Shadowy Worlds, Shadowy Words
Dr. Andy is back on Substack -- thanks for your patience!
Dear Friends,
My late mom, Mary Clementine Ternes, was an avid reader. Her mother Vera would read to her until her daughter could read on her own, and thereafter the two of them would just read together, sometimes in my grandmother’s bed, until late into the evening. I’m not sure what my grandfather thought of this practice. A radio, a record player, and eventually even a television came into their Detroit home, but my mom preferred to read.
In the late 1950s, my mom had an entry-level job in a Mad Men style advertising agency in New York City. Her supervisor, during the conversation in which he informed her that she was being fired, told her that she reads so much that she should travel uptown to Columbia University to get a master’s degree in library science. So that’s what she did.
My mom kept reading journals. Also called commonplace books, these are hardback blank books in which one records quotations, responses to book passages, and unfamiliar, mellifluous, or inspirational words. Thus inspired, the keeper of a commonplace book can be like Wordsworth who said you should “Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”
Sylvia Plath kept such journals. In one of them she wrote, “I have to exercise my memory in little feats just so I can stay in this damn wonderful place which I love and hate with all my heart.” In another, she expressed a sentiment that my mom would have agreed with: “Aloneness and selfness are too important to betray for company.”
Sylvia Plath would also underline words in red in her dictionary, many of which Plath scholars have also found in her poems. One imagines her underlining sharp and biting words, such as “acerbic,” or dark and shadowy words, such as “tenebrous,” “stygian,” or even “atramentous.”
One favorite evening word of mine, “noctivagant,” refers to wandering the streets at night, the way the speaker does in that famous Robert Frost poem:
Acquainted with the Night
I have been one acquainted with the night.
I have walked out in rain—and back in rain.
I have outwalked the furthest city light.
I have looked down the saddest city lane.
I have passed by the watchman on his beat
And dropped my eyes, unwilling to explain.
I have stood still and stopped the sound of feet
When far away an interrupted cry
Came over houses from another street,
But not to call me back or say good-bye;
And further still at an unearthly height,
One luminary clock against the sky
Proclaimed the time was neither wrong nor right.
I have been one acquainted with the night.
Today many of us have dropped our eyes, perhaps unable to explain.
I regretted that my father, a great proponent of civil rights and someone who was optimistic about the promise of America, did not live long enough to see Barack Obama be elected U.S. President.
I regretted, too, that my mom passed away a couple of weeks before we received our mail-in ballots. She was inspired by the feminist movement – maybe this was spurred on by how she was treated at that advertising agency, or by all the books she read – and would have been thrilled to vote (again) for Kamala Harris.
We who are living get to see the best and the worst of America, and still we march on, even when we find ourselves marching on the “saddest city lanes.” We seek to hold our heads up, imagining ourselves to be supported by the investments previous generations of idealists have made in us. Wielding their dreams, we take stock and plan for future campaigns. Rolling up our sleeves, at least eventually, we won’t give up.
If my mom were alive today, I would have texted her another word for her commonplace book: “Recrudescence. (17th century): the return of something terrible after a time of reprieve.”
I know that more than 51% of American voters think differently, but today I mourn for more than my mom.
P.S. I host a weekly pub quiz in Davis to which you are invited. Here are three pub quiz questions from last week:
1. Youth Culture. Who rose to prominence after winning the fourth season of American Idol in 2005, the same year that her single "Inside Your Heaven" (2005) made her the first country artist to debut atop the Billboard Hot 100 chart? Hint: She has the greatest net worth of any American Idol contestant.
2. Big Ships. Starting with the letter B, in what city was The Titanic built?
3. Countries of the World. The names of what percentage of African countries end in vowels? Is the number closest to 45%, 60%, 75%, or 90%?
P.P.S. Tomorrow’s Poetry Night features Julia B. Levine and Murray Silverstein! Join us at 7 PM at the Natsoulas Gallery.