Invite

each and every One not the same
with separate dreams separate stories
gracefully told old and young . . .
if only asked.

Before the lights go out and we to bed
let us hear record these retell
ourselves and those to take our places
this and each in every place.

Each at the center the world we matter
our dreams our stories preserving preserve
and honor our being here and having been.
Listen and repeat we never die.

Start a point and all directions
let the magic reach round the world
to show this whole and one and center
reaching full circle in dignity's fullness.

We are each One and not the same
not the dreams not the stories when
we listen each round the world . . .
round our lives.

Invite.

to be these ways

I am subject, me,
for my object, you.
Fortunately.
I am pretty.
you are too.
Then you are subject
and I your object.
Nothing wrong.
It's just like that.
And deep in sex
we back and forth,
me the one,
you the other,
you the one,
me like you.
Forth and back
till we be come
the one in love,
knowing its ok
to be these ways.
Yes, we the selfish,
we come back
to where we start
again, again and 'gain.

Instructable

How does she look like? (incorrect--in my opinion)
What she looks like is a dream. (correction in the answer)

I hear this a lot: "That (something/-one) is how (it or s/he) looks like." This construction is substituted for or confused with "what it looks like."

To remember the two expressions--"how does she look" or "what does she look like," but not a mixture of the two: Never "how does [something or someone] look like."

Now, just to be fair, the questions of how and what are not necessarily the same. How does she look might have the answer given above. It could also mean the same as the what-question which asks for a description in order to recognize someone as opposed to another person.

Let's take a thing instead of a person to illustrate.

"How does it (the situation) look?"
"Fine. You can proceed safely."
"But what does the road look like up ahead?" (Or, how does the road look ahead?)
"All clear."

Who is making this mistake? In my casual observation, it is speakers of other languages who are using the English they have learned or heard somewhere. Or am I mistaken? Perhaps I am. I heard this on the (vererable) BBC TV last evening.

. . . how it (the busy train station) looks like . . .

Followed by showing the busy train station. So what is going on? The BBC, known for its presentation of an English everyone can understand, and I, a native American English speaker not unfamiliar with BBC and British English, arrested every time I hear what I believe to be an error?

The train station, what it looks like--description or comparison with something else. How the train station looks like--for in this case, what it looks like--description.

If you run ngrams on the two phrases, "how it looks" and "how it looks like," you get the following.

how it looks

how it looks like

And if you run a frequency count on an American English corpus, you get the following.

how it looks

The number of instances is huge.

how it looks like

This is it, the total number of instances, four.

What to make of these? My reading is that the frequency over time favors "how it looks," without like. There have been periods that have come and gone where the addition of like has taken place, but only to be "corrected" somehow through editing, highs and lows in literacy rates . . . you guess. As for such a dramatic difference in the corpora counts, the difference might be sample sizes and/or characteristics of populations? Clearly, something is or is not going on. Regional differences? generational? types of English (native vs. other) used? As more and more people learn English from non-native speakers not well versed in how the language sounds (not "sounds like"), or is used, we get this, what I call, an  error.

I confess, a small bit of a bite of difference when in most instances we think we know what the user means regardless.

Rant, recant, resolve

RANT

From AD 623 to 632, we have

This list of [100] Battles by Muhammad, [which] also includes a list of battles by Muhammad's order and comprises information about casualties, objectives, and nature of the military expeditions ordered by Muhammad, as well as the primary sources which mention the Battles. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_expeditions_of_Muhammad)

1. If fifty percent of this information is correct, Muhammad authorized or took part in "battles" at a rate of two plus per month.  (Although the word battles does not strictly apply to all offensive/defensive acts listed. Consult the source above for a fine-grained analysis.)

What then does the "injunction" mean to do as the prophet did? which derives from the following:

YUSUFALI: Ye have indeed in the Messenger of Allah a beautiful pattern (of conduct) for any one whose hope is in Allah and the Final Day, and who engages much in the Praise of Allah.
PICKTHAL: Verily in the messenger of Allah ye have a good example for him who looketh unto Allah and the Last Day, and remembereth Allah much.
SHAKIR: Certainly you have in the Messenger of Allah an excellent exemplar for him who hopes in Allah and the latter day and remembers Allah much.
(Source: http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/033-qmt.php#033.021)

2. I say unto thee, take serious note of any movement claiming such categorical (divine) correctness about inflicting pain, suffering, death on others. Was there no such thing . . . is there no such thing as diplomacy and peacemaking? Or something better, such as live and let live and let God sort us all out.

