All my life I’d been sheltered by mother, no one wanted to play with me cus’ I wasn’t allowed out of the garden, or allowed to climb trees. Mother wouldn’t let me take part in school sports just in case I had an asthma attack and died.

You might think it’s normal for a parent to worry about their only child, but I was never diagnosed with asthma, mother just worried that one-day I might catch it off another child. Basically I wasn’t well liked at school, the first 6 years of my school life I had to wear a braces on my front teeth, not the nice small ones they have now, nope I looked like a rabid dog in a muzzle.

Then when I was 11, I had them taken off, but the damage had been done. No girls would talk to me, no boys wanted to hang with me. I was a fully-fledged loner, the school geek. Because of the teasing I didn’t want to be there.

The only girlfriend I ever had was Dorothy that was when I was 9.

She lived next door and I’d known her all my life, we used to play doctors and nurses in the back yard.

We had lots of fun in her Wendy house, she’d show me her “moomoo” and I’d show her my nob. One time when it was cold I complained that my willy was cold and felt like it was going to fall off, she suggested I put something over it to warm it up.

She used to make tiny outfits for her dolls and she had this little sequin jacket, so for a giggle I put that on my nob, after that my little Elvis would often dance to “Jail House Rock” for her.

C: Why do we bother with these discussions?

H: I believe there's always something to be learned from others.

C: So bug someone else then.

H: Fat chance. When you resist, I only get more determined.

C: (frowning) That doesn't sound like you.  I always thought you gave up quite often.

H: You would think that.

C: I just see things clearly.  You're the one with misty eyes.

H: (rolling eyes) Don't give me that nonsense. Optimism isn't a perspective, it's a mind set.

C: Oh that's rich. You're all about perspective!  In fact, your optimism fixates on some distant horizon and foreshortens all the hard work and obstacles that lie in between.  You have no sense or measure of what stands between you and your goals.  I see the magnitudes and the dimensions before me with a critical eye.

H: Critical?  More like hypocritical.  You never see the horizon at all.  You focus on the path instead.  That's why you never actually get anywhere.  I choose - it's a mindset, remember - to believe in the best horizon, but that doesn't mean I overlook the path.  I simply let it temper my outlook rather than overwhelm it.

C: Choice and belief.  Those are always your go-tos.  You see adversity and think you can will it away.  That's your mindset - close off your mind - which is really to say that your perspective is one of limited vision.  I, on the other hand, prefer acceptance and reason.  Adversity happens to us all, there's no stopping it, but at least I grapple with it rationally and refuse to sugarcoat it with free will and unbound trust in some nebulous "better".

H: (laughs) Acceptance and reason!  You don't even realize it, but those are just choice and belief in reverse.  Belief is acceptance, and choice is reason.  The only difference is that one is passive and the other is active.  You passively accept adversity where I actively believe I can overcome it.  I actively choose to look forward where you passively reason about where to go next.  That's pathetic.

C: (sarcastically, mimicking a Southern belle) I, Cynicism, am just a passive person buffeted about by the vagaries of life, and you, Hope, are the real hero actively fighting the good fight. (seriously now)  Where's Practicality?  He'd be laughing his ass off right now.

H: (looking hurt)  Oh, come on!  It's a stretch, to be sure, but I think it's a promising line of argument.

C: You would think that.

H: I give up.  You're just an asshole.

If you chart the family tree of Langston Hughes (1902–1967) you realize why the root system of his writing is deep, dense and intricate: The DNA of African slaves and Kentucky slave-owners unleashed in him a cataclysmically creative canvas that captured the turbulence of 20th-Century American culture and converted it into words in a way seldom seen before or since.

Some categorized it as Jazz Poetry.

Rarely do style and substance swirl and twirl together so eloquently — swaying whimsically one moment, gyrating energetically the next.

Hughes expressed the African-American experience during The Harlem Renaissance, “a cultural, social, and artistic explosion that took place in Harlem, New York” in the 1920s.

Words were his friends, his solace, his escape. Here’s how he explained it in his 1940 autobiography, “The Big Sea”:

“I was unhappy for a long time, and very lonesome, living with my grandmother. Then it was that books began to happen to me, and I began to believe in nothing but books and the wonderful world in books — where if people suffered, they suffered in beautiful language, not in monosyllables, as we did in Kansas.”

Though Hughes produced much memorable work, his poem “Let America Be America Again” seems especially appropriate given the nation’s most-recent self-inflicted wounds. 

Here’s, perhaps, its most powerful slice:

Out of the rack and ruin of our gangster death,

The rape and rot of graft, and stealth, and lies,

We, the people, must redeem

The land, the mines, the plants, the rivers.

Redemption can be messy. Why? How do you make something better without work. Pain. Sweat. Blood. How do you make something more acceptable without discipline. Focus. Direction. Guidance.

Can’t be done.

But redemption represents a distant dream, a fixed celestial point, a Star of Bethlehem teasing the Wise to launch a demanding and difficulty journey that offers promise — but no guarantees.

What sustains men and women on such an uncertain voyage?

Hughes put it this way: “Hold fast to dreams, for if dreams die, life is a broken-winged bird that cannot fly.”

