondered: Do writers win points these days simply by citing the currently approved obsessions? Wouldn’t readers be more impressed by the sharing of some telling observation from the author, a brilliant apercu perhaps, or an unusual or interesting use of language?
Yesterday I found myself reading to some grade schoolers, one of whom, Franklin, was not taken by the enterprise. He unenthusiastically handed me his book, The Velveteen Rabbit, and slumped in his chair with the resignation of the hopeless. As I read the classic aloud, his eyes, big behind his clunky glasses, searched the room for more enticing pursuits. At one point he dropped his head on the table, not so much resting but impaling it there, his cheek scrunched against the wood, his glasses pushed up to his forehead, his eyes closed in deepest misery. And looking at him, I kind of admired his lack of inhibition, his exquisite physical demonstration of boredom. How many times, stuck in dull conversations, have I felt like assuming the exact same position but refrained out of a learned sense of decorum?
Florida, much maligned – especially recently – excelled on the national stage last night. First, a young man from Fort Lauderdale won on Jeopardy!, then Florida Atlantic University upset Tennessee in the NCAA basketball tournament. Academics and athletics.
Up in Winter Park, poet Billy Collins was visited recently by a New Yorker writer for Talk of the Town, who reported that Collins was happy to no longer be teaching. “Right now, people are ready to be offended,” the poet said. “But I’m always ready to be delighted.”
If only all our New York transplants could be like that.
Last week we got our balcony back – it was inaccessible for 13 months because of a building renovation project – and we immediately carried out to it the table that had been sitting in our living room for the last year and enjoyed, once again, our meals al fresco.
Today, predictably, it is too cool to eat outside.