I live in a small city in southern Oregon, practically perfect in every way; folks here are intellectually alive, culturally aware, decent and interesting.  The valley is strikingly beautiful and the climate is mostly mild with the occasional decorative snow fall.

This is Shakespeare country, home of the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, welcoming thousands of tourists each season, so it was probably inevitable that cutesy Shakespearean puns would pop up as local businesses attached themselves to the tourist trade.  We have a health food and vitamin shop known as All’s Well and two Puck’s Doughnut shops.  When it comes to Inns and Bed and Breakfasts, all bets are off.  The Bard’s Inn, The Windsor Inn, the Stratford Inn, Arden Forest Inn, A Midsummer’s Dream, Anne Hathaway’s B and B and Garden Suites,  and a dozen equally Elizabethan spots clog the local directory of places to land in town.

I get it.  Makes sense.  And then, out of nowhere, banners fly announcing the arrival of the Waffle Barn.  I like waffles; I like barns.  But, hey!  The combination is just wrong..

No matter how you pitch them, if you look at the pyramid of the major food groups, waffles belong right there at the base – securely anchored among the comfort foods.  And when might you need some comfort?  For a start:

Relationship in the dumpster?  Passed over for promotion?  Tried on clothes at the store and nothing fit?   Contacted by an old flame an old flame on Facebook looking younger and better than ever while your profile picture looks as if had been taken at the morgue?  IRS audit coming up?  Black cloud hovering overhead?  Wondering if it’s all worth while?  Looking back at a life seemingly frittered away?  Figuring out that your mom loved your sister more than she loved you?

Whatever.

Nothing is ever so daunting that it can’t be remedied with a late night ride on the Comfort Food Express.  Any one of the food friends listed below and/or any combination holds the promise of immediate relief.

Mac and cheese, chocolate,pot pies, any pie, biscuits and gravy, chocolate chip pancakes, mashed potatoes, fried chicken, more chocolate, green bean casserole, chicken soup, tamale pie, any other kind of pie, more chocolate, chips and salsa, milkshakes, sundaes, tuna casserole, chili, chili fries, chili mac and cheese, pizza… and waffles.

Of course, comfort arrives in different guises as you bounce around the globe.  Brits seem to  hunker down with mooshy things, mashed peas, boiled potatoes, custards, the highly regarded Spotted Dick (pudding made with suet and custard) and Bangers and Mash (sausages and mashed potatoes covered in brown sauce).  Drooping in Russia?  Order up some solyanka, but make sure to ladle in a dollop of sour cream to mellow out the pickled cucumbers,cabbage, dill, and brine that make this hearty broth.  Out of sorts in Poland?  Try the makaron ze smietana, a frothy pasta with strawberries and cream.  Yes, I said pasta with strawberries.

Butter, sugar, suet, fat, rich, sweet, salty – these are words that bring comfort.

I’ll tell you where comfort is not to be found.

In a barn.

Barns are for cows, and horses, and sheep, and hay, and grain, manure, and rats.  Large animals live there doing what large animals do around the clock.  People who work in barns dress for the job; no sandals, flip-flops, stiletto heels in the barn.  They wear boots.  Big boots, high boots, made of substances that can be hosed down daily.  Hosing, sweeping, pushing extraneous animal matter around – that makes up a good part of the day in the barn, unless you have to get in the first cut before the next rainstorm, in which case, you live in a world of swirling hay, spears of which embed themselves at will in any available expanse of skin.  Tossing hay long enough brings a shot at farmer’s lung, easy to contract after breathing in hay mold day after day.  And, let’s hope you haven’t baled up and stacked hay that is too wet as no one likes to see hay spontaneously combust.

I happen to like the ways barns smell; I admit it brings happy memories and, yes, even some comfort when the wind blows the right way.  Whatever involuntary Proustian reflex I might find in or around barns, however, would absolutely be shattered with the introduction of waffles, or chili fries, or mashed potatoes.

