I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


Comments Welcome!

Saturday, February 23, 2019

How did grammatical aspects come to be


February 23, 2018  (I was 73)

How did grammatical aspects come to be
so long and effectively unbeknownst to me
Perfective verbs express completion of action
and of course the imperfective verbs
express the incompletion of an action
or the completion of an inaction
In iterative I reiterate the repetitive
continuous action signified by the single act
Frequentatives are habitual actions I inhabit
Desiring to be desiderative
one verb derives from another
indicating my wish to perform the action
expressed in the original verb...
which I so often do

No comments:

Post a Comment