Cubs,

No longer schlubs,

Now they're “The Champs.”

(Those little scamps … )

Cursed?

That jinx’s dispersed.

“Get outta town!”

(It’s been shut down.)

Theo,

He's no “Bambino,”

Built a team:

So “Lean & Mean.”

Maddon?

Joe never saddened;

Coached like a Yoda,

Sip-pin’ his soda.

Zobrilla,

Quite a fella,

“M-V-P”

Don’t you agree?

Winners!

Chicken dinners!

(No more goats

For Chi-town folks.)

Cheers,

& lots of beers,

From Harry Caray.

(That’s really scary!)

Fans?

They've big plans.

Parades in streets:

Wow, what-ta treat!

Cubs,

Their super club:

They're really “Champs.”

(Those winning scamps … )

I remembered you looked at me,

and said with a laugh,

"You're too smart to have friends,"

and I laughed back,

thinking on, 

what an ugly truth was in that statement. 

Good day, Prosers.

In this week’s Throwback Thursday, we look at the origins of swearing. The full version with beautiful imagery can be found later on the blog site. 

Let’s face it, most of us turn the air blue at some time or another. We often bleed blue ink when writing, too. Those that are offended by swearing, please look away.

Swearing, cursing, profanity and expletives all perform certain psychological functions, and use particular linguistic and neurological mechanisms; similar in behavior to chimpanzees when angry. Yes, it’s actually a form of anger management! But where did the use of expletives originate?

Unsurprisingly, many swear words have been around for thousands of years, and, of course, we have a lot to thank the ancient Romans for when it comes to swearing as a form of naughty language.

Swear words tend to fall into two categories, oaths and profanities—like taking the Lord’s name in vain—and then there's obscene words, including biological terms as well as sexual and racial slurs.

The Romans gave us a model for the obscene words type of swearing, Melissa Mohr explains in her book ‘Holy Shit: A Brief History of Swearing’. Like us, their swearing was similarly based on sexual taboos, but with a different spin. “The Romans didn’t divide people up [by being heterosexual and homosexual],” she says. “They divided people into active and passive. So what was important was to be the active partner.”

Hence, the sexual slurs used were more along the lines of words the likes of pathicus, a rather graphic term which basically means receiver. Ooer!

Swearing and cussing as we know it evolved much later on, with certain theories of their origins being acronyms savagely disregarded due to how late their examples as acronyms appeared.

"For unlawful carnal knowledge" or "fornication under consent of the king" are both false explanations for the word fuck and have a catalogued etymology. As for placing the letters S.H.I.T. as a precaution against potential explosions on containers at sea, apparently standing for "ship high in transit" — well, just no. The word shit has a much older and documented history.

Fuck can be traced back over 500 years to Norwegian fukka and Swedish focka, both meaning "to copulate." The OED's second edition, cites its use in English as fukkit in 1503, but the earliest current spelling appears as "Bischops ... may fuck thair fill and be vnmaryit" from poet Sir David Lyndesay in 1535.

“Shit is an extremely old word that’s found in Anglo-Saxon texts,” Mohr says in her book. What English-speakers now call arses and farts can also be traced back to the Anglo-Saxons, she adds, though in those times the terms wouldn’t have been considered as impolite as they are today, simply biological.

Shit as a noun nods to Old English scitte, meaning "purging, diarrhea." And just the basic form of excrement stems from Old English scytel. The action, however, has a much more widespread history — Dutch schijten and German scheissen. The Proto-Indo-European base skie conveys the idea of separation, in this case, from the body.

As for Piss, English includes this as both a noun and verb. The verb appeared in the 1300s from French pissier, "to urinate," and vulgar Latin, pissiare. The noun came later, in the 1400s, and eventually morphed into an intensifying adjective — piss-poor, piss-ugly, etc. — around World War II

Still cussing, yet to many a lesser version, is the word Bitch. As a female dog, its use dates as early as the Old Norse bikkjuna. Its use as a term of contempt to women, though, began in the 1400s.

The word is first seen used this way in the Chester Plays of the 1400s. "Who callest thou queine, skabde bitch?" Basically, "Who are you calling a whore, you miserable bitch?”

"The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue," published in 1811, calls bitch "the most offensive appellation that can be given to an English woman, even more provoking than that of whore."

We have looked in depth at the etymology of several swear words on this blog before, all of which can be found listed in the comments section below...

But what of that which offends the religious? The term profane is from classical Latin profanus, literally "before (outside) the temple". It carried the meaning of either "desecrating what is holy" or "with a secular purpose" as early as the 1450s CE.

Profanity represented secular indifference to religion or religious figures, while blasphemy was a more offensive attack on religion and religious figures, considered sinful, and a direct violation of The Ten Commandments. Moreover, many Bible verses speak against swearing.

In Medieval times oaths were believed to physically injure Jesus Christ as he sat next to his Father in heaven. Phrases such as “by God’s bones” or “by God’s nails,” were looked upon as the opposite to ceremonies conjuring Christ’s physical body in a wafer and his blood in wine.

Goddamn followed and clearly compound word of "God" and "damn." "Damn" originates from the Latin damnare which means "to condemn." And God originated with Norse goth.