YUSUFALI: And thou (standest) on an exalted standard of character.
PICKTHAL: And lo! thou art of a tremendous nature.
SHAKIR: And most surely you conform (yourself) to sublime morality.

YUSUFALI: Soon wilt thou see, and they will see,
PICKTHAL: And thou wilt see and they will see
SHAKIR: So you shall see, and they (too) shall see,

YUSUFALI: Which of you is afflicted with madness.
PICKTHAL: Which of you is the demented.
SHAKIR: Which of you is afflicted with madness.
Source: http://www.usc.edu/org/cmje/religious-texts/quran/verses/068-qmt.php#068.004)

Nice irony. Whose madness?

3. Increased numbers will also become deluded and miss the messages of what Islam says and does and stands for. For example, the soon to be released film, "Muhammad: The Messenger of God," will beget converts, as well as controversy. According to "Sami Yusuf, who is one of the Islamic world's biggest musical stars and who sang the soundtrack for the film. . . ."

You cannot study Mohammad's life and not fall in love with him and his character. If this film makes people of the world know our prophet better and see how kind he was, we have done our job.
(Source: http://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran/Sunni-Muslim-clerics-furious-over-anticipated-Iranian-film-about-Muhammad-413587)

Kind? Kind of an antithesis as seen by other than the chosen. No war is without human suffering. No human is immune to suffering if a loved one is taken for words not uttered under duress. Convert or die? (This from other parts of the holy book. Have a look if interested.)

RECANT

I have been a pacifist all my life. Cooperation and mutual understanding have been my lived principles.

Given the clear and present danger in the face of Islam and its origins in and adherence to the words of Allah, I reject the choice to convert or die. He, and I do mean _he_, has a gun as should I. My choice is for me and my family and my friends and my acquaintances and my fellow nationals and my fellow world citizens. I will shoot.*

RESOLVE

It is not difficult to look into the matters of Islam, from its founder to its teachings and scriptures. Without deep scholarship and based on cursory examination, anyone can learn enough to dismiss the religion, especially its political and missionary intentions. To volunteer to become a missionary or more for the cause, read and learn if ever so lightly as is here demonstrated. To board boat, train, or plane and head for the battlefront before doing so, well, consider yourself lost.

While living in or visiting a more secular state, to protest in public and demand the heads of unbelievers or to claim that the western nation-states are violating the word of Allah, these are life-and-death threats and therefore can be strongly censured--deportation will be among the next responses from  awakening democracies and other civilized corners. Back to wherever you who so speak can consort with other like minded delusionals.**

--
* Containment-isolation is a humane (evolved?) alternative, if you have the opportunity and luxury for implementing same.
**For more on the battles of Islam, see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im0IisZ77QI. IMPORTANT STUDY, NOT TO MISS.

(Im)precisely

He added, "Brothers and sisters don't be fooled by your desires, this life is short and bitter and the opportunity to submit to allah may pass you by."

A Washington Post article online concerning one of the latest shootings in the US outlined the different lives the shooter, Mohammad Youssef Abdulazeez, led. As with many articles online, advertisements were sprinkled throughout, among them this one concerning wine. What is interesting is that the advertisement comments nicely on what the article at that point was highlighting in the writings of Mr. Abdulazeez. 

I question the mechanical insertion of advertisements into "content," always, but that is perhaps a minority view. As this one, however, makes clear, Mr. Abdulazeez's interests are eerily underlined and give pause to the wisdom of scrambling content with Mammon's messages. 

Isn't that what these intrusions and diversions are? Down with the silly and time-wasting insertions . . . they even lead to posts like this one, where the diversion is the subject, not what the article says, much less what the article might mean.

Oh, the title and authors in case someone might want to delve. Chattanooga shooter's real, online lives seem to take divergent paths, by Greg Jaffe, Thomas Gibbons-Neff and Adam Goldman, July 17, 2015.

