Catachresis

Deliberately unnatural usage. I spend most of the morning with that word, wishing I had a few more reference books. I've misplaced my Greek dictionary, but I do find a book of Sri Lanka aphorisms that I had forgotten about. "Never let an elephant in the garden." Catachresis came up in a book on metaphor. I make a note to get the wonderfully attractive new librarian to help me out. She's asked several times if she could help me with anything, found a few things for me, and was impressed with my knowledge of the fork. A reference librarian, after all, likes to do their thing. Taking a little shuffle outdoors, I'd stopped down at the print-shop stoop to roll a smoke and the sky was a neutral off-white, fairly bright, and suddenly there are buds on the red maples and poplars, I'm seeing them quite clearly, and they weren't there day before yesterday. Yesterday I think it rained and I stayed indoors Temperature? It did hit seventy. Thawing earth? Running sap? I went back to the house for the small bow-saw, cut off a couple of branches on a red maple (because I like the sap) and sure enough, running strong. It's doesn't seem odd to me, to be standing in the woods, in my tattered overalls (fucking green briar) sucking on sticks. All sap carries sugar, so it's a great source for water, the first sport's drink. Even the Mackletree, a sycamore, carries one or two percent. Forget all that crap about a sheep's stomach, use plastic buckets, I only make bamboo spiles because they're cheap and easy, and there's a stand of bamboo west of Friendship on Route 52. Free for the taking. Egyptians used vegetable starch to fill and smooth papyrus. I found polishing with a stone worked very well. It's actually fairly easy to make papyrus if you have the time. Once Ted and I tricked out a decent press, a three-ton hydraulic jack in a very stout frame, we found we could make paper from almost anything, pressure is the key. The micro-fibers on the fibers want to mesh together, felting and papermaking are closely related. The frogs are loud tonight, but I'm listening to Mahler and the frogs don't stand a chance. I take a few breaks, get up for wee drams, smoke a lot, and it takes almost twenty-four hours to listen to nine symphonies. I listen to the cello suites, which is a little over two hours, maybe once a month, they are the most sublime thing I know. I borrowed a book, I have it for a month, and I'd buy a copy but it's quite expensive, that documents the wrought iron work in the American Cathedral in DC. It's incredible. There are still people who can do that. Bronze tools are still very important, where you don't want to make a spark, but the Bronze Age was a brief period, once you learned about higher temperatures and melting other rocks, cast iron, wrought iron, and steel. Steel is purified iron. Coke is charcoal coal. It burns very hot. Converting ore into aluminum requires most of the power grid, but you get these very cool swords, light-weight and sharp. Rain and wind, I'd better go.