Ode to Thrifting

Introduction

Sometimes when I’m feeling grateful for something, I am moved to write an ode to it. This is one of those times. (If you would like guidance writing your own sonnet, full instructions are here.) As usual, I provide copious footnotes.

The poem

Ode to Thrifting

A pair of Docs for only forty bucks?
I’ll take ‘em ‘cause they’re only barely used.                   2
Amer’can jeans, with tags still on—what luck!
How can a cheap-ass dude like me refuse?

I always check the housewares section too
Forever seeking out the perfect mug,                               6
And picking up a choice pint glass or two,
And all of it dirt cheap. Who’s feeling smug?

Of course there’s all the stuff you’d never buy.
Such pseudo-brands as George and Charter Club,        10
Godawful art, sad toys … we heave a sigh.
To thrift we have to sift … ay, there’s the rub.

     But when I think of forking out full price?
     No thanks—I’ll opt for thrift and toss the dice.         14

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Thrifting

A linguist once said (or maybe he said it twice, maybe he said it constantly), “There’s almost no word in the English language that can’t be verbed.” (Google’s Gemini A.I. says this was uttered by Jorge Luis Borges; ChatGPT says it was Calvin, of Calvin and Hobbes, and that the actual wording was “Verbing weirds language.”) I think “thrift” as a verb (begetting thrifting as a gerund) is perfectly legit. It means, of course, to shop at a thrift store. I think the gerund is more common but there’s no reason you couldn’t say, “I thrifted this sweet linen shirt” or, even better, “I hella thrifted this dope linen shirt,” if you don’t mind your kids making fun of you (and I don’t).

On a related note, I am also fine with “gift” as a verb, as in “my brother gifted me a giant pack of Q-tips” (which thankfully is a hypothetical scenario, as my household is overflowing with Q-tips, and why are they called that, anyway?). But “gifting” as a gerund, notably in the 2018 Nordstrom holiday ad campaign “Let’s Go Gifting!” almost makes my stomach turn. (The print ad actually did, so click that link at your peril.)

Should you be concerned about the quantity of commentary thus far, since we’re only three words into this poem? Yes, unless you’re enjoying this. If you’re not, click here immediately. (If you are, click that link later.)

To the uninitiated, “thrifting” might connote only the Salvation Army or Goodwill. But there are all kinds of variations, like consignment stores (pricier but with much better stuff), other charity outfits (e.g., local humane societies and Out of the Closet), and a variety of for-profit used stores ranging from mom and pops’ to big chains. My wife and daughters have become thrifting experts over the years, and I’ve benefited a lot in terms of secondhand thrift. (Get it?)

Line 1: Docs

This is a real-life example! In the past year I’ve scored not just one but two pairs of Doc Martens. One was $40 and the other was like $50 and they were both nearly mint. It’s not like I strictly needed either pair and I’d never have gone shopping specifically for this product, but you gotta have shoes, right? This is the sweet spot of thrifting: you can obviously never go hunting for something specific you need right now, but you never know what deal might jump out at you.

Line 2: barely used

Look how little wear there is on the soles. There was even less when I bought them.

Line 3: Amer’can

Obviously I needed to reduce this word to three syllables to fit the meter of my sonnet, but that’s only half of it. In my experience, people say “Amer’can” to suggest—ironically or not—heartland-style patriotism. Some may try to make patriotism political. I oppose this. Everyone in America should be openly patriotic, and what better way than to choose American-made products when possible? Often it’s not possible (as lamented at length here), so when I have the opportunity I snap it up.

The pair of American jeans isn’t a hypothetical example either. I found a pair of J Brand jeans, really well made right here in California, for like $50. I wasn’t familiar with this brand but quickly learned they typically go for like $200. I’m wearing those bad boys right now in fact.

Line 3: tags still on

Yes, these jeans (aka, this pant, these jean) still had the original tags. It’s amazing to me how often this is the case. Somebody evidently bought them, didn’t wear them, and either waited too long to change his mind (i.e., after the return window had closed) or hadn’t bothered to keep his receipt. So he sold them to a consignment store for something like an eighth of what he paid for them, probably without batting an eye. Obviously this is a scenario that could only happen in an affluent community like Pacific Heights, San Francisco (which is why it’s worth a trip out there to thrift). And thus, even as I’m sparing the environment by buying used stuff, I’m still susceptible to liberal guilt when I consider how much better thrifting is in the privileged Bay Area vs. many other parts of the country. I tried a Goodwill in Medford, Oregon (official city slogan: “There are worse places!”) and though I found a few good things (as I invariably do), I couldn’t believe how many of the garments were Kirkland brand. No thanks!

(By the way, if you are ready for some very heavy philosophy that is also very light humor, check out this video from the standup comedian Sheng Wang on what it means to wear Costco jeans.)

Line 4: refuse

Of course most of what goes on at a thrift store is refusing. Flicking through an endless rack of mostly godawful shirts is probably the original “swipe left” behavior.

But there are also people who refuse to go thrifting to begin with. I don’t just mean the rare sort who has so much money he or she can’t be bothered to shop used. It can also be cultural. A family friend, who emigrated here from China, explained to my wife that buying used clothing isn’t popular in her cohort. The unease has something to do with not wishing to inherit the energy of the previous owner (about whom you know nothing, after all). Used clothing may also have a historical association with poverty.

Of course such cultural reluctance to used clothing isn’t a given among Asians or anyone else. Consider my old UCSB pal we affectionately nicknamed “Sven” because he was Chinese. One day he was rocking this cool football jersey that he was absolutely swimming in, and I asked where he got it. “I found it,” he said, “at a party.” Being well off, he hadn’t snaked it for reasons of economy; he just liked it, apparently without worrying about who’d owned it before. Well, maybe he should have worried: when I saw him a week or two later and asked, “No football jersey today?” he replied, “Oh, man, I was at a party wearing it and this giant dude comes over, super pissed, and says, ‘Hey, that’s my jersey!’ Man, I’ve never taken a shirt off so fast in my life!”

Line 5: housewares

There was a time in my adult life when my wife and I decided we were no longer kids and should really have all matching plates, bowls, etc. And we lived that dream for a while, before we eventually broke everything. (This might have even been before we had kids along to help.) So now we’re over it. Just about every plate, saucer, bowl, and drinking vessel we own is from a thrift store, except for some Corelle salad plates and bowls that somehow soldier on. I don’t know how we got to be so clumsy, but there you have it.

When I was a kid, anything in my family’s household getting broken was a major incident, causing deep shame in the perp and over-the-top indignation in everyone else. It was like you’d crashed a car or something. So now, having mostly used housewares, it’s really nice to just shrug when I break something. After all, at least we got some use out of it, after buying it for like a dollar, and it had already  served some other family, possibly for years. I’m all about fully depreciated assets!

