Tag Archives: James Joyce

The Middle

If you have just found this Alphabet Book, this is not the beginning, this is the middle. You are in the middle. One might say you have no choice in this, none of us do, the middle is all we have between past and future, it is our only contact with reality. If you must have beginnings and endings, and some of us insist on on such things, well, find them in the middle, find them right here in the now, the only now we have, where every forward motion recapitulates a past one, spiral like and self similar. The Old English Rune Poem knows this well. Look at the material: magical letters, powerful, speaking auguries of the future from the lips of the gods, curing and protecting whatever they are carved into, evoking magic wherever they go. You can’t just line this stuff up in any old order. There’s an arrangement to … More

How to See the Pair in the Middle

The rune carvers thought in pairs. They had a whole pronoun classification for the two that are also one, so it is no surprise to find pairs in the Rune Poem, matched thematically: the end to the beginning, then the next two, reflecting each other in pairs to the middle. With an odd number of runes the middle one stands alone. This is Eolhx, the fifteenth of twenty nine runes in the poem, the only one without an opposing pair, though there may be a pair built into it, more than one. To see it, you must do two things:

1. Center yourself in a landscape or on water with a nice view of the horizon, east and west.

2. Count the days and choose the beginning or end of the middle one as your moment. Choose both. The start or end of a day is up for debate in any case, the rune … More

P is for Poetry

Old English poetry was performed, probably sung, for purposes beyond mere entertainment. The Germanic tribes Tacitus visited at the end of the first century would prep for battle by barding, which he called “a peculiar kind of verse” sung to stimulate their courage and to divine the outcome of the coming fight through the quality of the sound itself. Tacitus tells us about these peculiar verses almost immediately in his report back to the empire, so you know it was impressive. It would be. Imagine it: he says the people would put their battle shields to their mouths, perhaps in them, and sing. A shield as a musical instrument. Their favorite sounds were “a harsh piercing note and a broken roar,” which “does not seem so much an articulate song, as the wild chorus of valor.” What were the words? Were they the names of the gods? An appeal for their protection? A … More

♂︎

Mars and Tiw share a day. They might also share a symbol: ♂︎ ᛏ. The earliest symbols for Mars the planet were of a pointed spear, or a spear with a shield drawn as a circle with a line running through it. We still use a shield and spear to mean Mars. He is a warrior like Tiw, both recognizable by their weapons, forever on a journey over the obscurity of night.

 

The Future

You can’t have a society without a collective understanding of time. You can’t. Show me one. Time is the basis of everything: our idea of shared reality, what we think happens after we die, every question of faith, every approach to proof, everything. There are great similarities from culture to culture about the big mathematical details. For example, some have noticed that the sun moves the distance of its own radius every minute, it’s why we have a minute. It’s in the stuff we can’t prove and quantify where we can really see the personality of a people.

This pairing of runes, Beorc and Ger, Birch and Year, reveals what happens to a culture’s sense of time when their abundance waxes and wanes rather drastically with their living conditions. These were coastal people whose challenging waters range from confronting to inhospitable. Their cold inland weather has its own difficulties and everything depends … More

Bright Fruits

 

 

Friþ

Translating Nyd

Need‘s Rune poem partner is the Human stanza, but you can’t translate the Need stanza without keeping an eye on the Hail stanza next door. Need and Hail are so much alike. Hail comes suddenly and can destroy a crop, smash berries from bushes, fruit from trees, destroy a roof. Hail makes need. Need can come suddenly too. You know quickly when you are in need. The sky opens up and pummels you with it.

Both the Need and Hail stanzas are anomalies in the Rune Poem. They stand out for being only two lines each, when the others are three or four (five for the final one) and they stand out for having many more stressed words per line than is customary for Old English poetry. The effect when sung is a fast staccato beat. A rapid pounding of the heart. Sounds like hail feels like need.

