In Quarantine Together
[Conversation is as accurate as memory allows, which is probably not too accurate.]
[The Boy and Girl are together in the living room on a Friday night. The Girl is lying on the couch, dozing, and The Boy is sitting in the chair facing her with a book called Great Love Poems on his lap. Neither Boy nor Girl can remember buying this book.]
The Boy [reading]:
By all the needs and notions of my kind
Am urged by your propinquity to find
Your person fair, and feel a certain zest –
The Girl: What does “propinquity” mean?
B: I heard that somewhere else recently, but I can’t remember. Maybe something like “proximity”?
G: Keep reading.
B [reads rest of Edna St Vincent Millay poem] “… I find this frenzy insufficient reason/For conversation when we meet again.” Wait, this is a blow-off poem. She’s ditching the guy! OK, let’s find some others. [Reads a different poem]:
G: What’s an Eremite, something like a trilobite?
B: A trilobite. Right. Definitely nothing like a trilobite.
G: Stop laughing. It sounds like some kind of fossil. Read it again.
B [reading]:
Bright star, would I were as thou art –
Not in lone splendour hung aloft the night,
And watching, with eternal lids apart,
Like nature’s sleepless Eremite,
The moving water at their priest-like task
Of pure ablution round earth’s human shores –
G: There, I knew I had a reason for thinking “trilobite”. “The moving water” makes it sound like it’s underwater, watching.
B: I’m sure it’s not a trilobite.
G: So what is it then?
B: I should know this. I’m not sure exactly but it’s like someone who stays alone in a cathedral at night counting the rosary or something.* Let me look it up.
G: Look up propinquity too.
B [holding volume I of large dictionary]: Pro, propitious, proprietary… damn, I can’t believe it’s not in there. Let me check again… Nope.
G: Wait, you’re telling me there’s a word the OED doesn’t have?
B: The OED? This isn’t the OED, this is the “Funk and Wagnalls Standard Dictionary”. I’ve had it since I was eight years old.
G: And it only has words that you already know.
B: It has words I don’t know! What’s this one: “dysphagia”?
G: I think that’s having trouble eating or something like that.
B: Hmm, “great difficulty swallowing due to some constriction of the muscles of the throat.” Well, I did not know that. Let me look up “eremite”… it just says “hermit”. Wait, hermit, Eremite… they’re really just the same word! I never noticed that. “Hermit: A person who abandons society and lives alone, especially for religious conemplations, an anchorite.” I knew there was something about religion. Oh, that’s weird, “2 A molasses cooky containing spice and sometimes raisins.” Never heard of that one. “3 A beadsman”. And look, both words are from eremita, “solitary,” from eremia, “a desert”.
G: I can’t believe it doesn’t have “propinquity”.
B: Look, it has all these other words. How about this? Do you know this one: “1. In the Middle Ages, a fine figured silken or linen cloth. 2 In art and architecture, a form of surface decoration, consisting of a system of reticulations, each of which contains a flower pattern, geometric, design, etc., either carved or painted.”
G: Uh, trompe l’oeil?
B: “3 A soft, absorbent, bleached cotton fabric, of plain or birdseye weave used for toweling, babies’ breachcloths, etc”
G: Muslin? Silk?
B: “4 A baby’s breechcloth; waistcloth.”
G: I give up.
B: Diaper.
[The Girl cracks up laughing. The Boy is always happy to hear her laughter.]
B: So, can I say that you love me so much that I can even read the dictionary to you and you’ll be entertained?
*St. Agnes’ Eve – Ah, bitter chill it was!
The owl, for all his feathers, was a -cold
The hare limp’d trembling through the frozen grass,
And silent was the flock in woolly fold:
Numb were the beadsman’s fingers, while he told
His rosary, and while his frosted breath,
Like pious incense from a censor old,
Seem’d taking flight for heaven, without a death,
Past the sweet Virgin’s picture, while his prayer he saith.
-John Keats
Image at top: inside Alhambra, author’s photo.
Best commingling of Keats and Funk & Wagnall’s that I think I’ve ever read. Thanks, Barry.
I’m sure the competition was fierce.