Jack Spratt

a triptych 27 August 2012

She's a woman of certain age with panache walking her dog daily Sometimes near sometimes Far who I've come to know from random encounters here were we live for now this Geriatric Ghetto alone save for pets in our own cribs slowly by life abandoning us alone again at last finally blest by solitude

She's leaving can't stand the oven heat of late June through July heading for the mountains nearby but too far for easy converse and I'll miss terribly her outrageous hats and humor so raucous as mine

I told her I'd follow just to prove what the bored gossip about we She laughed and said i've had enough of men and then we agreed that marriage is for kids who know nothing the glory of living alone

We're Gringos of rich background now paupers rendered so by the rulers of us yet of the manor/manners born obvious to us we who know not golden spoons but earned credibility in the finishing school of hard times then fine unalloyed value extruded

120827 08:47 celibacy

after an oddly great number and long history of sanguine cars he knew nothing of the word until a nurse called him such as Sanguine [adjective] cheerfully optimistic and at time Sanguinity [noun] bloodthirsty thus explaining from a sidereal out of left field hitting him in the head a line drive explaining much of his confusion between mercy and rendering terror Until then he just though he loved bishops red shoes and socks Ferraris Italian National Racing Red colors denoting the unique screaming v16 double overhead cam at their highest revs through curves up hills down dales flashing across straight always exhaust glowing like the gates of Hell yawning expectantly The nurse then went farther saying; "You know you put it out and take it back in?!" Until that moment he'd though himself merely a hypocrite

1208271510 sanguine

From now looking back peering forward feculent meaning aggregate lending richness to what once was imagined/intuition rehearsed/reprised the nightmare of a fifty eight hour birth for me for her and then the hell was real unbearable but survived Now seen differently and prized

120824 1629 looking back
© 2012 by Jack Spratt All Rights Reserved

sanguine adj / sanguinity n
Word History: The similarity in form between sanguine, "cheerfully optimistic," and sanguinary, "bloodthirsty," may prompt one to wonder how they have come to have such different meanings. The explanation lies in medieval physiology with its notion of the four humors or bodily fluids (blood, bile, phlegm, and black bile). The relative proportions of these fluids was thought to determine a person's temperament. If blood was the predominant humor, one had a ruddy face and a disposition marked by courage, hope, and a readiness to fall in love. Such a temperament was called sanguine, the Middle English ancestor of our word sanguine. The source of the Middle English word was Old French sanguin, itself from Latin sanguineus. Both the Old French and Latin words meant "bloody," "blood-colored," Old French sanguin having the sense "sanguine in temperament" as well. Latin sanguineus was in turn derived from sanguis, "blood," just as English sanguinary is. The English adjective sanguine, first recorded in Middle English before 1350, continues to refer to the cheerfulness and optimism that accompanied a sanguine temperament but no longer has any direct reference to medieval physiology.