What we know

https://twitter.com/hashtag/distractinglysexy?src=hash

From NPR

If you're catching up, British scientist Tim Hunt, 72, made the remarks at an international conference in South Korea, where he reportedly said, "You fall in love with them [women], they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry." On Wednesday, Hunt apologized--to an extent--and resigned his honorary professorship at University College London.

A different report

In 2001, Tim Hunt won a share of a Nobel Prize. In 2006, he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II. But in 2015, he's being widely criticized for his recent remarks about women in science, including: "when you criticize them, they cry."

Hunt, a biochemist, made that and other comments during a speech this week at the World Conference of Science Journalists that's being held in South Korea this week. He was quoted in a tweet that's since been shared hundreds of times, asking the audience to "let me tell you about my trouble with girls."

"Three things happen when they are in the lab," Hunt said, according to conference attendee Connie St. Louis, who is both a scientist and journalist. "You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you and when you criticize them, they cry."

Hunt, 72, went on to say that he doesn't want to get in the way of women in science — but that he favors the idea of single-sex labs. The scientist confirmed today that his words had been accurately reported, and he apologized for offending people, even as he insisted that the presence of women in labs is "disruptive."

A "scientist" mayor speaks

Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, weighed in on Hunt's remark and the now mounting alluvion, or is it more accurately a conflagration? He "applied science" to what Hunt had said and showed(?) that women do cry more often than men. Johnson also said that Hunt "was giving a light-hearted, off-the-cuff speech to some scientific journalists." Was Hunt making known a scientific finding for the science journalists? (Stretch.)

What we don't know

Take one reporter's version and lightly compare with another's (to wit, the quotations and summary above). The context for the remark or remarks is unclear. We thus know nothing. We weren't there, and it appears neither were a lot of "politically-correct-speech police" who have stirred the pot--there is no end to the metaphors we can command to describe this. . . .

What we do

Finally, we know something and it's all we need to know. A person has claimed, in jest or seriously, he has trouble with girls/women. No fuss there. His was an I-statement. And so what?

One fuss should be about getting the story straight. What was the context? What did he say? How did he say it? The next fuss should be that if the perpetrator actually harms others by his words or deeds, most assuredly contain him. But if he merely alarms and not harms, there need be no fuss at all.

Is alarm necessary in this case? Oh, the sins we commit by saying something about ourselves and what we think and feel. God forgive us for even having human traits.

Thank god, oops, God, for humor (see #distractinglysexy). Humor is the best fuss in this and other things or people we can make fun of.

Pleased to meet you

And now, may I call you by your first name?

This is how I think it should go in all circles where we are quoting or referring to what someone has said. For indeed, once we have heard or read what has come into our sensory space, we are--thus--intended audience. The spoken or written once released into the wild solicits attending, and once delighted or slogged by reaching the end of the communiqué, we are friends or enemies or bored neighbors, but more known than known about, intimates, definitely not strangers.

I was reminded of this insight recently, or it was made clearer to me when a reader castigated me for something I had written, his message proffered without so much as a salutation. I noted that and had some feelings about him and what he had written because of the omission. Did he know me so well that he could launch his salvo skipping more conventional correspondence conventions? I guess he felt he did, or he was so upset he couldn't bother, so carried away was he with writing his own message that I should "get" and proceed to my just reward.

And then this came into my inbox. An article in the _New York Review of Books_ seemed to support the notion of knowing, in the sense of being more familiar with the person as writer once we had read his or her words.

It seems impossible, at least for me, to read almost anything without being aware of the person behind it and without putting that person in relation to what he or she has written and indeed to readers of the book, to the point that I sometimes wonder, in the teeth of a literary critical tradition that has always told us the writer's personality is irrelevant to any appraisal of the work, whether one of the pleasures of literature isn't precisely this contemplation of the enigma of the person creating it.*

I find the way we usually refer to the writer or speaker, including the conspicuous absence of any reference whatsoever, disturbing and contrary to the relationship we always have now that we have read or heard another's words. We have been in the other's presence and thus now effectively introduced as two together traveling along Discourse Road at least as far as the subject matter or the relationship drives us.