So, what are appropriate names for a waffle place?  The choices are many and obvious:

Batter Up!,  Waffle Tasty.  Waffle Yummy.  Waffle Good, Waffle World, Waffle Mart, Griddle and Determination, Love ‘Ya a Waffle Lot, Jawful of Waffle, Waffle Hut, Waffle Shack, Meet Your Waffle Maker, Waffle Irony, Full of Wa,  Full of Wha? Waffle’s R Us.

Have to get Shakesperian around here?  Hamlet, Eggs, and Waffles?  Merry Waffles of Windsor?  Much Ado About Waffles?

Would I turn around and pull in to any of these places?  Probably.  But if you really want to get my attention, it’s a lot simpler to just hang the banner –

Breakfast All Day – Waffles

Late in the evening, almost thirty years ago, a friend confided that he envied me.  “You have no idea how lucky you are to have  a child you know will turn out to be a person you like as an adult.”  I am luckier than he could have known; I have three children, all now adults, who are just about my favorite people on the planet.  Each has particular gifts, and each has a distinctive personality; all three of them have a delicious sense of humor, and each is capable of reducing me to panting laughter on a regular basis.

All three have displayed a thoroughly admirable interest in subjects of great import, by which I mean comics and superheroes.  Again, their tastes in heroes differ slightly, but each is more than capable of describing the qualities necessary to heroism on a grand scale.

My eldest at about age ten was trapped in a car with me on a long trip; we had listened to every cassette, counted every out-of-state license plate, essentially run out of diversions, while the road before us spooled out hour after hour. In a moment if inspired invention, he grabbed his notebook and began the process of inventing a superhero whose mutated abilities sprang from the condition found in his or her home state (or adopted state, if not mutated but simply alien).

I can’t find that notebook, and my memory is imperfect.  I am certain that Wisconsin was home to Beer Man, a hero whose super power allowed him to spray beer at high pressure from various orifices as needed.  Apparently, he also had the ability somehow create beer as well, as he was not tethered to a vat or keg of any kind.  Spray from his pores gave him the sleek mobility of a hydrofoil, able to glide at speed, even when scaling the highest tower.

Without the document as guide, the rest of the line-up is pure conjecture.  It is possible that the state of Maine produced The Lobster, a red-faced hero who used her mighty claws in the fight against overfishing on the Atlantic coast.  It’s equally possible that Jersey Boy tapped the toxic fumes hanging over Newark, Union City, and Camden, essentially becoming a human flamethrower.  I can’t be sure.  Or, that may actually have happened.

Perhaps unfairly, we reduce regions to tag lines, states to fruits and vegetables. Is Idaho, one of the Northwest’s most picturesque winter wonderlands simply about potatoes?  Surely not, and yet we present The Spud, gender unknown, who uses its thousand eyes to keep track of malefactors from Wyoming to Washington.  The disgraced former hero from Idaho, Famous Potato, now sadly operates out of  her home in the Hollywood Hills, attending red carpet events where, over-indulging, she routinely gets fried.

Some states are more dangerous to encapsulate than others.  Missouri, for example, the Show Me State, would be poorly served by guardians such as The Voyeur or The Flasher. The origin of the nickname is in an address given by Willard Duncan Vandiver, a congressman who at the end of the Nineteenth Century explained the character of the state in inspired oratory.

“I come from a state that raises corn and cotton and cockleburs and Democrats, and frothy eloquence neither convinces nor satisfies me. I am from Missouri. You have got to show me.”

I know, Missouri doesn’t raise Democrats as it used to, but cockleburs?  You betcha!  The cocklebur has three notable characteristics, any one of which would propel a character into the superhero hall of expedience.  Cockleburs produce small football shaped spines which grab the passerby like an octopus with fangs.  That power alone would be almost enough, but wait … there’s more.  Generally unpleasant when fully grown, the cocklebur is actually much more dangerous as a seedling.  Not only is this hell-weed capable of stabbing, it is also highly toxic, poisoning countless grazing animals each year, and, in a final bow to youth, it tastes delicious when at its most toxic.  Thus, Spiny Cocklebur would be a youngster, covered with spines and bursting with toxins.