Line 6: perfect mug

I’ve gone through a number of pint-sized Sur La Table mugs, which I buy on sale when the current style of monogramming is being retired. Usually I can get a few with some really unpopular letter on them, like the over-stylized “J” that looks more like a stocking. When these mugs die, usually in a dishwasher accident, I’m kind of stuck because I need the large capacity, so I can’t just use one of our dozen or so tea mugs. I seldom find suitable, pint-size coffee mugs at thrift stores because they usually say something really dippy on them, like “MY PRETTY DAUGHTER THINKS I’M A GUN NUT,” or they commemorate a golf event or something.

My wife, though, has thrifted lots of really awesome diner-style mugs, very thick and so solid “you could bludgeon someone with one” (as she just said to me, making me wondering if that’s a vague threat … have I gotten on her bad side somehow?). Ideally such a mug is cream or off-white and doesn’t have any writing on it, though one of our favorites says “Ancient Mariner” with a picture of a sailing ship. I can just imagine the diner that mug outlived, which would be a mediocre but cozy place with a sea view, where the waitress snaps her gum and calls you “hon” and has a name like Doris or Debra.

Here’s one of our favorite thrift-store mugs.

Note also the nice wood-handled steak knife. We picked up a box of six of those at a little thrift store in Arcata for like $5; they’re West Bend brand, mid-century, made in USA and for sale on eBay for like $50! In the background there’s a recycled cream bottle we’re using as a vase so it’s even cheaper than Goodwill. On the flip side, at a Goodwill in White City, Oregon I saw a used Coke bottle for like $2.50. As if! Whoever priced that must have been sleepy, stoned, or both. But I snagged two perfect pint glasses there for 71 cents each with my senior discount. (Senior discount? Yep, my first! And yet later that day I was carded buying beer. Go figure!)

Line 8: smug

It’s not often I’d admit to feeling smug. But when J. Crew sells a cotton t-shirt for $60, and Sur La Table wants $24 for a chichi Le Creuset mug (in pastel pink or artichoke, ooh!), it feels really good to find a nice linen shirt in perfect condition for $9 and an off-white diner mug for under a buck. It’s like: in your face, retail industrial complex!

Line 9: stuff you’d never buy

A sonnet is too brief a form to even begin cataloguing all the weird stuff thrift stores sell that nobody could possibly want, like VHS cassettes, a grody plastic water bottle with a lipstick-stained straw, Lance Armstrong’s autobiography, cloying inspirational signs or plaques, a t-shirt commemorating a corporate team-building getaway … the possibilities are endless. You’ll probably have noted the strange handlebar-equipped helmet shown atop this post; I guess that was somebody’s attempt at a DIY rack of antlers. (No, my brother did not buy it.) If you have come across something truly strange you’d like to share, email me here or comment below.

There’s also stuff you’d totally buy but only for a Christmas white elephant gift exchange. Click here to learn about a wall hanging that actually functions reasonably as a doodad tray, and a mint bobblehead (still in the original box!) that turned out to be a collector’s item.

Line 10: pseudo-brands

For years I was puzzled to continually see brands in thrift stores that I never saw anywhere else. Finally I did some light research and sorted it out: these aren’t real manufacturer’s brands, they’re house brands contrived by stores I never shop at. No wonder I’d never heard of George … it’s a Walmart brand—like I’d ever buy clothes there! (Full disclosure: before I knew better, I actually did buy a George button-down shirt, and I like it just fine … but let’s keep that on the DL.)

As for Charter Club, it’s a Macy’s house brand, which isn’t exactly downscale, and in fact my wife warned me that by bagging on it in my poem I might be alienating some middle-class readers. Obviously I wouldn’t want to do that, but I’m pretty sure I’m not. After all, thrift shopping is already way cheaper, so who would try to gild the lily choosing down-market brands? I mean, when every button-down shirt is $9 regardless of brand, why settle? Besides, the name “Charter Club” is so transparently affected and puffed-up; it’s clearly intended to connote wealth, like an expensive chartered boat or an elite country club. It’s like the pretend-expensive Stauer wristwatch brand, or having “Estates” or “Acres” in the name of a suburban subdivision … overreach much? “Charter Club” is such a branding misstep by Macy’s, it comes off sounding even cheaper than Walmart.

Other brands I only ever see at thrift stores are Apt. 9 and Sonoma (Kohl’s); Xhilaration and Mossimo (Target); and Messini (which should be called McCheesy).

Line 11: Godawful art

Bad food, such as fast food or cheap pizza, can be a guilty pleasure, but bad art? We wish we could un-see it. It’s just so awful. I’m tempted to make this footnote an open letter to people who have realized how awful their art is, entreating them to actually destroy it instead of donating it. But then, a thrift store isn’t such a bad place to buy framed bad art,  just so you can pitch the canvas and reuse the frame.

Line 11: Sad toys

Some toys really are sad, like filthy or broken ones, or remote-control cars with no remote. But a lot of used toys only seem squalid to my adult eye and are actually perfectly good. When my kids were very young, their grandma bought them a bunch of random used toys which she kept at her house for when we visited. I don’t think she even picked them out—it was like a whole mesh bag of them for a fixed price at Eco-Thrift (which she cleverly calls “echo thrift”). My kids were enchanted (but then, they loved playing with a big pile of her spring-loaded hair clips, too). I think most of the antipathy toward used toys is the suggestion that the parents can’t afford new  ones, and thus aren’t fit to raise kids in these demanding times, blah blah blah. You know, typical parental guilt.

Line 12: have to sift

Having the time to dig through an endless amount of chaff to find the good stuff is another form of privilege. I reckon if I were a laborer, or a single mother working two jobs, I wouldn’t have the time or energy for thrifting. It also takes patience, and I suppose plenty of people just don’t have enough of it. Myself, I get a kick out of the amateur anthropology angle, so I’m always up for a trip to the thrift store. (And thrifting is a taste worth acquiring if your spouse and/or kids enjoy it.)

Line 12: there’s the rub

When writing a sonnet, I find it’s never a bad idea to work in a Shakespeare reference.

Line 13: forking

In 1987 I visited a thrift store in San Luis Obispo with my mom and my brother. I had my eye on this great serving fork that was about halfway between the size of a standard dinner fork and a regular serving fork. I figured it could help me eat even faster. The proprietor approached and asked if we could mind the store while she used the bathroom. In return, she gave me the fork! I used it for all my meals all through college, and it’s enjoying a second life as, well, a regular serving fork. I hope one of my kids continues using it long after I’m gone. (For more on this theme click here.)

Line 14: toss the dice

Have I ever left a thrift store empty-handed? Well, sure. But it’s rare, and generally somebody in my party finds something, and besides … a rare find like Docs for $40 builds up a lot of goodwill. (Get it?)

Postscript: ChatGPT

I’ve blogged before about ChatGPT’s attempts to write poetry. GPT-4-turbo is far better than GPT-3.5 in that it tends to get the meter and rhyme right, but it’s still no substitute for a human, in my opinion. I did, however, use it to research certain things for this post, such as the weird house brands and where they come from. After finishing my poem and footnotes (and rest assured, I’m not the type to have GPT do a “first draft” that I then “polish”), I asked GPT to write a sonnet of its own on this topic. Here it is:

A Thrifted Tale

Upon the racks of thrift, the brands they lie,
Forgotten names that once did softly shine,
Such pseudo-brands as George and Charter Club,
Their faded glory tucked ‘neath vintage line.