Hail and need … More

N is for ‘N

 

 

Translating Lagu

Waterways were busy places during the time of the Rune Poem, making for convenient connections between coastal settlements and with ports of trade farther afield. However, things become a lot less easy when the sea won’t cooperate. The whole endeavor becomes as the stanza says, langsum, longsome, long lasting, lengthy. This also means tedious, as in when is this boat going to stop pitching endlessly in these waves? Langsum, that’s when. You’ll be riding this out for a good long while, and langsum geþuht (longsome thought) means it seems even longer. Time slows down when you are scared and in your head, and this is scary. The boat is tealtum, unsteady, and it’s not a big ship. You are right there in the soup and you will feel every one of those sæyþa (waves) coming at you. They are swyþe, strong and violent, and frightening too. Bregaþ says it’s frightening, as I’m … More

X≠Y≠Z: (X+Y)-Z=(X-Y)÷Z

Y: Here come the water works.

X: I’ve been carrying you!

Y: No, I’ve been carrying you. Nobody carries me.

X: You’re delusional. Do the math, you’d be nothing without me and you know it, you just won’t admit that I know things, that I’m as smart as you are, smarter. You have this whole entitled thing going on that you don’t even realize. Or pretend not to, except you’re not that self aware.

Y: I don’t need to listen to you.

X: You never have anyway.

Y: This is total crap. Things were supposed to be better with just us. You’re just crazy, that’s what this is. You’ve gone off the deep end.

X: Right it’s me. I’m crazy. I’m just naturally hysterical and don’t have an actual brain and know what I’m talking about. You are conditioned to think that, you know that, right? You are so easily snowed. You bait me into … More

ᚻ

Voiceless spirant. Make a narrow aperture of your mouth and throat, leave your vocal cords aside, and force air through. Create friction, steam up the mirror. Huh. Hah.

Placed at the beginning of a word this letter sounds like a modern English H: a very light exhalation of the breath. In the middle or at the end it toughens up, sounds stronger, the spirancy has some voice to it, it’s a clearing of the throat not to be found written with an H in modern English, but just ask Bach who would have given this sort of H some voice, especially when sitting by the loch at nicht. In Old English give them all a sound, every H, heed me well there is no silent H here, I am happy to say. But in modern English? H is being dropped all over the place. H is an heir to naught, almost a ghost.

Stand up … More

ᛚ

Alveolar dental sonorant: using your gum ridge and teeth, leave your tongue free laterally, partially impeding your vocal resonance: now sing. Lalalalalalalahhhhh! Largo! Lalalaaaaaaaaah! Now lento. La. La. La. Lovely. A sound so popular it has remained unchanged all this time.

Carve a line up, now drape a single flag from the top, lacking in wind. Let it be limp.

 

How to Skip Town

It’s time to go. It is past time. If you need to get out of here yesterday you’d better do it with an eye on the future, that knife blade of a now you balance on will cut and run, so plan fast.

You don’t want to plan. You don’t care what comes next, I get it, but if something is going to come next, you’ll need to survive long enough to see it and that takes money. Bring any portable wealth you have, the smaller the better depending on your means of conveyance. Is that your car? Load it up. Fill it with anything you might regret leaving behind. Maybe we can attach a trailer or something you can pull behind you. Take what you can because you will not know your regrets until the actual future arrives. To speed that process, leave nothing, otherwise, you will quickly discover your regrets at which time … More

ᛟ

O ᛟ, you shapeshifter. Once you signified all O sounds, until you slipped sideways and joined up with E. Twins you were, they spelled you two ways Œþel and Eþel, depending on what you sounded like where they wrote your name, and when. (O Œþel, you were first in your birth order, if conjoined twins have a birth order.) O ᛟ, ᚩ took your O sound away. What can you do with a wordy god? Without O you get confused with ᛖ a lot. Eh, what do you care? You grew up to be a pictograph in your own right. A whole word world you are, doing the job of several letters in just one shape.

 Carve the ᚷ rune. Now put a roof on it. What a gift to have a home.

