Althouse: Sentence of the day.

February 3, 2017

Sentence of the day.

"You know like any face I made when I was young was adorable and now if I’m worried there’s this pathetic gleam of how do I look and yet we love an old dog or an old leather couch so why not an old female arm or an ass all its own, speaking powerfully shabbily in time."

From "Aging Is Feminizing Me and I Hate It," by Eileen Myles in New York Magazine.

33 comments:

David said...: “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”
― George Orwell; 2/3/17, 5:39 PM
David Begley said...: Stat of the day. Dow closed above 20,000.

Althouse saved "once written" $10,000. He better buy something through the Amazon portal. NOW.; 2/3/17, 5:39 PM
YoungHegelian said...: "Oh, Lord, I thank Thee that in Thy compassionate mercy I don't know this person at all."; 2/3/17, 5:40 PM
rcocean said...: “At 50, everyone has the face he deserves.”
― George Orwell

George Orwell - dead at 47.; 2/3/17, 5:42 PM
Yancey Ward said...: Yeah, well I ain't looking to boink the dog or the sofa.; 2/3/17, 5:43 PM
campy said...: Can we impeach Trump over this?; 2/3/17, 5:44 PM
Jupiter said...: Can an old whore turn a new trick?; 2/3/17, 5:51 PM
madAsHell said...: A couple of days ago, we were "normalizing" Trump. Today, Butch Eileen is feminizing.

It makes me want to go hippie punching!!; 2/3/17, 5:56 PM
DavidD said...: Diagram that for me, please.; 2/3/17, 5:58 PM
Bob Loblaw said...: This is one of those people... I don't think much of her or her work, and yet I'm pretty sure I've been paying her bills through my taxse for decades.; 2/3/17, 6:03 PM
rehajm said...: When you lease you can acquire a newer model without tying up excessive capital.; 2/3/17, 6:12 PM
Lucien said...: Whoever it was predicted (was it just yesterday) that the Dow would not break (break, not even close above) 20,000 in the next four years should apply for a position as a market volatility expert on MSNBC, or maybe on Paul Krugman's new reality show "The Economic Genius Apprentice".; 2/3/17, 6:15 PM
Biotrekker said...: To Bob Loblaw,
She's a boring, political, lesbian poet, so, yeah...your tax dollars at work, most likely; 2/3/17, 6:24 PM
urbane legend said...: DavidD said...
Diagram that for me, please

Yes, I also want to see that.; 2/3/17, 6:40 PM
traditionalguy said...: She is in her passage into the land of the elderly. The exercise, and the make up, and the clothes are still important, but alas they seem like icing on a fast shrinking cake.

Whatever else she IS, she remains a human being worthy of respect.; 2/3/17, 6:42 PM
Spiros Pappas said...: Mr. Begley, the surging stock market is about deregulating the financial sector and not about a more robust economy. We should get ready for another financial crisis and a massive multi trillion bailout. That's not good news and has nothing to do with Mrs. Althouse's post. Not everything has to be about Mr. Trump.; 2/3/17, 6:51 PM
Bruce Gee said...: You know like any sentence I wrote when I was nineteen read like this.; 2/3/17, 7:02 PM
Bill said...: Ms. Myles' sentence reminds me of my one experience of being stoned off my arse on an edible (I foolishly ate the cookie entire). I was trying, valiantly, to read—and finally put the book aside because by the time I'd get to the end of a sentence, I'd forgotten how it began.; 2/3/17, 7:23 PM
Jupiter said...: Blogger traditionalguy said...

"Whatever else she IS, she remains a human being worthy of respect."

Is that like where all the kids get medals just for participating?; 2/3/17, 8:04 PM
Etienne said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 2/3/17, 8:17 PM
George Grady said...: The way I understand gravity is that it is the problem with everything in the universe. Because of gravity even the tiniest most infintestimal[sic] particles in the universe can not be in more than one place at the same time. Ones even tinier than that[sic] actually can be but gravity messes up the rest of us — male and female and even little protozoans I think immediately.

If that was my "understanding" of gravity, I'd be too embarrassed to mention it in public. Of course, neither understanding nor embarrassment seems to be prominent on the list of the author's experiences.; 2/3/17, 8:26 PM
The Godfather said...: @Althouse: If you're thinking about a retirement job, you might consider teaching English composition -- or even grammar. There seems to be a great need for this.; 2/3/17, 9:05 PM
Unknown said...: I realize commas are at a premium these days, but I bet we could band together and collect a whole BUCKET of them to donate to this lovely aging "writer".

To be honest, this writer could only make it through half before I was shouting at my screen at the abysmal punctuation.; 2/3/17, 9:45 PM
Sebastian said...: Sentence of the day: now that's just AA toying with us.

In any case, we will get a lot more of this noisy self-absorption from entitled female baby boomers (I don't mean Althouse!) in the years to come.; 2/3/17, 9:47 PM
Sam L. said...: I am so bummmmmmmmmed for that woman. Oh, truly I am. I don't even have to read it to feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeel for her.; 2/3/17, 10:28 PM
Joanne Jacobs said...: A talking ass? Old, on its own, powerfully, shabbily.

Incomprehensibly.; 2/3/17, 10:34 PM
Jupiter said...: Getting old is no fun. Keep it up long enough, it wrecks your whole life.; 2/3/17, 11:07 PM
Etienne said...: The Godfather said...you might consider teaching English composition -- or even grammar. There seems to be a great need for this.

Especially among immigrants.; 2/3/17, 11:11 PM
Kyzer SoSay said...: The way I understand gravity is that it is the problem with everything in the universe. Because of gravity even the tiniest most infintestimal[sic] particles in the universe can not be in more than one place at the same time. Ones even tinier than that[sic] actually can be but gravity messes up the rest of us — male and female and even little protozoans I think immediately.

The problem with sentiments like the above is some young person will read this and think it's a deep and true explanation of gravity and the laws of nature. Then they'll feel smart when in fact they're probably dumber than if they'd just stuck to the idea that gravity makes you fall down when you're on Earth. So many young "intellectuals" these days have flowery, ridiculous reasons and meanings stuck in their head or spouting from their lips, and somehow this translates to a sense of smug superiority, as if they really get it, man, like, in such a deep way. Most of the liberals in my family are like this. The ones around my age are nearly insufferable in their smugness, when in fact they've accomplished so little in life they ought to feel slightly ashamed.; 2/3/17, 11:47 PM
Michael Fitzgerald said...: Looks like somebody's been reading Finnegan's Wake....; 2/4/17, 1:02 AM
Clyde said...: Lost in an impenetrable thicket of verbiage.; 2/4/17, 3:27 AM
AllenS said...: We all age, it's what you do about it that's important. For instance, I'm 70 years old, and I'm a lot of confident about my appearance when I go out in public since I got my nose hair trimmer.; 2/4/17, 7:19 AM
AllenS said...: of confident = more confident. I can hardly wait to be 10 years older.; 2/4/17, 7:40 AM