An aisle of treasures, old and full of charm,
Where once was grandeur, now lies humble fate,
These things, discarded, lose their worldly harm,
Yet still they wait, for hands to re-create.

The “downtrodden few” in thrift stores find their place,
Each mark and stain, a story left untold,
While “fledgling” dreams aspire to win the race,
Unseen, unsung, but silently grown bold.

     So let us seek the past, both lost and found,
     In secondhands, the future shall resound.

I don’t know about you, but I’m less than impressed. I won’t do a full critique other than to say this poem is lacking in concrete detail, and has a weakness for meaningless filler phrases like “softly shine,” “worldly harm,” and “hands to re-create.” GPT-4-Turbo should stick to its day job, HTML and coding.  You know, the job it stole from STEM grads.

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

If William Wordsworth Were Writing Today

Introduction

What if William Wordsworth (1770-1850) were writing today? And what if he had a corporate-type editor? Imagine the instant-messaging dialogue that might take place after the great poet submitted a new work for review. Actually, you don’t need to, because that’s what this post is about. The launch point is this timeless Wordsworth poem, from 1807.

Wordsworth’s poem

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high o’er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
Beside the lake, beneath the trees,
Fluttering and dancing in the breeze.
 
Continuous as the stars that shine
And twinkle on the milky way,
They stretched in never-ending line
Along the margin of the bay:
Ten thousand saw I at a glance,
Tossing their heads in sprightly dance.
 
The waves beside them danced; but they
Outdid the sparkling waves in glee:
A poet could not but be gay,
In such a jocund company:
I gazed—and gazed—but little thought
What wealth the show to me had brought:
 
For oft, when on my couch I lie
In vacant or in pensive mood,
They flash upon that inward eye
Which is the bliss of solitude;
And then my heart with pleasure fills,
And dances with the daffodils. 

The dialogue

BANES: well i’ve read the poem and i think its a good start. a solid start

WORDSWORTH: Actually, it’s complete.

BANES: dont need to add anything

BANES: just tighten it up a bit

WORDSWORTH: I don’t see your point.

BANES: well you know poetry its so good at being sucint. thats  why its so popular right. i  mean those who still read poetry want concise

WORDSWORTH: My poem is under 200 words. That is not long.

BANES: its all relative

BANES: what is that poem about the subway and petals on a wet black bough so good can you do more like that

WORDSWORTH: If you’re asking me to plagiarize Ezra Pound, no. If you want me to adapt my style to imitate him, hell no.

BANES: no nothing like that just concise

BANES: like that first stanza maybe get that across in one line

BANES: get to the point faster

WORDSWORTH: Oh, I see. So I could get the entire poem down to the size of a tweet.

BANES: exactly

WORDSWORTH: I was being sarcastic.

BANES: no need for that i am trying to help

WORDSWORTH: Every word in every line is essential or I would have removed it already. That’s what makes me a poet.

BANES: you need to adapt

BANES: modern readers = shorter attetnion span

BANES: no time for flourishes etc

WORDSWORTH: Well then just call me a pagan suckled in a creed outworn.

BANES: what are u talking about

WORDSWORTH: I gather you’re unfamiliar with my earlier works.

BANES: really what are you talking about and never mind your earlier works

BANES: you have currency now so lets leverage that

WORDSWORTH: I assume you’re referring to Taylor Swift name-dropping me in her song, literally one line after decrying “some namedropping sleaze,” ironically enough.

BANES: taylor swift yes exactly

BANES: we need to get on that

WORDSWORTH: I won’t disgrace myself by pandering to pop culture.

BANES: i'm trying to help you here. u want to be replaced by A.I.?

WORDSWORTH: If you think ChatGPT can write poetry, you’re delusional.

BANES: look, you know why coleridges poems are so successful? He’s writing about big-screen TVs, pleasure domes, and opium trips. your writing about dancing flowers

WORDSWORTH: Have you even read my poem?

BANES: yes

BANES: in fact i found some errors

BANES: like, i'm sure you saw lots of flowers but not continuous, not 10K

BANES: and lakes dont have waves

WORDSWORTH: Actually, Windermere lake is the largest in England and does have waves. As usual you have no idea what you’re talking about.

BANES: look work with me here you have some good stuff here, lonely = emo can resonate with readers

BANES: just tigten up a bit and we’re good

BANES: and doesnt matter what lake, actually not saying which lake is better

BANES: in fact i wanted to ask you

BANES: poetry now needs to be hyper local

BANES: i'm thinking different versions of poem by region

BANES: can we do one for CA and change from daffodil to poppy (state flower

WORDSWORTH: I am not a staff writer for a tourism board. And I’m not rewriting the final rhyming couplet to support “poppies.”

BANES: about that rhyming

BANES: kind of passe

WORDSWORTH: Taylor Swift uses rhyme.

BANES: touche

BANES: but getting back to the number of flowers

BANES: never ending line & 10K, nobody is buying that

WORDSWORTH: I’m employing a standard poetic device called hyperbole. I guess they didn’t teach you that in business school.

BANES: why cant you just be more precise

WORDSWORTH: Are you my editor or my fact-checker?

BANES: readers dont want to be decieved

WORDSWORTH: Are you going to revoke my poetic license?

BANES: look maybe i dont have a fancy degree from Oxford but i know my stuff

WORDSWORTH: My degree is from Cambridge.

BANES: whatever

BANES: look there is an incosistency in the poem you start with lonely & brooding and then later your all talking about bliss of solitude

BANES: not as strong as other parts need to tighten up

WORDSWORTH: This just demonstrates how completely you have missed the point. “That inward eye which is the bliss of solitude” is exactly what this supposed audience of modern readers has lost, due to the constant intrusion of Twitter, Snapchat, and the never-ending smartphone “feed.” There is no more bliss because there is no more solitude. And nobody can just enjoy their natural surroundings without stopping to snap photos and share them on Instagram.

BANES: nobody says instnagram anymore its insta

WORDSWORTH: You know what? We’re done here. You can take our contract and shove it. I’ll just put my poem on my blog.

BANES: actually i wanted to talk to you about that

BANES: its time to monetize your blog

BANES: adsense can make us some money if we get the seo right

BANES: untapped potential there

BANES: you already did the work

BANES: dont you want to get paid

BANES: hey are you still there

BANES: ???

BANES: hey

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Email me here. For a complete index of albertnet posts, click here.

Ode on an IPA

Introduction

Sometimes when I’m feeling grateful for something, I am moved to write an ode to it. This is one of those times. Also, I’m planning to create a new category in the albertnet index, “Drink,” and it’ll be nice to have a fresh post to top the list.