Several states have attached themselves to birds, bees, and mammals.  Louisiana is the Pelican State, Utah the Beehive State, and Michigan the Wolverine State.  Too easy!  It’s a challenge to slap Oregon’s mascot around until The Beaver turns feisty enough to sink its buckteeth into crime.  And then, take Iowa, the Hawkeye State; I’m pretty sure it is the only state characterized by a body part, although Alabama claims to be the Heart of Dixie.

Some states have gone way out of their way to squelsh remarkable heroism.  South Carolina is now the Palmetto State; we might have had a better chance to come up with something had they stuck with the Iodine State, the Rice State, or the Swamp State.  Imagine the sting that Iodine Lass could land on the open wounds of her nefarious foes. Fear The Rice Man pounding his adversaries with useless carbs!  Swamp Thing has a franchise of its own, but imagine Swampy, a blobish entity of indeterminate size and shape, able to take the form of a villain’s most disturbing nightmare, travelling on globbish stumps, holding within its jiggling form all the swamp creatures caught up in Swampy’s sudden ascent from its bed, a filth filled Aquaman, calling the denizens of the swamp to do his bidding.

In the name of all that is proud and fine in your home state, rise to this challenge!  Give honor to the heroes ready to pick up the burden of guarding your borders. Come on, Ohio, let’s see what Buckeye, a giant shrub, can do.  What about it, South Dakota?  You’ve got Four Presidents made of stone hanging on the side of a mountain; kick those bad boys into gear!  Little Rhody.  What are you, Chicken?  OK, Oklahoma, Can  Sooner make time shift?  Lone Star, not simply an alien, but a luminescent ball of fire.  Imagine the sticking power of North Carolina’s Tar Heely, backing enemies down, heel by heel.  New Mexico, Land of Enchantment?  OK. let’s see what spells Mistress Enchantment can spin when aroused.

It’s on! Operators are standing by to take your call.

Let it be known that I have enormous respect for those who are good at math.  My wife is.  I am not.  No hard feelings.  No bitter, bitter pill to swallow.  Just part of the tapestry of life.

Is my life reasonably rich and full?  Sure, but tossing in the depths of a tortured, sleepless night it all comes back to me – the regret, the mistakes, the shame.  In my several years in Algebra II, there were the occasional moments of clarity, sudden sharp bursts of insight, none of which resulted in anything like competence, but most of which amused my teachers for the fleeting seconds during which I seemed to waken from math induced stupor.

Looking back on it, I can see why I seemed stubbornly resistant to instruction.  The problem was never that I didn’t like math, or didn’t like the teacher, or didn’t work at math.  Alright, it might have been true that I didn’t work at it, but the more pertinent observation is that abstraction and hypothetical constructions make the veins in my temple swell and throb.  Plonk a graph up on the board and start talking about axes and slopes and I’m fading, fading.

Sorry.  What was the question?

Sadly, Word Problems, the one area in which I did show promise, sprang a trap of their own from which I could not escape.  I understood the frustration of my math impaired brothers, and there were a few,  who asked, “When am I ever going to use this stuff in my real life?”

Not I.

Word problem are all about real life.  The situations posed in word problems were easier for me to sort out than they were for the math wizards all about me.  These were stories.  These were vignettes opening a door into the trials and tribulations of people such as I, people who could not figure out how to get the right combination of candies, had to pack and could not find the area of a suitcase, went to the track but could not figure out the odds.  I knew these people; I felt for these people.  With their safety and well-being in mind, I plunged into each problem, determined to get them to their destination before a train going in the other direction took their children away.

This wasn’t math.  This was Reality Math.

Ah, and perhaps you have already sensed where the problem might lie.  I did care, cared so much that I found myself so engaged in the “what ifs”, the “yes, buts”, and, worst of all, the “what happens next”, that I forgot about the math part and lost my self in conjecture on the state of humans tempest-tossed in an uncaring world.

I think they call that distracted.

Here’s what I mean:

In a group of 120 people, 90 have an age of more 30 years, and the others have an age of less than 20 years. If a person is selected at random from this group, what is the probability the person’s age is less than 20?