 

Light

The Day and Torch stanzas are as similar as night and day and everybody knows it. The living (cwicera) know (cuþ) it in the torch stanza, you’d have to be dead not to, and it’s straight up mære (famous) in the day stanza. Who doesn’t know yin and yang? Light and dark, complimentary opposites, a two in one intruding into each others space. Like all opposing forces they need each other to survive, and we need them. We particularly favor light, it makes us all happy in the day and secure at night. Who gets to feel secure at night? Well, not everybody.

How to Burn it All Down

You want to burn it all down, even the unburnable. Good. To burn it all down you’ll need a focus. Find out what it is that’s really pissing you off most, bring that bitterest pill right to your face and choke it down. Really feel the effect, lean into it. Let it spread through your chilly veins. Let bitterness be your new flavor, but don’t let it linger. You can’t linger about being bitter or sour or salty about something and still think you can accomplish a proper burning down, you have to spice it up with some heat, pica rico, get a good burn going, make it hurt.

Now, smolder right on past indignant, consume outraged and offended into ashes, and get to steaming. Irritated and irate are nothing now, you want livid. You want fury. You want fuming. Are you are fuming? Properly inflamed? Ugly angry? Ugly angry. That’s the look … More

ᛞ

D. Voiced alveolar dental stop. You use your voice and soft palate to make the sound, make your breath stop against your teeth. Leave your larynx out of it and you make a T.  D was sometimes spelled with a T in later Old English, and it would occasionally appear as the letter Eth which looks like this: Ð and this: ð. Eth is kind of a cross between a Þ (thorn, TH) and a D. A th sound with a little D flavor. Eventually the Рand Þ became interchangeable leaving the D to stand alone, exiled in wretchedness.

Make a thorn and point it at a reverse thorn. A thorn in a mirror. Let them keep in touch, they are very close.

 

Crann Bethadh

Crann Bethadh means tree of life in Old Irish. It’s an oak tree. The Celts used to plant them in the centers of their villages where they could be the axis mundi, the pillar holding everything up, the pivot around which it all turns. It’s a sacred world tree, and an older one than the one in the Old English Rune Poem, which stand right there next to it in order. In the Rune Poem, oak is the letter A, which comes right after D. In the Ogam alphabet written down in Old Irish, D is an oak. When they needed new runes for new sounds and invented the oak rune, they kept it close to its roots.

The Ogam alphabet uses bríatharogam to describe each letter name. These are two word descriptions that act as riddles or metaphors and work in a similar way to Old English kennings, which are either compound … More

How to Bathe a Gannet

So your gannet colony stinks of ammonia, guano, and a bit like fish, well what did you expect, they are gannets. Thousands crowding together. Eliminating. If your gannets are befouling the place and you wish to change their objectionable odor, your best route to success is via a good luxurious scented bath, into which a new fragrance might be introduced. Your task may feel a Herculean one for they do enjoy their own smell, it’s their signature scent, and if you know anybody who has a signature scent, you know they can be quite resistant to change. Ascertain if your gannets are determined to smell like a birdy pile of pee soaked herring or if they are amenable to a modernizing update. Inform the gannets one must not become too attached to a signature scent at risk of becoming predictable or seeming out of date when the fashion moves on. Woody, spicy, or musky notes … More

Æ is for George William Russell

George William Russell, Irish legend in a crowded field, once published something under the pseudonym Æon but the printer cut off the last two letters and Æ liked the result. He did and was a lot of things, mainly between 1890 and 1930: painter, composer, agriculturalist, cyclist, pacifist, vegetarian, mystic, mentor, publisher. He published a weekly newspaper called The Irish Homestead intended mainly to support the rise of co-op farming but it wove in plenty of the Irish literary revival. How could he help it? Who could blame him.