The poem

Ode on an IPA

Of any beverage, I like beer the most.
But not just any rotgut swill will do.                        2
In fact, I’d like to now propose a toast:
To holding out for only first-rate brew.

What use have I for lagers, which are weak?
Or stouts and porters, cloying as they are?             6
It’s strength and bitterness my palate seeks.
In this regard, the IPA’s the star.

I can’t imagine any better booze:
It’s hard to beat in terms of ABV,                             10
And truly unsurpassed in IBUs,
With feisty hops that add to its esprit.

   So what should therefore fill our holy grail?
   A hearty, hazy India pale ale.                                 14

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Ode on

Why is it sometimes “ode on” and sometimes “ode to”? Beats me. I almost wrote “Keats me,” because it’s hard to think of “ode on” without remembering Keats’ famous “Ode on a Grecian Urn.” Hmm. Perhaps I can only speak for myself here. You may have no idea who Keats was. You might be saying, “Wasn’t he that groundbreaking economist?” No, that was Keynes. And I see we’re getting way off track here, only two words into the title of this freaking poem.

Title: IPA

It’s tempting to think if you don’t know what an IPA is, you’re on the wrong blog. But in fact you should read on … you’re about to be educated on something really important!

Line 1: beverage

I think “beverage” is a really corny word. It’s right up there with “luncheon.” I can hear it now: “Okay, ladies, what beverages would we like for our luncheon? Shall we set out doilies? Perhaps we can sit out on the veranda.” But I couldn’t use the word “drink,” because a) I’d have to fuss with the meter some more, and b) “drink” has connotations of alcoholic beverage, and I want to be clear that I like beer more than any other ingestible liquid, alcoholic or not. (I’m not counting water here; if I could only drink one thing the rest of my life, beer would be an obviously fraught choice.)

Line 2: rotgut swill

After reluctantly settling for “beverage” in the first line, I was very pleased to pen “rotgut swill will do.” I think “rotgut” is a word that deserves more usage, though we’re fortunate in our life circumstances if we have little need to trot it out. For guidance on using “rotgut” in a poem, click here.

Line 3: toast

Next time I have a drink with friends, I’ll propose a toast, and it’ll be this one: holding out for a first-rate brew. Of course, if my next drink happens to be a Coors Light, this would be a pretty hypocritical toast. Fortunately, the likelihood of that scenario is slim. This was not always the case, I hasten to add. As a starving student, I sometimes had to make do. For example, I was once headed to a BYOB BBQ (in this case, the “B” was for both “beer” and “beef”) and was hoping to mooch off my friend. Alas, he was hoping to mooch off of me. So we dug around in the change jar, under sofa cushions, etc. and came up with around five dollars total. This was enough to purchase some house brand chicken franks and buns (fortuitously on sale!) and a twelve-pack of Meister Brau, so we were good to go. In some ways I don’t really miss those days.

Line 5: lagers

In case you’re not an aficionado, there are essentially two main categories of beer: ales and lagers. There are wide variances within these, of course. Most watery American macro-brews (e.g., Coors, Budweiser, Miller) and most Mexican beers (e.g., Corona, Tecate, Pacifico) are lagers. Lagers really are weak and watery. This can be objectively confirmed by looking at their alcohol content and IBUs (more on this later). I’m tempted to say lagers are for people who don’t actually like beer and would like it to be as close to water as possible, but that’s not really fair. Lagers have their place, like after a really long, hot hike, or when you’re eating Mexican food, or when somebody offers you one.

(To the wise guy in the back claiming the two main categories of beer are regular and light: you are not funny, and there’s no valid reason to even acknowledge the existence of light beer.)

Line 6: stouts and porters, cloying

Full disclosure: I probably couldn’t tell a stout from a porter in a blind taste test, and I doubt I’m alone in this. But then, I’m no expert; as I said, I have little use for them. I almost wrote “stouts and lambics.” Although one source claims that lambic is actually the third main category of beer, it’s really not very common. It comes only from a single region in Belgium and although every one I’ve ever tried has been sweet, I’ve read they can be sour. I figured I ought to focus on beers readers are familiar with, rather than trying to act like some kind of know-it-all.

I do enjoy a Guinness now and then, actually, and though it really is kind of sweet, I will acknowledge that “cloying” is a bit of an exaggeration. (Chalk it up to poetic license.) I recently read somewhere a very believable account of why Guinness, a very low-alcohol ale, is so popular in Ireland: it has to do with the pub culture and the desire for patrons, typically men, to spend a very long time socializing there. A strong beer wouldn’t do; everyone would be passed out, unless they developed a strong tolerance, which would of course destroy their livers.

Line 7: strength and bitterness

I do like a strong taste, in pretty much everything. Ever been at a restaurant, and you ask the waiter about some fish entree, and he says, “Don’t worry, it’s mild, not too fishy”? I never got that. Why shouldn’t it taste fishy? It’s a fish! I never eat tilapia because it tastes like nothing. It’s the lager of fish.

The other sense of strength has to do with alcohol content, which I’ll get to later.

I’ll grant you that bitterness is an odd thing to desire, outside of the obvious metaphorical sense (i.e., “I want a beer as strong and bitter as I am!”). Bitter beer is certainly an acquired taste, just like strong black coffee, espresso, green tea, very dark chocolate, and arugula. (I personally don’t see the point of espresso, other than European affectation, but that’s why the Americano exists.)

I remember the first time I had an IPA. It was like fifteen years ago, and it was the excellent Racer 5 from Bear Republic Brewing Company in nearby Cloverdale, California. I was throwing a surprise birthday party for my friend Trevor. I chose Racer 5 without regard to its quality, actually: I simply liked that the “5” on the logo was red, because Trevor’s nickname was Red 5. (He was the best sprinter on our UCSB cycling team, and, particularly if he got a good lead-out, he almost never lost. I once gave him a lead-out and as I pulled off, I thought of the scene in Star Wars when Han Solo sets up Luke Skywalker to blow up the Death Star, and yells, “You’re all clear, kid!” Red 5 being the name of Luke’s X-wing fighter, I tried pinning that name to Trevor and it stuck.) At the party, a pal complimented me on my excellent taste in beer. At the time I totally disagreed: the Racer 5 was far too bitter for me. But now it’s one of my favorites.

Line 8: the star

This is a bit problematic, since arguably Stella Artois could claim to be the star since it’s their name, or Heineken because there’s a star on their label. But “star” makes sense here, and it rhymes properly, and I’m sticking with it.

Line 9: booze

The point here is that in my book, an IPA not only beats out other beers, but beer beats out all other alcoholic beverages. Mixed drinks can get you into trouble, as can the imprecision of pouring wine. Moreover, I just like beer.

Line 10: ABV

ABV is alcohol by volume expressed as a percentage: the other measure of a beer’s strength. Legend has it IPAs were stronger in order to survive the trip from England to India, but Wikipedia says this is a myth. For whatever reason, IPAs are traditionally more highly hopped than other beers, and stronger. Most beers put the ABV number right on the bottle. This is kind of handy if you’re making an effort to modulate your intake.