Ok, you can do the math, but consider for a moment how those under 20 year-olds feel in the company of a massive number of people over thirty.  How much over thirty?  We don’t know.  How much under twenty are in the miserable minority?  Again.  No clue.  Are we talking about toddlers and octogenarians?  What kind of  group is this?

So, let’s say this is some kind of cult.  The leader is about forty-three, his brides, all twenty of them, are under fifteen.  What kind of world is this?

Or, this could be row A through D in the Elizabethan Theater at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival, in which case, all the over-thirty adults are actually over seventy, and the under twenty not-yet-adults are under twelve, grandchildren dragged from meaningful participation in their own lives to a matinée performance of Richard III, in which case, the question ought not ask the probability of finding an under-twenty but rather is the under-twenty capable of speech after three hours of watching the House of York come to its entirely appropriate end at the Battle of Bosworth Field.

Dany bought a total of 20 game cards some of which cost $0.25 each and some of which cost $0.15 each. If Dany spent $4.20 …

OK, stop right there.  Who spells Danny as Dany?  I can tell you who – Daenerys Targaryen, daughter of Aeyres Targaryen, the Mad King.  Before she was riding dragons, her brother/cousins Rhaegar and Viserys called her Dany, as you might expect.  I have no idea what her cuddle buddy, Khal Drogo, called her in close moments out of the public eye, but that consideration draws me quickly into consideration of  the development of the fictive language of the Dothraki, more than distraction enough, but a strong and strange memory pulls me even further away from the idiotic game cards in question.

On a flight from Los Angeles to Dallas, I was seated next to two Klingons.

Apparently Dallas was hosting a major Star Trek convention, and these two were performing in what had been billed as “A Klingon Fight To The Death”.  I got that much out of them before they retreated into speaking only in what I took to be Klingonese, the language used by Klingons in an episode entitled, “The Trouble With Tribbles”.  They did pause long enough to assure me that they were not speaking Klingonase, a variation of the language which had been introduced in Star Trek novels of the 1980’s.  That cleared up, I put my seat back and snoozed, comforted by the guttural bandying of insults tossed around by my seatmates.

BaQa! (Klingonese for something vile)  They were again in my row on the flight back to Los Angeles but now in human form.  Having exhausted conversation in Klingonese, they were pleased to fill me in on the weekend’s activities in what sounded to me very Californian English.  I would have considered this chance meeting entirely unlikely had I not seen the documentary, Trekkies, in which I learned that there is a Star Trek convention somewhere in the world every weekend.

Having now referred to Star Trek for the second time this week, I need to wrap up this late-in-life math apologia. Thank God my wife can work out how many game cards of each denomination Dany got for her $4.20; I’m still trying to figure out how many wives the cult guy has salted away.

I’ll admit that something in me had broken, that two hours of reading waiting room magazines had left me not simply groggy but impaired.  My speech was thick, my step uncertain; I tried to rouse myself from stupor as my wife emerged from her appointment.  I rose uncertainly, grunting in what I hoped was a supportive manner, holding the last magazine I had found, an issue of People devoted to fashion, pointing clumsily at a photo that filled half a page.

My wife is a photographer.  A really good photographer.  I am sure she thought that I found the picture magnificent or inspiring.  She would have been mistaken.  The page shone with the image of a glistening model languishing above two small paper towels, one stretched to its full length, the other slyly folded on an angle.  I shook the page with purposeful energy; she nodded, and asked me to smile, that being one of the demands a first responder is expected to ask the victim of a stroke.  I swatted the magazine again, unable to put my thoughts into words.

My wife nodded.  “I see.  Two towels.  What about them?”

The ‘what’ of this exchange was a full-page ad for self-tanning towelettes.

Let’s start with the self-tanning piece first.  The product advertised was the L’Oreal Sublime Bronze Towlette, a product offered at fine stores and equally fine web-sites everywhere.

Convenient and easy to use, these Sublime Bronze Towelettes for Body create a streak-free, natural looking tan. With enough self-tanner for one application, each towelette is perfect for at home or on the go. Made with Vitamin E and gentle AHAs (alpha hydroxy acid derivatives) to provide a beautiful, 100 percent natural-looking tan and ultra-smooth skin.

