On a whim…

The New York Times, quoted by Apple’s site, reports that Amtrack spokesman, Matt Hardison, said that the carrier has adopted Apple’s iOS devices to make improvements for Amtrak and customers in, “one fell swoop”.  (Amtrack Story )

That’s what I LOVE about cliches. The ubiquitous meaning of the thing fades and all that is left is a sweet sounding shibboleth. Those of us who remain the faithful adherents of language filled with meaning are assaulted by the remarkable capacity of others in our species to use a phrase only because it “sounds right” but have no sense of whether it is really appropriate.

I suppose we could get our dandruff up over this or let our craft flounder but in the end it’s all really quite funny. Take the quote and replace the cliche with a substitute bearing the meaning of the abused phrase:

Imagine this, “Amtrak’s Matt Hardison says, ‘We’ve made a number of important improvements all in one cruel, predatory, devastating attack upon our customers and Amtrak that they never saw coming.'”

Shakespeare put the phrase, “one fell swoop” into the mouth of a grieving Scot. If we replace his tight script with our own, the burden of too many worlds might lead to an early end for McDuff. A McDuff whose remorse upon learning that his family and household have been ruthlessly slaughtered is so powerfully portrayed by the image of a predatory bird diving with breath taking descent, on his hapless prey. Ah, McBeth a ruthless predator, has descended upon the house of McDuff!

So, fair Apple, from thy tall tree hast thou descended upon commuters to work mayhem and destruction?  Only on their wallets would Apple prey!

For those who missed my humor I can scarcely resist owning it. My dandruff may be “up” but the word is dander. Dander, I say,  as in a frothy fermented roiling mass. In an argument some ill tempered people become so worked up the spit flies as if they were foaming; His dander is up.

As to water craft, they founder, not flop about like Sole (flounder).  So far as I know all founder remain seaworthy even after they flop about. In the latter case a ship may strike a reef and be dashed in such a way that the vessel breaks apart; It founders.

Snow falling finally. Not the pretty flakes, but tiny frozen dandruff. Here in deep southern New Hampshire we’ve had March weather since October 31st. I suppose I should suppress it but I keep thinking there should lyrics for this that are sung to the melody of Don Ho’s “Tiny Bubbles”.

Tiny snowflakes (tiny snowflakes)
In the breeze (in the breeze). . .

I wonder how it came to be that right to left was the way to read… for some but not all of ‘us’? In a left to right world how do the ‘right to left’ live? Are there closet right readers (those who read wrong)? In a world where calamity is the expectation and on a slow news night the increased humidity of a mild summer night is presented by the ‘chief meterologist’ with a view toward the apocalypse it seems likely that the end is where we find our meaning.

My beloved is a cheater reader. She doesn’t exactly read right to left but she sneaks a peak at the last chapter to decide whether she will stick with the writer to the end. Is the end, she asks, worth the effort? In a right to left world do we already know where we are bound but wonder from whence we came?

Several Sundays ago our minister wrestled with Paul, or at least Paul’s interpreters. “All things work for good.” Unlike those ‘things’ that work for food or a good salary, I suppose. No, what our minister protested was the tempation to abandon accountability for Andersonvile, Auswitz, Somalia with a blithe “all things work for good.”

When my late wife was diagnosed with her, eventually deadly, cancer two polar opposites set to work explaining our dilmena. It was all good, somehow. Or, it was all bad and we deserved it. To say I loathed the latter and the one(s) who declared it would be self evident to any who know me but to say that I equally loathed the former might come as a surprise. After all they might say, “You are a minister, of course you believe all things work for good.”

Not so fast. I find it far easier to accomodate the reality of disease, decay, and death than to explain birth, vitality, and hope. How can anyone emerge from the torture chamber and have hope or from the oncologist where ‘the facts have been explained’ and belive that there is joy afoot? I can’t speak as an authority of every instance of suffering and the discovery of goodness but I can say that I have no answer but this: goodness is conceived even in the deepest trouble.