You might think I prefer a higher ABV because I want a strong buzz when I drink. Not so. I will readily admit that part of the point of beer is the alcohol, which is pleasant, and which does aid in relaxation at the end of the day, and helps ease any residual pain in my legs from a hard bike ride. But I’m a big guy and a 12-ounce, 5% lager just doesn’t do it for me, while two beers is more than I care to drink at a sitting. A 12-ounce IPA in the realm of 6.2% (the ABV of a Lagunitas IPA) or 7.5% (a Racer 5) is perfect. Two lagers would be like a 10% IPA; not even the Drake’s Denogginizer Double IPA has that (though it’s close).

Line 11: IBUs

IBU stands for International Bitterness Unit, an objective measurement of bitterness (details here). I’m not sure how scientific or accurate it truly is, but I do find it helpful. Anything over 50 is a good, strong beer. (A small number doesn’t mean a lousy beer; I like Fat Tire ale and it’s only 15, which is typical of a lager.) The highest I like to go is the Denogginizer at 90 IBUs. The main use for this figure, for me, is when I’m at a pub with my wife mansplaining to her what watery lager she’ll like the best.

Line 12: feisty

Did you know that the word “feisty” comes from the word “feist,” meaning a small mongrel dog, especially an ill-tempered one? Fun fact!

Line 12: hops

Hops make beer bitter, but that’s only part of the story. I think, or like to think, hops make beer sprightly in other ways. Maybe this is all in my head, but who cares? Placebos are legit.

Line 12: esprit

From the Latin spiritus, spirit. Pun intended.

Line 13: grail

Let’s not forget that a grail isn’t just something that’s sought after. It’s a chalice. And what’s the point of an empty vessel? Let’s fill it! With good beer!

Line 14: hazy

Lots of IPAs are hazy these days. Wikipedia says this is “achieved using a combination of brewing techniques, including the use of particular strains of yeast, the timing of adding the hops, and adjusting the chemistry of the water.” I just love the taste of a hazy IPA. It seems to be the specialty of my favorite brewery, Fieldwork, which—just my luck—is walking distance from my house. Look how different this Fieldwork hazy is from the red ale next to it:

I think of a Fieldwork hazy as the grapefruit juice of beers. Just delicious. In fact, I would have worked the name Fieldwork into the poem itself except that I can’t: the word is dactylic (i.e., the first of its three syllables is stressed and the next two unstressed), which is incompatible with the iambic meter of a sonnet. I thought of writing the whole poem in dactylic trimeter just to work in Fieldwork, but that would have taken too much effort.

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English: I Think That That Language Is Screwy

Vlog

This post is available as a vlog. Put it on the big screen and gather the whole family! Or, fire it up on your phone, add earbuds, and pretend it’s a podcast!

Note: this post is not about Vladimir Nabokov or any of his works. It’s kind of inspired by his love of words, though, and there is some Russian language lore in here.

Introduction

If you’re a super-nerdy word buff like I am, this post should be right up your alley. If not, it’s an opportunity to silently mock me and feel relieved to be a normal person. Either way, read on!

The Poem

English: I Think That That Language Is Screwy

All languages are more or less complex.                            

To learn a second one is to subject                                   2

Yourself to much abuse. It does perplex                           

Me: so much stuff to get correct!

One language highly likely to abuse                      

The learner is our blasted English tongue.                     6

It’s almost like it’s tailored to confuse:

Of tangled threads it’s intricately strung.

Pronunciation rules do exist.

Exceptions, though, seem almost infinite.                   10

(To number them, much less produce a list?     

For such a project, I’m inadequate.)                    

As evidence, allow me to present                         

The heteronym, which proves without a doubt:         14

Our rules simply do not represent

An airtight way to sound our vowels out.

When I write “wind” what way have you to know           

If “moving air” is meant, or “reeling in”?                     18

Does “tear” suggest reaction to a woe,                

Or ripping something up? See? Evil twins!

Our consonants are dodgy, too. You see,

The word “refuse” can mean “debris,” although        22

The “s” can be pronounced just like a “z,”

In which case “turn down” is the sense, you know.

These heteronyms confound inflection, too.

Does “entrance” mean a way to get inside,                26

Or “put into a trance”? It’s up to you

To sort it out. It’s not well codified.

                                                                                                                           

What’s going on? There’s really no excuse         

For ambiguity to so abound.                                        30

Who authorized a system so abstruse

That letters make an arbitrary sound?

    The secret of our tongue, I think is that

    It does reward a grasp that’s intimate.                 34

Footnotes & commentary

Title: That That

No, it’s not a typo. The first “that” is a conjunction and the second is an adjective. Both are arguably necessary. More on this later.

Line 1: all languages

There has been some bickering among linguists and anthropologists about whether all languages are equally complex. As detailed here, there was a movement to assert this, perhaps driven by a desire to “reject any nationalist ideas about superiority of the languages of establishment.” I can’t see how anybody could objectively assess the complexity of this or that language, because we all have a native tongue that will make some languages easier for us to learn and others harder. Also, I don’t actually care.

Line 1: complex

Why is this word blue? And certain others? Hmmmm…

Line 3: abuse

Is “abuse” an overstatement? Perhaps, but I’ve seen and experienced some pretty disparaging behavior around the attempt to speak a foreign language. For example, a teenager I once knew, whose mom was from China, was visibly disgusted with her mom’s English and routinely said, “Learn how to talk—I can’t even understand you.” Myself, I struggled with French. A college instructor once told me, right before my oral final exam, “You should know: your pronunciation is terrible.” This didn’t exactly put me at ease. Then, halfway through the final, he stopped and said, “Before we go on, I just have to say, your accent is awful.” At the end he recapped how poor my performance had been throughout. Nice. It’s also worth noting that when I have  the classic anxiety dream of showing up to a final exam having never attended the class, the class is always French.

Line 4: so much stuff

There are so many possible errors you can commit with written communication. It occurred to me once, when reviewing my score on a college French quiz, that since the instructor is allowed to knock off half a point for any little goof, a poor student could end up with a negative score.

Incidentally, if you rightly recognized this poem as a sonnet (though it’s longer than the standard 14 lines), you may have noticed that this fourth line is missing a foot. That is, it has only four two-syllable feet instead of five. This is deliberate. With all five feet, the line sounded jarringly too long. I encountered  similar problem when I wrote my Ode to South Park. Its fourth line is technically correct (five iambic feet) but it doesn’t sound right. For eight years I’ve been considering fixing that.

Line 6: blasted English tongue

I am so glad I learned this language the easy way (i.e., from imitating my parents as a toddler). Its grammar is so much harder than that of Latin or Russian. I’m tempted to include French in this list of easier languages, but its insistence on arbitrarily assigning gender to an inanimate object, and then requiring articles and adjectives to match this gender, seems unnecessary and possibly malicious.

Line 8: tangled threads

I believe it’s pretty widely accepted that the difficulties inherent in English stem from its long and complicated history, starting with Germanic dialects that evolved over time by contact first with Vikings, then with conquering Normans, Bretons, and Frenchmen. Details here.