First of all, any tan is a self tan.  OK, I guess you could tan someone else, as in “tanning a hide”, but with the exception of Buffalo Bill, the character introduced in Silence of the Lambs, you don’t see much of that anymore.  “It puts the tanning towelette on itself…”?

Then, one might think each towelette is chock full of more than an adequate dose of  bronze tanning substance, but the ad only cagily suggests that each towlette has enough self-tanner for one application.  No real guarantee there, as who knows how many applications of  towlette tanning juice one might need in order to achieve the tan and ultra-smooth skin the bronzed model appears to have realized with one swipe of this streak-free stuff.

L’Oreal itself has some explaining to do.  Back in 1907 when an enterprising Alsatian chemist came up with super snappy hair dye, he named it after a popular style of hairdo, approximately a “halo”.  L’Auréale, nom inspiré d’une coiffure de l’époque arborée par les femmes : l’auréole. No stone left unturned in this relentless search for truth in  tanning.  The company can’t even spell its own name correctly; how is one meant to trust them to tan with one application?

The good news is that L’Oreal (cough) is not the only source of self-tanning supplies.  The thoughtful shopper can choose from – Fake Bake Flawless, Tan Physics True Color, San Tropez Self Tan Bronzing Mousse, or the Maui Babe Browning Lotion.  To be sure, these products are not tan-infused towelettes; the San Tropez Tan Mousse, for example, goes on with the help of the San Tropez Applicator Mitt.

In the towelette section of the bronzing aisle, the choices include the Tan Towel Self-Tan Towelette (Classic 10 Count), the Tart Brazilliance Skin Rejuvenating Maracuja (Paraguayan passion fruit) Self Tanning Face Towelettes, and the Helios Full Body Tanning Towel.

The choice is up to you.  Applicator mitt or full body tanning towel?

To add ignorance to injury, I hadn’t known that products known as towelettes existed. I suppose one could make almost any noun smaller with the flourish of an “ette”.  Kitchenettes, vignettes, majorettes, dinettes, roulettes, brunettes, luncheonettes, coquettes, sure, even baguettes, assuming that the classic French comestible was not actually a small bag?  What else had I missed?  Are small owls, I wondered, known as owelettes?  No, those are owlets, single “t”.   A band of tiny dominatrices known as dominettes?  Probably not.

Side note before retiring from the universe of self-tanning agents:  “Brazilliance” may be the best new word to emerge in decades.  Pass it on.

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I need a little literary throat clearing in order to put this idea into play, because as is often the case, something I’ve read set off a confusing chain of associations that called for further reflection, and, if I’m lucky, a slight shift in my habitual thoughts about the world, life, the future, mankind, existence, etc.  I don’t like to think of my mental life as habitual, but whatever mentation is, it appears to dive fairly easily into some fairly rigidly engineered constructions.  So, when something jars me a bit, I try to summon some gratitude, as I did in reading Station Eleven by Emily St. John Mandel.

Station Eleven presents a not-very-far-in-the-future apocalyptic narrative, neatly alternating relatively ordinary events in the lives of the contemporary characters before the plague that obliterates most of the world’s population with the foreshortened and dangerous lives they lead post-disaster as a small band of survivors about twenty years after the end of life as they knew it. There is no rhyme or reason to survival of the plague.  Passengers on one flight miss infection and live to form a new community huddling in the remnants of the airport; another plane filled with passengers already infected sits on the same tarmac, diseased bodies decomposing in the locked cabins.  In the course of a week, the age of technology ends; electricity, for example, becomes a thing of the past.  The small bands of survivors scavenge as they can, looting stores and homes until, by the sixth or seventh year, they live in quasi-tribal settlements amid the ruins, hunting,  gathering, and stockpiling weapons to protect themselves in a world that is without the rule of law.

All pretty much the apocalyptic fare exceedingly well written, but there are two additional elements that make the novel uncommonly arresting.

The first is that twenty  years on, those who were children have but dim memory of the world as it was; they cling to tales told by older survivors, barely recalling what it was to have enjoyed television and comic books.  Older survivors essentially live in the ruins of the world they knew, simultaneously wistful in remembering simple pleasures – bagels, coffee, bananas – and saddened in recognizing that they had taken so much for granted.

