Strange Car Conversation

[porphyry]

The other morning, we were all in the car together on our ways to school and work. The children were good-naturedly bickering in the back seat, but I, sensing the potential for the situation to escalate, intervened by using the sympathy appeal.

Me: Come on, you two. Settle down. You'll scare Flipper.
Andrew (without hesitation): I will scare Flipper until he hides in the bottom corner of your uterus!
Madeline: What's a uterus?
Malkhos: It's an upside-down Greek vase that Flipper is living in right now.

Comments

[gislebertus.livejournal.com]

The question is whether this uterus has volutes or not.

[helima.livejournal.com]

Ha!
Priceless.

[med_cat]

LOL

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Nice coincidence, by the way: Greek delphís means dolphin, delphýs: womb.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

And the pun was operative in Greek that is why the Apollo of Delphi (the wombs) rode in a chariot drawn by Dolphins.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

How stupid of me! I never thought what Delphoi means. The very beginning of the "Eumenides" might have been a hint:

First, in this prayer, of all the gods I name
The prophet mother Earth; and Themis next,
Second who sat--for so with truth is said--
On this her mother's shrine oracular.
Then by her grace, who unconstrained allowed,
There sat thereon another child of Earth--
Titanian Phoebe. She, in after time,
Gave o'er the throne, as birthgift to a god,
Phoebus, who in his own bears Phoebe's name.
Etc.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Womb AND Navel at the same time!?

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

They no doubt knew they were connected from from the umbilical chord. Never read Aeschylus--interesting to see it there--but the same myth is in the Homeric Hymn to Apollo and in various essays of Plutarch, complete with the battle with the Python. So there seem to be two variants of the story. Fontenrose would have done better to bring his attention to bear on that rather than treat Latin paraphrases of the Homeric Hymn as independent witnesses of the myth.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Apparently not a coincidence. The dolphin is called like that because it's curved, domed.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Isn't the etymology of words endlessly fascinating? I just love knowing things like that.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Oh yes! I really love Skeat's Etymological Dictionary for that reason. For instance I was very happy to learn how the cocoa-nut is related to bugbears and playing at bo-peek, and about the confusion caused by the accidental similarity to the name of the cacao-tree.

My favourite etymology I found in this year is probably that of the islands of Wak-Wak in Arabian Nights. It's a wonderful, remote place, and the narrator connects its name with the Arabic exclamation of admiration "wah". More probably it's from the Chinese nickname for Japan "Wo-kuok" = Land of the Dwarfes. Sometimes the footnotes are more wonderful than the text.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

I'm working on an item like that now. When the Greeks borrowed Lamashtu mythology the name suggested to them their own word for 'maw' which, coincidently, was appropriate, hence Lamia.

Unfortunately West and Burkert thinks Gello (probably the coldness of death) originated in the same way from Akkadian Gallu--Unfortunately the Gallu was an apotropaic figure completely unrelated to the child-killing mythology, so I find it extremely improbable.

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Sounds fascinating. (To my shame, I had to look up Lamashtu, Gello, Gallu, - and even "maw". But at least I knew who Lamia was!)

[leopold-paula-b.livejournal.com]

Also I've just learned that the Japanese word for dolphin literally means "sea pig". As does the English porpoise < porcus + piscis.

And a common euphemism for "wild boar" is "mountain whale" in Japan. (Eupemism, because eating quadrupeds was regarded more offensive than eating whale.)

Both facts from Robin D. Gill's "A Dolphin in the Woods". The title is actually a quotation from Horace's "Ars Poetica".

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Flipper...indeed! (Though I have taken part of the explanation from antiquity below and understand it all much better now;) As long as you don´t oppose to having parts of yourself described as antique pottery, that´s probably a good way to explain the procedere. I wonder what Flipper would say? He´ll come out speaking fluent greek, I suppose or maybe he will turn to latin just to be modern about it.

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, first, I don't mind my inside parts being analogous to antique pottery; actually, Malkhos has a book somewhere, Soranus' Gynecology, where that exact comparison--vase/uterus--is made, even to presenting a drawing for comparison. Mind you, the ancient Greeks really knew nothing about the operations of the internal body since autopsies were not performed on the dead. One could do worse than a Greek vase, I suppose.

Second, Flipper, also according to Malkhos, is much closer to Plato's Forms than any of us, so he's more perfect, surely, than we are since we've fully assumed a corrupt body. I'm sure you're right that he must be conversing with himself in some language I don't know, and the poor thing will have to start all over learning English once he's completely fallen to this earth when he's born and the corruption is complete. :)

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

Well, to be able to partake of this kind of conversation is but one of the joys of reading (both) your journal. You probably can imagine, how hard that kind of thing is to get by, otherwise?!

Perhaps especially at being a more or less suddenly single (still having to get used to the condition after two years of separation, all amicably mostly, but still a strange yet quite amusing way of life, after eleven years of being otherwise inclined) woman my age.

Those (conversations) I continously report on on my own journal these days, are due to my persistent bafflement at what levels you are normally being encountered on. But then; this often takes place in brasseries and the likes, though I actually care even less for the self-important ones one would have to encounter at readings, vernissages etc. I do some of those too and am mostly bored even faster, there, for exactly said reason and I don´t even mean the oh so corrupt body, on the contrary...

Amongst some of the more extraordinarily beautiful vessels my not a bit tired yet eyes (except for an urgent need of better reading glasses than those I bought at the market) ever met with, were some of the greek urns and vases on display (since I tend to watch absolutely everything including pre-historic tombs with poetic paintings once inside an exhibition) in the Berlin Neues museum in the most excellent company possible, when it comes to things magnificent: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nefertiti_Bust .

I love, how the usually used french real compliment on female beauty (such as used by my friend Davide about his girlfriend) is: "elle est magnifique". Can´t think of ever having heard it before, in other, less cultivated countries I lived in.

Flipper, off course, must be (still) far beyond that!

[malkhos.livejournal.com]

Well, thank you. What most people do have to seek out in the cafes, etc., is usually part of normal conversation around here, and even the children are getting the hang of it. I guess most of this is due to Malkhos's extreme capacity to intellectualize everything because it is natural to him to do so. I was lucky enough to pick some of it up through osmosis, I suppose. There are times when this capacity of his can annoy me (it engenders a kind of stubbornness that at times seems to me stupid, if that makes any sense) but mostly it's a gift.