The French brought the two together by referring to the English as les goddems during the Hundred Years War because of their frequent profanity, according to Geoffrey Hughes' book, "A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths, and Profanity in English."

So which is your favourite to use and does it make you feel better to do so? Do you not swear or cuss at all? Whether you do, or not; you will never be censored when writing on Prose. So come all over our pages if you want, or fucking don’t if you don’t.

Until next time,

Prose

FACT: To be part of present "Civilized Society" you have to have money yourself or access to someone willing to pay on your behalf.

This fact didn't really press on me until a few years ago when I started making an effort to minimize my dependency on money. It made me more aware of money's impact on society, and its politics; how even maintaining your ability to prove you're you, costs money.

It made me realize we're living in a mutated version of Feudalism.

As a born and raised American, I can only speak truly for the observations in my country, though I don't doubt you can find these correlations everywhere.

The Government are our Lords, to whom we pay taxes and rely on for protection of our lands (country); though we, the Surfs, do not give up our personal, individual goods, we're tasked with joining the working class to keep the profit wheels spinning on the fruits of our collective labors and skills; not doing so is the equivalent of being part of the dregs/worthless class.

The Corporate leaders are the Kings and Confidants who move the Lords like pawns to maintain their claims and financial strength-- even military strength.

These Kings and Confidants conquer laws like land, manipulating gains in their favor by any means necessary. Playing the Surfs like peasant fools fed only the information needed to fuel the cause-- save the few independents who seek the all-truth. Some Lords fight it but how much sway can the Lords have when they rely on the Kings and Confidants to maintain their station?

The Surfs are lead to believe their support matters in the decisions of Lords, Kings and Confidants... but as individuals such support or lack of support means nothing. The Surfs remain hard working peasants fighting to obtain the luxury and wealth they see in those stationed above them. They are the majority but balancing the every-day woes of such a class leave little time to take note, much less set aside the differences for the sake of the similarities in goals-- to band together and change a nation, their nation.

The Surfs who do know, are aware and speak up to educate the others, are often persecuted like Protestants fighting Catholic rule in the 16th Century. As if their claims or actions are treasonous...

In this mutated version of Feudalism, the Kings and Confidants do not rule out in the open, they fill the ranks of an umbrella of companies and their subsidiaries all employing the working class and providing them goods the Lords deem fit, at the behest of said Kings and Confidants-- those who have influence on the Kings and their inner circles.

The peasants are usually the last to know the all-truth of any given situation, and often do their best not to disrupt the current balance and make things harder than they already are-- failing to realize they're otherwise already on a slow decline giving a portion of their lives and well being to the Kings and Confidants every time they buy their products, use their services and/or accept what they say and do as the all-truth.

These Surfs may not have their houses and land burned down but they get foreclosed, evicted and just as ruined for decades to come. Lords in this regard, aren't much different, often having families to threaten, titles to strip and favors to take back as punishment; when execution isn't covertly ordered sometimes as easily as a Surf, though rarely in as high a number.

As the lowest rung of the social-economic ladder, this working class of people take the brunt of the bad in the way shit runs down hill. They may live beyond their means because they've grown up believing they have to appear ready for where they want to be before they get there. Indebted they're at the mercy of the Lords and their chain of command. Slaves to the wage standards of worth set by the Lords and their High-Minded overseers.

For perspective... the only constant, the control factor between all three tiers in this scenario is time.

TIME

24 hours a day, 120 hours for a 5 day week, sleeping 8 hours a day (40 hrs a 5 day week) leaving 80 waking hours of time per person.

A person, a low-end Surf if you will, paid the minimum wage of $7.25 and hour, is likely to sell at least 40, half, of their waking hours to the holdings of the Kings and Consorts, just to make the proverbial ends meet. A mere $290 a week, before paying taxes, insurance and securities to the Lords of their country.

On such wages for their time, they may work for more than one proprietor the full extent of their waking hours to provide for themselves, their families, and or to maintain previously stated appearances in reach for more than they have. A whole $580 a five day week, before paying their Lord-commanded-dues.

The Kings, Confidants and Lords who do care for the Surfs they financially live so far away from, often barely blip the radar field full of those who'd kill thousands of the Surfs just to boost their coffers, and start a war to pave the path to invasion. Making it difficult for the Surfs to even know they have such support, and harder still for those Supporters to navigate the mine-field of selfish will, finance, and influence determined to maintain underhanded control.

It's a grim world, one that will require the collective efforts and awareness, of the majority, to change it.

|| another_proser ||

The happiest thing I can possibly imagine is me, living in a library. There would be all my favorite books there, and all my yet to come favorite books. I would read all day! And maybe all night, too. My library would be in the woods. I would be able to read with the trees. I would dive into my books like you, reader, would into a pool. Adventures would surround me constantly. But I would not only read; I would also have a Writing Corner where I wrote books. I would sell them, but I would also keep a copy too. My library would be very small; but then again, smaller is cozier. I would not be lonely because I would have friends come and stay with me. They could do what they wanted; hike in the woods or read/write with me. It would be wonderful! Just me, my friends, and my library.