Personal Blogs

I always used to think 'paradise' was from the Greek 'paradisos', a garden—and so it is, but the word is apparently something classical Greek borrowed, from an ancient Persian word for a deer park, or something with a wall round it.

The word survives into modern Greek, although 'κηπος' ('key-poss') is commoner.

Now here's the link-up. 'Garden' means a guarded place. It's Germanic and seems to imply a perimeter fence. Variants are 'yard' (as in front or back), and 'ward', as in keep watch over (what a warden does).

So gardens are places that have walls around them, to conserve things. Just like paradises.

And what is kept in a 'κηπος'? Well if it's trees it could be a "δενδρόκηπος', dendrokipos = tree garden = orchard.

Beware the apples Adam and Eve! You may be evicted and end up beyond the pale.

There was an old fellow called Clerihew,

Who never wrote Limericks, or very few.

He frequently tried

But after the third line his attempt always died.

Julius Caesar
What a helluva geyser.
He said "Let's bring it on!" ^[1]
And crossed the Rubicon.

[1] "alea iacta est"

I daren't get on the scales anymore.

They're frightened of me too.

Chora wrote a famous and charming haiku: as a gardener addressing a toad he knew, and who probably knew him.

If this sounds improbable, my aunt had a toad who lived for several years at the bottom of her garden. She would feed him (or her) and as a teenager I was taken to see the toad, who lived under some stones and did indeed hop out to greet us, and would consent to be scratched on the head, and tickled on the chin.

Chora's haiku goes something as follows in (very) free translation:

I thought that, for once, rather than compress a poem, which is my instinct, I would try to expand one, and also add rhyme and meter. Usually haiku in English are without rhyme, and end on a characteristic falling tone, which is very evocative, but not necessarily faithful to the original Japanese tradition. Other languages however have different and now longstanding traditions about the form translated or composed haikus. That's for another post though.

Here is my longer appeal to Mr Toad, in entirely my own idiom. But with falling tone.

As I slept
A dark thought
Jumped on my back
"I am Winter",
It hissed.

What is thought, what knowledge?

Such a troubling question.

Asked in every season.

I'm heartbroken by

A last dragonfly's symmetry.

At sunset.

Shelley and Keats were talking one day.

"Do you have any holiday plans?" asked Shelley.

"Not exactly a holiday", Keats responded, "More a summer employment, but in a climate very congenial to my health, and well remunerated".

Intrigued, Shelley inquired: "What exactly is the post?"

"It's in the famous Italian city of Pisa", said Keats: "The popularity of the Grand Tour has burgeoned apace, and many visitors to Italy now clamour to ascend La Campanile from which the revered Signor Galileo Galilei is claimed to have carried out his celebrated experiment.

So popular is this to touristi—as they are there described—that crowds of our fellow-countrymen assemble daily at the entrance. The authorities make a small charge for the ascent, for the maintenance of the bell tower, and are also charged with ensuring that no person is put at risk of life or limb: so there is a limit on how many can be up the tower at any one time.

I answered an advertisement in the Times of London, seeking a person: 'Capable of organizing groups of people desirous of ascending our famous tower, and ensuring their convenience and safety in a highly popular destination. Fluent English is required'—and got the job.

So I'm off there for the summer months."

"Congratulations my dear fellow", Shelley exclaimed warmly. "So you'll be minding your Pisan queues."

Close your eyes and slowly inhale. Hold it to a count of six, then breathe out gradually.

It's often said that each time you do that, you are likely to breathe in a molecule from Julius Caesar's dying breath.

At first sight this is surprising.

But there are an enormous number of molecules in a breath of air. If the molecules in Caesar's last gasp are shared out evenly across the whole of the earth's atmosphere—plausible after 2000 years—then on average the air we inhale with each new breath (about 500 ml) will include one of those molecules.

Julius Caesar could just as well be any person that has ever lived.

Or the last mammoth.

Scritch scratch at my window.

A sharp clawed one seeking entry.

I must brush up my endgame first.