A harlot of God upon the Earth

I stood by the shore at the death of day,
As the sun sank flaming red;
And the face of the waters that spread away
Was as gray as the face of the dead.

And I heard the cry of the wanton sea
And the moan of the wailing wind;
For love’s sweet pain in his heart had he,
But the gray old sea had sinned.

The wind was young and the sea was old,
But their cries went up together;
The wind was warm and the sea was cold,
For age makes wintry weather.

So they cried aloud and they wept amain,
Till the sky grew dark to hear it;
And out of its folds crept the misty rain,
In its shroud, like a troubled spirit.

For the wind was wild with a hopeless love,
And the sea was sad at heart
At many a crime that he wot of,
Wherein he had played his part.

He thought of the gallant ships gone down
By the will of his wicked waves;
And he thought how the church–yard in the town
Held the sea–made widows’ graves.

The wild wind thought of the love he had left
Afar in an Eastern land,
And he longed, as long the much bereft,
For the touch of her perfumed hand.

In his winding wail and his deep–heaved sigh
His aching grief found vent;
While the sea looked up at the bending sky
And murmured: “I repent.”

But e’en as he spoke, a ship came by
That bravely ploughed the main,
And a light came into the sea’s green eye,
And his heart grew hard again.

Then he spoke to the wind: “Friend, seest thou not
Yon vessel is eastward bound?
Pray speed with it to the happy spot
Where thy loved one may be found.”

And the wind rose up in a dear delight,
And after the good ship sped;
But the crafty sea by his wicked might
Kept the vessel ever ahead.

Till the wind grew fierce in his despair,
And white on the brow and lip.
He tore his garments and tore his hair,
And fell on the flying ship.

And the ship went down, for a rock was there,
And the sailless sea loomed black;
While burdened again with dole and care,
The wind came moaning back.

And still he moans from his bosom hot
Where his raging grief lies pent,
And ever when the ships come not,
The sea says: “I repent.”

“But there is poetry in the meanest of lives, and if we leave it unsought we leave ourselves unrealized. A life without food, without shelter, without love, a life lived in the rain—this is nothing beside a life without poetry.”

One thing you learn in linguistics is that language is always evolving. If enough people favor one definition of a word for enough time, the meaning of that word changes “officially.” This is known as semantic change. Then there are changes in pronunciation and spelling, of course.

Most fascinating to me is lexical change, which covers (among other things) the loss and gain of words in a particular language.

So why am I thinking of this?

Just wondering how long it will be before emojis are in the dictionary.

Thanks to autocorrect, roast beef shall henceforth be known as toady neef.

A comment found on reddit that resonated...

“My husband and I have a philosophy that we work with, that we call pebble vs. boulder. I don't remember where we picked it up, or who to give credit to, but it have been a godsend in our marriage, and while parenting.

How it works is that sometimes you say something that feels innocent enough to you, (tossing a pebble) but in fact, it hits the other person like a bolder. And the trick to dealing with that is to openly communicate with the other person when it happens. When one of us says something that hits the other person, then the person who is hit says "whoa, what did you mean by that?"

Then the other person has a chance to explain- and it has never, not even once, meant the hurtful thing that it felt like. It gives us chance to talk about where and why that particular 'twitch' comes from, and why it hurt. We've used it for as long as we've been together, and it has helped us understand each other.”

This whole week has been one thing after another. I always hear people talk about mercury being in retrograde during times like this. I don't buy into astrology, but just for kicks decided to check and it's apparently been in retrograde since the 3rd.

Correlation does not imply causation. Correlation does not imply causation.

"Nationalism teaches you to hate people you never met and be proud of shit you didn't do."

Slept in till almost 11. Kinder chocolate for breakfast (one of the major perks of adulthood). Puppy snuggles. Upbeat Frank Turner/Ellliott Smith/A3 mix on the ipod. Prepared my vote-by-mail registration. Started updating my resume. Sitting on my balcony with red bull in hand on a warm sunny September day, feeling a cool onshore breeze. Looking forward to good times with good friends tonight. Sure I may be broke, but life ain't so bad.

Not everyone grows up to be an astronaut,
not everyone was born to be a king,
not everyone can be Freddie Mercury,
but everyone can raise their glass and sing.

Well I haven't always been a perfect person,
and I haven't done what mum and dad had dreamed,
but on the day I die, I'll say at least I fucking tried.
That's the only eulogy I need.

Last night I had a dream that I went on a date with Anthony Bourdain. We were both getting to "that point in our lives" and wanted to have children. But I was all "dude, you're trying to impress me but your knives aren't even sharp enough to cut through this tomato."

Oh, and I ate hot dogs.