Line 10: exceptions … almost infinite

Other languages I’ve studied are so much more consistent than English. Sure, French has irregular verbs, but not all that many of them, and although my mouth cannot make the sounds this language requires, in principle its rules make sense, and the diacritics (accent marks etc.) are helpful. Russian is also very logical (in my experience, and according to a fluent speaker I consulted). As for Latin, my college class learned all the grammar in a single semester and spent the next term translating Cicero et al … that’s how consistent Latin is.

Line 11: number … list

I got sucked in by Heteronym web pages and ended up letting several hours of my life slip away. Existing lists on the Internet are either too short (like this one) or too long (like this one which lists 427 pairs). By “too long” I mean too generous. I don’t want to count theoretical heteronyms, like “luger” (the pistol—proper nouns shouldn’t count) or the word “as” when it’s pronounced “ass” to mean “a Roman coin.” Who’s ever heard of this coin?

Incidentally, my first attempt to list all the heteronyms lead me to the Heteronym Homepage, way back in 1996 when the Internet was pretty new to most people. In case you’re a youngster, I have to tell you that back then, websites weren’t the slick multimedia affairs we see today. They all tended to be like the Heteronym Homepage: some nerd at a university posting a little essay about heteronyms and inviting readers to contribute their own. (This was before blogs were a thing.) As you can see, I’m credited with three contributions (one of which I had to argue for and which the webmaster only begrudgingly posted, with a qualification). This was my first-ever Internet presence.

Line 14: heteronym

If the heteronym is my poster child for English being particularly hard, I suppose I should establish that it’s a mostly English phenomenon. Since there are something like six or seven thousand languages worldwide, demonstrating this would be like proving a negative, but among mainstream languages I believe this is true. More on this in the Appendix, if you’re interested.

Line 14: proves without a doubt

Of course the existence of the heteronym isn’t the only evidence we have that the English language is completely whacked. Consider the word “thought.” Why does this crazy assembly of letters, “o-u-g-h-t,” make an “ott” sound here, whereas in the word “drought” it makes an “out” sound? And how come removing the second “t” from “thought” changes the “o-u-g-h” from “ott” to “oh”?

When I lived in San Francisco, I always puzzled over the pronunciation of the street name “Gough.” It could rhyme with “bough,” “cough,” “dough,” “rough,” or “through.” The arrangement of the letters in English is so often useless. We have to learn so many pronunciations à la carte.

And what’s this business with “h” and how it affects other letters, like “s” and “c”? Why should the “c” in “ch,” which is a “k” or “s” sound, combine with “h” to produce a totally different sound than either of them makes alone? Makes no sense. You know how the Russians indicate the “ch” sound? They have a specific character for it: “ч.” For a “sh” sound they have the character “ш.” They even have a character, “ж,” for the “zh” sound we nonsensically suggest with a simple “s,” like in the word “pleasure.” And their “k” sound is indicated by a letter, “к,” that never makes an “s” sound like our two-timing “c.” (The French “c” also does double-duty, but at least when it makes an “s” sound they indicate this with a cedilla, i.e., “ç”.)

Line 18: reeling in

Yes, I acknowledge that “cranking up” (like a wind-up toy) might be a better way to convey this second sense of “wind” then “reeling in.” Call it poetic license: I had to set up the next rhyme (two lines later). I think I deserve some leeway, given how freaking hard this poem was to write. My original goal had been to pack a heteronym into every line, but that proved impossible (for me). If you count up the blue words you’ll see how far short I fell.

I’d also thought it’d be cool to use each sense of each heteronym, but you see I only managed that once.  I even wanted to rhyme two pairs so that one sense of each rhymed with the corresponding sense of the other. For example, I wanted to rhyme the noun “abuse” with noun “excuse” and the verb “abuse” with the verb “excuse.” Oh well. I don’t know why I thought I could do all this … probably I listen to too much Eminem. I have to remind myself: he’s a genius and I am not. (Plus, rhyming is easier for a rapper because he or she can warp pronunciations slightly to achieve the desired effect.)

Line 20: evil twins

This is not a reference to my brothers Bryan and Geoff, who are twins (though they were pretty evil as kids). It’s an allusion to the TV trope of a look-alike evil version of the hero. At least three episodes of the original “Star Trek” featured the evil twin concept; there was a “Magnum, P.I.” evil twin episode;  and if memory serves there were three evil twins in “Charlie’s Angels” once. I can’t think of a better way than “evil twin” to distill the heteronym concept.

Line 22: refuse

This word was a trap! Did you get it wrong the first time you read this stanza? Good, good. One characteristic of a proper sonnet is its strict adherence to iambic pentameter: you have to arrange your words carefully to naturally create the proper rhythm for the reader. As I’ve explained before in these pages, it wouldn’t do to  screw up your naturally iambic vs. trochaic words willy-nilly in a line of verse:

Right: Exquisite and expensive are her tastes

Wrong: Hot dogs are bad for foraging pit bulls

Right: The yuppie Zeitgeist sickens Uncle Ralph

Wrong: His blood pressure is getting acute now

In the first example above of incorrect verse, you’d have to put the stress on the third syllable of “foraging,” which just sounds wrong. And in the second wrong example you’d have to put the stress on the second syllable of “pressure” and the first syllable of “acute,” which is also unnatural.

It turns out this consistent, rhythmic inflection can often help the reader (subconsciously) recognize which sense of a heteronym is intended, if the word has more than one syllable. For example, in line 26, there’s not much context to suggest which meaning of “entrance” is the right one, but you probably got it right (EN-trance, a way to get inside) because the meter led you there.

So getting back to line 22, you probably read it “re-FUSE” the first time, until you got to “debris” and had to go back and revise your interpretation (perhaps subconsciously). If so, you probably noted a small snag in the rhythm of the poem. I employed this little trick to jar you a bit, to prep you for my point about inflection later on (line 25).

Line 26: entrance

Ever since I realized “entrance” was a heteronym, I’m unable to look at an “ENTRANCE” sign and think “EN-trance.” I always see “en-TRANCE,” as though there were a hypnotist on the other side of the door.

Line 31: abstruse

I deliberated about “obtuse” vs. “abstruse” here. Generally, I avoid using a fancy word where a simple word will do. But “obtuse” is just too much of a stretch for the meaning I’m looking for. It’s not just me: look how much one dictionary had to say about using “obtuse” to mean, well, abstruse:

Lunching with a colleague once, I described my entrée as insipid, and he said, “How can pasta be stupid?” I explained that insipid mainly means “lacking in flavor” even if the word is often used to mean “dull” or “generally lacking.” He refused to believe me, so I bet him $5. We stopped at a bookstore on the way back to the office to check a dictionary (this being in the pre-smartphone era). Easiest $5 I ever made. I should have tried to take $5 off my teenager today when she read this poem and asked why I didn’t use “obtuse” here.

