of course

I don't want to name names...so, N. elbows me to say my blog is bland and dried-out and I reply "what about the archive." How useless a response I know because we turn to the blog to see the latest blurb and jottings but I can't seem to keep up. I can barely keep up with sleep, which seems more necessary. Sleep. Rest your eyes for a moment.

Have you? (so phatic, a new word that I have learned. I make learning these words transparent.)

I tried. And I have tried to go to sleep and sleep cajoles "nice try." As so the blog begins to tease me much the same. Who is in control here? When the telephone rings I remind myself that I am in charge of deciding to answer it. The ringing phone is not my master. Discpline is a ciphen.

N., I hope I've done some justice. Yet, I've drifted from my subject: the fascination with "of course." No. When I wrote that poem I hadn't read that other poem. So, how is it multiple people are driven to repeat the expression "of course."

Its earliest meaning was a nautical term...oh, so many nautical terms that seeped into our speak...and then it took on the meaning of "customarily," and, most currently, the meaning of "obviously," which is also often used as an emphatic affirmative response that stands alone. I am butchering this progression. Let's turn to OED for the earliest indications of this latter meaning of "obviously":

1823 J. D. HUNTER Captiv. N. Amer. 39 She made some very particular inquiries about my people, which, of course, I was unable to answer.
1838 DICKENS O. Twist xxxiv. 266 You will tell her I am here?..Of course.
1861 M. PATTISON Ess. (1889) I. 32 It would be easy, of course, to exaggerate this truth of the continuity of history into a falsehood. Mod. And you were present? Of course; why not?


In these jottings I rest for now. In "of course" we stand alone emphatically but we are in a current current, apparent waves, and we question what's customary.

May I only blog in bogs of sleep....