The second is that a multi-generation band of actors, musicians, and artists travel from settlement to settlement performing Shakespeare’s plays.  Like the performers and lecturers who travelled the  Chautauqua Circuit, these survivors believe that art, beauty, and Shakespeare are necessary to life, even in perilous circumstance, and travel through this world is one perilous circumstance after another.  Some members of the company have fought for their lives; they commemorate the necessary death of their assailant by placing a tattoo of a knife after each kill.  This is a landscape red in tooth and claw, and yet, one of the actors also has a tattoo that reads, “Survival is insufficient”.

That character believes he has recalled a line from Star Trek, and he has come close.  In the third season, “The Hunted”,  an exchange between Prime Minister Nayrock and Roga Danar might have become heated, were Roga Danar, the mutated super warrior, actually capable of heat.  Relentless slaughter, that he can pull off; conversation, not his strong suit.  In any case, not unreasonably, Nayrock has plans to send Danar to the settlement known as Lunar V.  Danar thinks this a poor idea.

Nayrock:  You were programmed to survive.  You can survive at the Lunar V Settlement.

Roga Danar:  To survive is not enough.  To simply exist … is not enough

OK, first time I’ve quoted Star Trek.  May be the last.  With regard to Station Eleven, however, it is quasi-poignant that this particular nugget survives as one of the few cultural landmarks placed next to King Lear, and it is difficult to think of another piece of apocalyptica that presents a credo as a legacy of an earlier age.

The statement has weight in the context of a world in which the amenities we take for granted have been lost, and it pulled me way back to one of the hundreds of unassigned books I read when I might have been actually participating in what my college believed to be formal education.  The book was Homo Ludens, by Dutch cultural historian, Johan Huizinga, an author I knew well as two of his earlier books, The Waning of the Middle Ages and Erasmus, were among the assigned books I actually read.  Huizinga’s thesis in Homo Ludens has some punch.  “Play is older than culture, for culture, however inadequately defined, always presupposes human society, and animals have not waited for man to teach them their playing.”

Got it.  Even animals (other animals) play. it seems that simple survival is not sufficient.

Huizinga took me down an altogether different and rocky path as he went along, noting that while many significant terms passed into the Romance languages, ludens and  ludere were not among them.  He had much to say about play and contest as what he called civilizing functions, but I was back in my language hut again, trying to figure out why words leave a culture and what meaning language has in the essential characteristics of a culture.

So, commonly used phrases, “getting by”, “hanging in there”, “killing time” seem dangerously close to statements of simple existence, which is, as we now know, insufficient in a culture.

We don’t have to be a noted Dutch historian to figure out that play, and friendship, and beauty, and humor allow us at least as much sustenance as dolphins and Roga Danar seek.  I understand that tough times do demand that we hunker down to some extent, but whether we quote Hamlet or watch Survivor (and I do both), we need to live broadly, way beyond survival.

When I retired, I put together a list of fifty novels I intended to read, each of which was critically acclaimed and each of which I had missed during my working years.  No real surprises on the list; One Hundred Years of Solitude has been glowering at me from the bookcase for more than a decade, and I’ve started Infinite Jest at least six times.  Meanwhile, however, lists be damned; my reading has been completely undisciplined, and the unread pile next to my bed has become an obelisk, I don’t recognize half of the titles I’ve downloaded on my Kindle, and I still haven’t read Infinite Jest.

This piece actually begins in response to the last three books I recently picked up, none of which were on  the list, and none of which I will finish. My willingness to drop a book quickly or at the midpoint interests my eldest son who is a punctilious reader; he sees every book to the end, no matter how annoyed he is by the subject, the author, or the genre.  I admire him and his grit, but I now have a list of thirty-eight books to get out of the way and can’t dally with books that don’t capture my heart and soul.  That being said, in  an attempt to be polite to folks pressing favorite books on me, in the last two days I have been reading The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh, The Little Paris Bookshop by Nina George, and Seinfeldia: How a Show About Nothing Changed Everything.

