Reading round up – testicles and unanswerable questions
Two things I have read last week have rattled around my head a little.
Firstly, a line in the last few pages of Paul Auster’s ‘City of Glass’ of the ‘The New York Trilogy’,
Food itself could never answer the question of food: it only delayed the moment the question would have to answered in earnest.
Truth, right there. And it got me thinking about how many other things in our life that do not answer their own questions, such as love, success, etc. However, those things can be forgone, we do not have to enter their cycle if we don’t wish to. It is perfectly possible to live alone, in poverty. But we have to do this dance with food, whether we like it or not, making us unbearably mortal.
Secondly, I’ve recently finished Gavin Francis’ ‘Adventures in Human Being’. I have a lot of work-related medical and anatomy texts, but this book was recommended to me as not only is the case study for Bell’s Palsy like myself, someone who doesn’t recover the same as most people do, but Francis’ view of the body as a landscape, and a home, feels similar to mine, in that I’ve moved so many times, and know I will move many more, I don’t feel at home geographically, it’s physically, here in this again, unbearably mortal shell, that I am home. And he also mentioned how the word ‘testify’ is believed from testicles, and I cannot believe I never made that connection before, as I was aware that Romans used to swear oaths whilst holding onto each other’s testicles, so it makes sense. And some think that the testicles were a witness to a man’s virility, hence the association with testifying the facts of a matter.
But my problem is, this means I cannot testify, not really. And I couldn’t have sworn oaths in ancient Rome. Most men don’t know where the ovaries are, a large amount of women don’t either, so to ‘ovafy’ would be a guess, and probably look more like patting down pockets for keys than locating organs. ‘Breastify’ makes more sense, and also a nice, rhyming feminine version, although it would be more fun to ‘boobify’ to the facts of the case, when I presented my ‘boobimony’ to the court, m’ laud.
Etymology is a hole that if I don’t watch out, I will fall into and never be seen again, as this stuff is just fascinating.
🙂 So glad this practice has fallen out of favour.
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Me too, although it would be fascinating to watch agreements being made between Putin and Obama this way 😉
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🙂
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Thank God that’s over 😀
Hey Lucy, you said that you have medical books for work..are you a doctor? I’ve never met a doctor with your excellent sense of humor though :p
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Ha! Thanks 😉 I’m not a doctor, I’m an embalmer and spent a decade nursing before heading downstairs to the mortuary, where it’s a whole lot quieter 😉
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Oh! That is quiet!
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Boobify! I just snorted tea. I didn’t know that connection between testify and testicles either. Etymology is utterly fascinating!
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Indeed, boobify, sister! I’m going ot be like Beavis and Butthead now, sniggering at every court or evangelical preacher scene in every film I watch from here on 😉
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“patting down pockets for keys”… Oh, hell, you are on fire! I appreciate your brand of humor, as it is not trying to be cute or clever, but merely observational.
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Thanks dude, have a good week! 🙂
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Just when I thought the subject of testicles had reached its apex of interesting, you have proved otherwise. I would get a bit testy if another man had his hands around mine which would be the only time I would ever have three.
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Yay! That is what I want on my gravestone, ‘When others had written off testicles as no longer interesting, she proved otherwise.’
I should be on the telly.
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There are channels for that sort of thing…
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