Line 33: that

Why is this word in blue? Isn’t blue supposed to mean it’s a heteronym? Well, yes. I haven’t seen “that” listed on any of the heteronym web pages I’ve seen (though for that matter, none of them lists “misuse” either, which certainly belongs on the list). We know that for a pair of words to qualify as a heteronym pair, they have to be spelled the same, pronounced differently, and have a different meaning. For the first test, consider that at least three mainstream dictionaries (the three I’ve checked) show two different pronunciations for “that,” as shown here. 

That upside-down “e” character, ə, makes a sound something like “eh,” as in the words “about, item, edible,” etc. as shown here.

Now, you might say these are just alternative ways to pronounce the word, like we sometimes say “the” to rhyme with “thee” and sometimes to rhyme with “duh.” But I don’t think “thăt” vs. “thət” is arbitrary. When we use “that” as an adjective (to specify “the one singled out, implied, or understood”) we pronounce it “thăt” (rhymes with “hat”). But when we use “that” as a conjunction (to introduce a subordinate clause that “is joined to an adjective or a noun as a complement”), we say “thət” (rhymes with “pet”).

To test this (actually, to prove it, as I was already convinced), I wrote two sentences on Post-Its and took them around to my wife and kids to read aloud. The first read, “If you think that I’m going to put with that, you’re crazy.” All three read it as, “If you think thət I’m going to put up with thăt, you’re crazy.” No prompting was necessary: that’s how they naturally pronounced those words.

The next Post-It read, “I think that that that that man said is a lie.” All four read it, “I think thət thăt thət thăt man said is a lie.” By sounding the conjunctions with the “ə” sound, they were able to easily utter (and understand) the sentence, odd though it is. But when challenged to pronounce “that” to rhyme with “hat” in all four instances, they got tripped up. So: we have established a different pronunciation that tracks with the different meaning. Voilà! Heteronym!

(If it seems like I’m making an inordinately thorough case for “that” being a heteronym, it’s because my daughter drew me in to a spirited debate on the topic and got me all excited.)

Line 34: grasp that’s intimate

This really is the glory of English: by being hard to learn, it gives an unfair advantage to native speakers. All languages do this, of course, but to the extent that English is particularly difficult, the advantage is magnified. Moreover, English is a particularly good language to be utterly fluent in if you’re trying to a) be upwardly mobile in the global economy, or b) rest on your laurels. When I mention to people that I was an English major in college, I like to add, “It was a really easy major for me because I grew up speaking English at home.”

Another reason I contrived to end this poem with the word intimate? It rhymes perfectly with “thət” (as used in the previous line).

Postscript

I have just discovered another heteronym pair: poke (to prod) and poke (pronounced poe-KAY), the Hawaiian dish of marinated raw fish or seafood. This isn’t on any heteronym list I can find. Score!

Appendix

Is it truly the case that the heteronym is mainly an English thing? Well, I studied French for six years and never came across a pair in that language. According to this article, “French has relatively few heteronyms, and the ones they do have, they often put a gratuitous accent mark on one of the meanings to differentiate them. (For example, où meaning ‘where’ and ou meaning ‘or.’ The accent grave makes no pronunciation difference for the letter ‘u’; it's added so that ‘where’ and  ‘or’ are not spelled the same.)” Wikipedia lists 21 French heteronyms, and points out that a heteronym pair is usually the case of a noun being spelled the same as one conjugation of a verb (particularly third person plural), for example “couvent” meaning either “convent” or “they brood” (as in eggs). Since the French don’t really pronounce “ent,” the verb form sounds quite different. But this is certainly more obscure than English heteronyms.

I never encountered heteronyms in Russian and can’t imagine them because every letter in that language so consistently makes a discrete sound. As for Italian, Wikipedia is ambiguous about heteronyms in that tongue. It states, “Italian spelling is largely unambiguous, with a few exceptions” but then lists 35 examples. I plugged half a dozen of these examples into Google Translate to try to hear the difference, and they all sound identical to me, certainly nowhere nearly as different as “tear” (the liquid) and “tear” (the verb). As for German heteronyms, Wikipedia says that language has “few.” Ditto Dutch. No other languages are mentioned, for what it’s worth.

Further reading

The Heteronym Page

The Heteronym Homepage

The Bass Swam Around the Bass Drum On the Ocean Floor (Smithsonian)

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Ode to Cat

Introduction

If you are a cat person, you might be predisposed to like the following poem … unless, of course, you decide it fails to do cats justice, though judging me harshly might also be enjoyable. If you’re a dog person, perhaps this poem will help you to see the light and change your ways before it’s too late.

The Poem

Ode to Cat

“To be or not to be,” that’s just BS.

“To do or not to do?” is what I ask.                          2

Are weekends best for resting, to de-stress,

Or time to chase down countless little tasks?

I ponder this and then I see my cat.

As if to taunt me, all she does is nap.                       6

She looks so wise … could this be where it’s at?

I pick her up and put her on my lap.

The cruel, accursed beast—she never stays!

A rescue cat, she’s skittish as they come.               10

To run for cover’s just how she allays

Her fear (though nothing’s what she’s running from).

Some weekend mornings, I will rise at dawn

In quest of precious, peaceful writing time.           14

I creep downstairs and put the kettle on.

The stars line up: the moment feels sublime.

Warm mug in hand, I settle down and start

To gather up my thoughts—but what is this?        16

My kitty’s joined me … bless her little heart!

She kneads my lap … O what a treat this is!

But now I can’t get any writing done.

I can’t disrupt my cat, she needs this lap.              20

My little plan will have to be postponed.

I must hold still throughout this creature’s nap.

By chance I find a novel close at hand

And just like that, my morning plan’s recast.        24

Before I’d had such grand, ambitious plans

But now I want to make this moment last.

    To do or not to do: my cat knows best.

    With help from her, the matter’s put to rest.     28

Footnotes & commentary

Title: Cat

I could have written this for my cat in particular (i.e., Ode to Freya), but I want to give a shout-out to housecats in general. (Note to Berkeleyites: I know that by city resolution, the term “pet” is out in favor of “companion animal” and “owner” has been replaced by “human guardian,” so the phrase “my cat” may startle you. Yeah, yeah, I know you can’t “own” an animal. I’m tempted to apologize, but then Freya just feels like “my cat” and I refuse to be disingenuous about this. I also gather that in some quarters “Berkleyan” is strongly favored over “Berkeleyite” so I’m tempted to apologize for that, too—but haven’t you folks derailed this commentary long enough?)

Line 1: BS

Is it verging on blasphemy to call BS on Shakespeare? Hey—not so fast. I’m actually calling BS on Hamlet, not his creator. Why does Hamlet consider suicide, when he’s such a bright guy he can spew perfect iambic pentameter off the cuff? Okay, fine, his dad died and his mom is marrying an asshole … boo hoo hoo. Get a backbone, Hamlet, would you please? I can answer his hand-wringing “to be or not to be” quandary in one word: be. It’s too bad Ophelia couldn’t take a page from Paloma Faith’s playbook (well, songbook) and tell Hamlet, “Don’t say nothing/ Just sit next to me/ Don’t say nothing/ Sshhh/ Just be, just be, just be.”