My grievance is this. When academics, although not exclusive to this subculture, want to quote or comment on what another has contributed to the knowledge base or a discussion, we say, "__________ [enter person's last name] has said . . . " or contends or questions, etc. "Shakespeare [not Mr. Shakespeare or Will or William or Bill] treated such-and-such theme in _Hamlet_."  Everyone knows this William Shakespeare, or The Bard, but he is and has long been his LastName, and we keep on speaking of him and his works by using just LastName. Darby is someone we think we don't know, and we say, "Darby concludes that her experiment in social constructionism demonstrates" that such-and-such-and-so-on.

Now, William Shakespeare or Willa Darby are people we do now know intimately having read their each of their words or heard them performed. (Don't get confused. Willa Darby doesn't exist even though you think she does because you were googling around just now. I am imagining her here as some kind of scientist who said/wrote something, just to make a point.) We effectively become intimates with these people, connected through the highly personal and sincere efforts of theirs to communicate something and our personal and sincere efforts in listening to a first person relate what is important to him or her. Shouldn't that count for a more personal reference if we want to tell our stories about ourselves quoting or referencing our intimates?

Mr. Shakespeare conveys a closer feeling-tone, does it not? I know he is dead, but he lives in our consciousness in the present through his great works, that is words. And Willa, she for her part is not only a respected professional but now among those I would call upon to support me and lend credibility to my thoughts or feelings on subjects of our mutual concern. I show my interest and concern for her by attending to what she has done her best to express. She likewise demonstrates her interest and concern for me by carefully devoting focused energy on a matter she thinks I and others need to know about, understand, feel.

What is the order of intimacy or familiarity you ask, because some writers and speakers command different respect. Different forms of address signal different register. There is a difference between Willa and Dr. Darby. Well, this is all fodder for another treatise which probably has already been chewed and spit out by someone. Other than the LastName convention, these denotations and nuances can be set aside, or google 'em if you like.

My point comes down to the fact that I don't like, and never have, referring to others we bring into our lives and conversations by using just a surname. Cold, impersonal, rude? Perhaps that is going a bit far. But if I felt that someone is person enough to have become one of those I would quote or reference in what I want to say, doesn't s/he deserve more than LastName? Mr. Shakespeare is respectful and suitable as a handle for polite academic discussions. Dr. Darby sounds both respectful and personal if I am referring to her and her professional work. Smith next door is really closer than my use of this his LastName. He is really Bob, and he drives me crazy. (No. Just kidding.)

You have surmised, have you not, that I have never liked it when I have heard someone refer to me by this LastName business. Perhaps more importantly, how does it sound to you? you as your last name only?

Assume you have said something and others have heard or read you and are making reference to you or what you have said in sanity or its opposite. Say this out loud inserting your last name where indicated.

    _LastName_ yesterday said that the number of migrants entering Europe from Africa with the "help" of traffickers was appalling. "Something should be done by individual governments, yes, but the EU has some role to play. They had better start talking now to resolve this situation," _LastName_  said.

Alternatively, have someone read the above out loud to you. Think about it for a moment. How's that feel?

Call me the crazy and overly-sensitive one, but I hear my own last name when someone refers to me as strange, oddly distant, imperfect, something I can't quite label. As if I am not here, or there. It is a kind of out of body experience for me, although I have never had one of those. Am I dead or what? I am right here, buddy. But I am sure I was not far away when I heard or read reference to me other than by my given name. Definitely jarring, not agreeable.

Thus a proposal, which I know will be impossible to see taken up in any foreseeable future and certainly not in my lifetime: Do away with the shorthand LastName utterance when referring to someone who has spoken personally to you. Find a more friendly and persuasive and engaging way to talk about our fellow travelers.

We know so little about Shakespeare's life, and yet as we read his sonnets, or watch his plays, we develop an idea of Shakespeare, and we are aware of a continuity of "personality" behind the writing. We have the impression that if someone ever did find the full story of his life, we would immediately recognize the person we had in mind.*

Please not Shakespeare. Let that be William Shakespeare.
__________
* from _The Writer's Shadow_ by Tim Parks,  http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2015/jun/08/writers-shadow-antonio-tabucchi/