I stuck with Seinfeldia for a good while with particular interest in how a show about nothing invaded the situation comedy universe, and, I have to admit, with sustained wonder that anyone as crusty as Larry David could stay in a room long enough to sign a contract.  “No hugging, no learning”, was the phrase used by Seinfeld and David to describe the character of their work together, a compressed reminder that sentimentality had no place in Seinfeld’s world.  As I think about the nine seasons, it strikes me that it also describes stasis; the characters don’t learn from their disastrous failures of judgment, don’t become closer, don’t grow.  I have to admit that much of my guilty pleasure in watching the show is in knowing that I am going to see self-involvement bordering on callous disregard for others, no matter how obviously a situation demands compassion.  I’d be more embarrassed by my heartless amusement were the show not in constant syndication, viewed by millions daily, available around the clock, only surpassed in hours-per-screen by Judge Judy and Kickin’ It With Byron Allen.

I am actually quite ok with hugs and with learning, with development of character, and with declarations of emotion unless they devolve into hyper-sentimentalized bathos (Hello, Elizabeth Berg).  The central character in The Language of Flowers, however, has a profound allergy to emotion and human connection, having been shuffled through a succession of foster homes.  Unaccountably, she does have an extraordinary connection with flowers, not simply enjoying their shape, fragrance, color, but sensing the emotional energy that each specimen projects.  As an assistant to a kind florist, she understands the deepest longings of a few special customers and provides them with the flowers that (almost literally) speak to their needs.  She understands, for example, that the shy woman whose request is halting and obscure is in need of passion, presenting her with a bouquet of jonquils (Narcissus jonquilla), blooms representing desire.  It’s not so much that particular flowers have power as that they make their meaning palpable to those sensitive to their language.

In the 19th Century, floriography flourished, as it were, as a sort of cryptological message board.  Romantic swains sent bouquets as coded declarations, assuming that the recipient would know that Heliotrope meant devoted affection and that purple Hyacinth asked for forgiveness.  Characters in the novel can’t summon words to express emotions they themselves do not understand, but they find the language of flowers communicates exactly what they mean to express.  I’m interested in the difference between symbolism, in which an object represents concepts and experiences, and language, which is a formal system of signs.  Not sure where the language of flowers lands.

A rose is a rose is a rose, but in the language of flowers, an orange rose signifies fascination while a yellow rose signifies infidelity.  Each of the roses is an object, but each is also specific in its essence, and so both sign and meaning.  It is not surprising then that some of the most evocative moments in Shakespeare’s works arrive in the language of flowers.  Ophelia’s descent into madness in Hamlet is made most tangible as she catalogues the various imaginary bouquets she presents to Gertrude, Claudius, and her brother, Laertes.

There’s rosemary, that’s for remembrance; pray love remember: and there is pansies.  That’s for thoughts.

A lovely passage in A Midsummer Night’s Dream is Oberon’s rhapsody as he prepares to enchant Titania:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows, where oxlips and the nodding violet grows, quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine, with sweet musk-roses and eglantine.

Ophelia, Oberon, and the central character in The Language of Flowers all seem to know what authority each particular flower possesses.  A similar presumption pops up in The Little Paris Bookshop, which I am so far still (barely) reading in what I hope is a translation from the original German novel, Das Lavenderzimmer (The Lavender Room).  Monsieur Perdu owns a bookshop on a barge, floating in the Seine, from which he matches books and customers.  He has lost (perdu) the love of his life and has retreated almost entirely into books, which like flowers, apparently speak more profoundly to deepest longing than can words.  He calls himself a literary apothecary, prescribing the book that can mend a shattered heart.

Early in the novel Monsieur Perdu has a customer, a woman weeping, and attempts to press upon her the book he thinks she needs rather than the vapid Romance she thinks she wants.

“It’s your choice, Madame!  You can leave and spit on me.  Or you can spare yourself hours of torture starting right now.”

Clearly, he feels strongly about her choice of reading matter, but in his own profound loss, speech has become less authentically communicative than his understanding of the power his books present.

