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.


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Tuesday, February 23, 2021

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

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