Æ gave James Joyce his start, asked him to write something simple. Joyce’s first published story “The Sisters” appeared in The Irish Homestead under the pseudonym Stephen Dedalus. It’s from a child’s point of view, so it seemed simple, of the wake and remembrance of a priest whose life was, you might say, crossed. That’s how Eliza puts it in the story. It’s what she doesn’t … More

Truth

Did you know that tree means truth? Well it does, honestly, let me be the first to tell you so you know it’s true. The Old English word treow means both tree and truth. Lots of Old English words use treow in them to mean things like to trust or believe (treowan), or to be faithful (treowfæst, truth-fast). Treow is used for more woody things too, like when you take your treowfæstnian (trusty) ax to the treowsteall (a grove) to work as a treowwyrtha (carpenter) treowfeging (joining boards together) into a treowgeweroc (tree work, something made of wood). In that treow grove you’ll find forest birds (treowfugol) and faithful friends (treowgeðofta) who’ll go in for a little tree worship (treowweroðung) with you and with whom you might find treowlufu (true love). Watch out for the treowles and treowleasnes.

Tree and truth were more than … More

Shh

 

 

The Aurochs and the Beaver

The beaver was so full of charm.
The aurochs felt such great alarm.
Stop being so happy.
I like feeling crappy!
Stand down or I’ll do you great harm.

The beaver laughed well never mind
There’s no need to be so unkind.
It was only a joke,
I thought you were woke.
To history you’ll soon be consigned.

But beaver we’re both being hunted,
And with truth you’ll soon be confronted.
The hunter agrees,
Your balls cure disease.
You’ll die first, there I said it unblunted.

They do like my castoreum,
And my testes, you can’t even see ’em.
So they hunt my poor hide
Of this you’ve not lied.
Still, your bones will fill a museum.

 

X is not Y and Neither is Z

A is for always    and be is become.

C cogitates    then D says it’s done.

Everyone falls grave    here in jeopardy.

Kenning loves mingling,    now one plurality.

Quick now listen hwat,    remind yourself well:

So, future’s not nearing,    times now this I tell.

Understand? Listen up.    Vern says wannabe?

X is not Y    and neither is Z.

 

How to Die

First, you must find a reason not to live. There exists uncountable reasons but you must choose at least one and try to make it as ineffable as possible so the people you leave behind may feel suitably at a loss for words when they find you. An added benefit: it will be easier for the people who attend your wake, interment, scattering of the ashes, memorial service, whatever it is it will be none of your business, to speak in hushed and reverent tones if they find themselves capable of speaking at all. Amongst the reasons not to live you might choose: you are suffering from progressive melancholia; by ceasing to exist you will bring your existence to the attention of the person who barely knows you exist, though you maintain a unique awareness of said person’s existence; pondering the great nothingness of everythingness has inverted your thoughts into a perpetual retrospective arrangement.… More

Octave

The rune carvers, the people who knew the Rune Poem by heart, probably sang it. There’s a lot of evidence for that, not to mention putting a story to music makes the retelling easier to remember. We can all sing along, others joining in where memory fails. Poetry has beats and rhythm and we sing ours too, but we don’t call it poetry when we do that. We have another word for that. Language takes all the music out of poetry. Language did not take language out of music.

Music has an alphabet of its own: the letters are notes. And these notes we arranged into groups of eight. Octaves. Take a note, think of a sound. It’s got a letter, but from such a short alphabet. Now hum it. Hum it steady, you sound terrible because you are not actually doing it out loud. Do it. There you go. Your note, that … More

Rune Casting: Ear

Tell me your future. Tell me, what do you hope will happen before you’re dead? And what is it you are afraid of? Never mind. Doesn’t matter what. The future is not in the what, it’s in the hope and the fear that you hold now, in the present. Whatever it is coming to you, or coming for you, is happening now. In here. In your mind. There is no other future. Well, there is the one thing that is going to happen, Ear says it for sure. It’s coming to you and it’s coming for you. You’ve got it coming. You’ll choose the earth as your consort and sleep together forever. Everything is temporary, except that. That’s carved in stone.

ᛠ

EA. Diphthong: a compound vowel. This one is deceased, we don’t use it any more. What did EA sound like? Maybe like EO, maybe like AU, emphasis on the E or the A because all Old English diphthongs fall down dead in the end: you pronounce both letters but not equally, let the second one drop away to its death, thirty two feet per second per second.

Maybe EA sounds like the E in second. Maybe EA sounds like ÆA, like a hybrid of what A is doing in gnaw and in mad. More like gnaw, but it’s still pissed off. Or it was, EA is dead and gone now, some sounds die. They get eaten up, don’t be mad about it. What chewed EA away? Everything is temporary.