Perdue confesses, “…sometimes it feels as if I am sewed up in my own skin, as if I’m living in an invisible box that keeps me in and everyone else out.  In such moments, even my own voice strikes me as superfluous.”

So, what have these two quasi-romantic novels have to do with Seinfeldia?

Ahem, let’s just say that emotions are often tricky, and that we rarely find words that carry the meaning of those emotions, in, part because we don’t ourselves know ourselves.  Like the unfortunate Monsieur Perdu, we may be sewed up in our own skin.

Seinfeld’s characters amuse themselves (and me) by noting the peculiarity of others, cataloging foibles, dismissing earnest endeavors, reacting to a world they observe in minute detail.  Allowed no hugging or learning, they remain slightly nettled but determinedly superficial, living from syndicated episode to episode with little expectation of love or loss.  My newly found florist and bookseller are truly broken, but in books and flowers, they attempt to escape self-imposed captivity.

I do not speak the language of flowers; I do find restorative refuge in books.  My own writing is full of frippery and playful digression, hardly the stuff of restorative refuge for anyone else; I amuse myself, but also clear my thinking a bit.  In reading the remaining thirty-eight books on my retirement must-read list, I hope I’ll be provoked and prodded, nudged into thinking, swept into feeling.

If I can just stay away from friends with books I really don’t need to read.

My wife does not fool around.  She spots something that needs doing, takes a deep breath, and gets on Google.  Lots of folks here in town offer advice, but she knows there are experts out there in the Googleverse poised to deliver the precise information she needs to get the job done right.

For example, we had rats in the attic.

Unacceptable to be sure, but hardly a topic I wanted to discuss at length.  My hope was that they would tire of scooting through the rafters, eating insulation and wiring, and head back out in search of more appropriate rat chow.  You know, take care of this on their own, without our having to jump in with corrective measures.

Live and Let Live, that’s my motto, especially when it comes to climbing into a dark space currently inhabited by rats of some size, and  I knew they were sizable rats because even a novice student of rodent behavior knows the difference between skittering (mice) and thumping (rats of some size).

Here’s the thing – once you know you have rats in the attic, you pretty much can’t un-know that rats of some size are up there doing profoundly rattish things under cover of darkness.  The thumping was intermittent, then constant, then accompanied by a sort of sloshing, leaving no doubt that uninhibited predation was taking place up there.  For all we knew, rats were stacking corpses like fire wood, and once the aroma of decomposing whatever-it-was up there seeped into the walls, it would be tougher to eliminate than the predators themselves.

Next stop, obviously, Google.

Try it.  Type in “rat extermination”, skip past the many outfits and enterprises happy to bring in extermination experts, and continue until you see Ratcontroltricks.com where Jeff R. Morrison provides more information about do-it-yourself ratting than you might have thought possible.

“Social media,” he advises, “is one of the easiest ways for us to keep you updated with the latest news in the rodent control world!”

I can’t begin to describe the many fast-breaking stories emerging from the rodent control world, but I will pass on an observation that struck me as humane.  Rodent controllers use a curious phrase to describe the rat’s sensory sensibilities; apparently, the rat is directed by what they term “essential oils”, by which I take it they mean those elements in the rat’s world that are appropriate and comforting to the rat.  These essential oils are all over the ratscape, and the intrusion of foreign … oils … as introduced when plopping down the waiting jaws of the rat trap, give notice to the rat that he would be well served to stay away from the unfamiliar aroma and device.

Foiled again!

Confounded, when all else fails, the do-it-yourself rat battler can slap that bad boy in the whiskers with an assault upon the essential oils themselves.  Dipping rags in ammonia, draping the rags throughout the rat kingdom, renewing the ammonia bath for several days seems to so offend even the sulkiest of rodents that they pack up their belongings and hit the road.

MIssion accomplished.  Maybe.  We hope.

But now, the time has come to search for ammonia-stench-dot-com in the hope of allowing our own essential oils to resume their rightful place in the home we choose not to share with sloshing fat rodents.  I’m actually not anxious to get into social media conversations about odor, so if anyone has advice to offer, please feel free to jump right in.