Line 3: resting, to de-stress

The phrase “de-stress” irks me a bit, summoning as it does the cliché-ridden lingo of corporate America. But that’s exactly what I need to connote here, because working in this realm is what tires and stresses me out so much.

Line 4: countless little tasks

I feel like during the week, I can barely keep my head above water on the home front. This means anything extra—fixing my bike, organizing the garage, mailing a package—can feel like a really big deal. If I dig deep and take on this kind of crap, I head into the next work week more tired than ever and gradually start to augur in. On the other hand, if all I do all weekend is rest and recover, I feel like I don’t have a life outside of work. It’s an ongoing dilemma.

Line 6: as if to taunt

No, I don’t think cats are actually sophisticated enough to taunt anybody. Conversely, I’m sure they aren’t attuned to sarcasm, which is why I feel completely free to say to my stretched-out, luxuriating cat, “Freya, you really need to slow down—you can’t keep burning the candle at both ends like this.”

Line 7: looks so wise

Would we love our pets so much if we didn’t project positive traits onto them? Just like dogs appear to smile, or to have thoughtful, penetrating eyes, cats surely look wiser than they are. It’s an illusion I enjoy, so I let myself believe it most of the time.

Line 8: put her on my lap

In my experience, there are two kinds of cats: the kind that love to jump onto your lap and do so freely, and the kind who generally avoid your lap. I have yet to encounter a cat who is blasé or ambivalent about this, so it’s pretty pointless to put a cat on your lap and expect him or her to stay.

Line 9: cruel, accursed beast

Given what I just said, isn’t it totally unfair to deride my cat this way? Of course it is, but frankly, as foolish as my behavior is, everyone in my household feels affronted, every time, when Freya bounds away. I never said humans were wise either.

Line 10: rescue cat

What, you haven’t heard the term “rescue cat”? Well, I haven’t either. But we all hear the phrase “rescue dog,” usually spoken with just a whiff of self-congratulation. Not that I would take anything away from someone kind enough to rescue an unfortunate homeless dog. But I got this kitten from the pound … isn’t that a rescue, too? Not according to the Pet Adoption page on Wikipedia on which the phrase “rescue dog” appears six times  but “rescue cat” not once.

Here’s the Frey when she was very young:

Line 10: skittish as they come

As a tiny kitten, Freya was a stray, and this has left its mark. A car door slams a block away and she races across the room and hides. A shoe drops upstairs and she stiffens, eyes wide, threat level orange.

As a tiny kitten she liked to climb into this tiny basket. It’s amazing she even fit. I suppose she felt secure there, perhaps almost like being swaddled.

Line 12: nothing’s what she’s running from

Sometimes Freya is just bored and pretends there’s danger, just to have an excuse to race across the house. After five minutes of this she’s ready to sleep it off, of course.

Here she is in a playful moment.

Line 12 would be near the end of a standard sonnet (just before the rhyming couplet at the end). I’m not a good enough poet to condense all my content into so few lines, so I just kept going.

Line 17: bless her little heart

Though I’m not real clear on the details, I’m vaguely aware that “bless your heart,” at least in the South, isn’t exactly a compliment. That’s about right, because the first moments, when Freya has decided to try out my lap, mean nothing. This is her nervous period when I’m expecting her to suddenly change her mind and leap off my lap, so this seemingly loving expression could well be followed immediately by “you little shit.”

Line 18: kneads my lap

I have a little claw trimmer that I use to keep my cat’s claws from getting too sharp … thus, it is neither painful nor ruinous to my clothing when she does this classic pet trick.

Note how her tail is hooked around her front leg there.

Line 20: needs this lap

You might accuse me of using this phrase just for a nice poetic shimmer so soon after “kneads my lap.” After all, I’ve made the case that Freya is on the antisocial side, and it’s commonly theorized that cats only sit on us for the heat. But in this case, I had the heater going! Nine times out of ten she’ll take a heater vent over a lap, but that tenth time? Remember, this cat had a traumatic kittenhood. It just might be that some modicum of feline-human connection is actually important to her. Maybe she also treasures this particularly quiet time when she can finally relax enough to succumb to a  lap.

Line 21: have to be postponed

So often, postponing writing for even twenty minutes during this enchanted morning time means losing that twenty minutes forever. When the family is up and around, I kind of want to be distracted. When my daughter says, “Dad, let’s get a bagel!” I wouldn’t even consider saying, “I’m busy [needlessly] writing [endless prose that nobody will ever read], sorry [but not sorry enough to get over my self-importance].” Full disclosure: we’ve gone for bagels only like twice, but it’s a matter of principle. (It sure isn’t a matter of gastronomy; I’ve come to accept that you can’t actually get a proper bagel outside of NYC.)

Line 22: must hold still

Do I really have to hold so still that I can’t even type on my laptop? Most of the time, yes … especially when I’m juggling a coffee cup as well. Plus, early in the morning before the caffeine kicks in, I’m still pretty vulnerable to sloth and the cat plays a big role in that … she’s a terrible influence. If she were the kind of cat who always wanted to be on my lap, it wouldn’t be special and I’d probably make her leave so I could work.

Since I’m a sucker for “the exception that proves the rule,” here’s a photo of Freya sitting on me without preventing me from writing. In fact, here’s a bit of irony: if you zoom in, you’ll see she’s sitting on me even as I compose the very poem you just read.

That said, it’s a terrible photo, which attests to the rarity of this scenario. If this happened a lot, I’d have a lot better photo of it.

Line 23: by chance … a novel

Well, it’s not actually random chance that there was a novel within arm’s reach. My wife and I were both English majors and our house is filled with books. I read a lot—not nearly as much as I should, actually, and I could easily imagine spending whole weekend reading. The problem is, this would feel extravagant, almost profligate, since reading—for all its value and ability to improve my mind and soul—is still a form of consumption, and everything I consume dies with me. The impulse to write constantly competes: shouldn’t I be creating something, even if it’s only an amateur record of an ordinary life, that will probably be casually deleted shortly after my death when my kids neglect to pay the Internet server bill?

Line 25: grand, ambitious plans

You’re not allowed to laugh at me over my assertion that blogging represents a grand, ambitious plan. I was making fun of myself, so you’re required to laugh with me or not at all.

Line 25: make this moment last

I refuse to strike or modify this line because it happens to exactly capture what I’m doing here: I expect this time with the cat to last only a little while, and I do want to extend that as much as possible. That said, I concede that this phrase sounds pretty cheesy, like a Kodak ad. So now you can laugh at me.

Line 27: to do or not to do

This return to my opening salvo would be punchier if my poem didn’t drag out to twice the length of a regulation sonnet. What can I say? I’m no Shakespeare.

Line 28: to rest

This last word, rest, seems like the perfect way to end a poem about a cat, doesn’t it?

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