Carve a W and make it look like a fresh mound of earth in a valley. Dirt piled over a grave. Put it on a stick … More

Decode

 

Bibliography

Alexander, Michael. Beowulf. Penguin Books, 1995. Penguin Classics.

Anderson, Earl R. “The Seasons of the Year in Old English.” Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 26, 1997, pp. 231-63, JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44510523.

Baum, Paull F. Anglo-Saxon Riddles of the Exeter Book. Duke University Press, 1963.

Bierbaumer, Peter; Sauer, Hans; Klug, Helmut W.; Krischke Ulrike. Dictionary of Old English Plant Names. 2007-2009, http://oldenglish-plantnames.org.

Bischoff, Bernhard. Latin Palaeography: Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Cambridge University Press, 1990.

Boethius. The Consolation of Philosophy. Bobbs-Merrill, 1962. vol. 86.

—. The Old English Boethius : With Verse Prologues and Epilogues Associated with King Alfred. Harvard University Press, 2012. vol. 19.

Borges, Jorge Luis. “The Kenning.” The New Yorker, January 26, 1976, pp. 35-36.

Bosworth, Joseph. “An Anglo Saxon Dictionary Online.” edited by Thomas Northcote Toller et al., Faculty of Arts, Charles University, 2014. https://bosworthtoller.com.

Brady, Caroline. “The Old English Nominal Compounds in … More

Vern Tonkin

Spanish was my first language but I was a toddler when my family moved to the States, where my world became English only, that I grew up as an English speaker and thinker and struggled learning Spanish when I had the chance in college. I got a pity D- in my third year of Spanish because my Argentine professor couldn’t fathom how a girl from Peru could only grasp the basic language of a baby, and she just couldn’t bring herself to fail a South American as I deserved. In Spanish I can understand everything and say nothing much. I do know all the swear words. So.

In grad school, I needed one more year of Spanish to get a Ph.D., or I could learn Old English. I was there to study temporality, as much as a very generous and forward thinking English department would let me, and another South American, an Argentine I love… More

O Yes, W.

ᚠ
byþ frofur.         fira gehwylcum.
Sceal ðeah manna gehwylc.         miclun hyt dælan.
gif he wile. for drihtne         domes hleotan ᛬᛫

It is a consolation to each one of us,
Though each of us must distribute it generously,
If we will before God, cast lots for judgement.

 

ᚢ
byþ anmod.         and ofer hyrned.
fela frecne. deor         feohteþ. mid hornum.
mære morstapa.         ꝥ is modig wuht ᛬᛫

It is singleminded and overhorned
Fiercely dangerous wild beast, fights with horns
Famous moor-stepper; that is a spirited being.

 

Þ
byþ ðearle scearp.         ðegna gehwylcum.
anfengys yfyl         ungemetun reþe.
manna gehwylcun.         ðe him mid resteð ᛬᛫

It is severely sharp for all of the attendants
Laying hold of it is evil, with unmet cruelty
For anybody who rests with them.

 

ᚩ
byþ ordfruma.         ælcre spræce.
wisdomes wraþu.         and witena frofur.
and eorla gehwam.         eadnys and to hiht ᛬᛫

It is the source of every speech,
The support … More

Alphybettyformed Verbage

A is always for apple. B is for a lot of stuff. Ball, bear, boat, banana, so many B things. Very early we learn from the one to the infinite is but a step.

The Old English Rune Poem is an alphabet book. It looks like an alphabet book, but like a modern alphabet book there’s infinitely more to it, if you look close. Every stanza of the poem describes a letter, a rune. In Old English the word rune means secret. The secret is these letters weren’t just for writing. In secret, when nobody was looking, people could carve the runes into bits of wood and cast lots with them. Find out their fates. Answer a few questions. Solve some problems. They could do this because each stanza of the Rune Poem, gives a little bit of wisdom, a little picture of life, sometimes a warning. Always in the form of a riddle. The … More