Life Breaks In: A Mood Almanack

415 Pages·2016·7.67 MB·English

by  Mary Cappello

l i f e b r e a k s i n
b y t h e s a m e a u t h o r
Night Bloom
Awkward: A Detour
Called Back
Swallow: Foreign Bodies, Their Ingestion, Inspiration
and the Curious Doctor Who Extracted Them
l i f e b r e a k s i n
( a mood almanack )
m a r y c a p p e l l o
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2016 by Mary Cappello
All rights reserved. Published 2016.
Printed in the United States of America
25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 1 2 3 4 5
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 35606- 8 (cloth)
isbn- 13: 978- 0- 226- 35623- 5 (e- book)
doi: 10.7208/chicago/9780226356235.001.0001
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Cappello, Mary, author.
Title: Life breaks in : a mood almanack / Mary Cappello.
Description: Chicago : The University of Chicago Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and
index.
Identifiers: lccn 2016014264 | isbn 9780226356068 (cloth : alk. paper) | isbn 9780226356235
(e- book)
Subjects: lcsh: Mood (Psychology) | Emotions—Psychological aspects. | Emotions—Social aspects.
Classification: lcc bf521 .c36 2016 | ddc 152.4—dc23 lc record available at https:// lccn .loc .gov
/2016014264
♾ This paper meets the requirements of ansi/niso z39.48- 1992 (Permanence of Paper).
For Mrs. Leach,
Ridge Avenue Elementary School,
who set the mood for arts and crafts
How it would interest me if this diary were ever to become a real di-
ary: something in which I could see changes, trace moods developing;
but then I should have to speak of the soul, & did I not banish the
soul when I began? What happens is, as usual, that I’m going to write
about the soul, & life breaks in.—Virginia Woolf
Almanack
perhaps (i) a variant (with specific semantic development) of classical Arabic
mun¯ak place where a camel kneels, station on a journey, halt at the end of a
¯
day’s travel, hence (in extended use) place of residence;
The assumed semantic development from the concrete classical Arabic
senses of the verbal noun to the sense ‘calendar’ has a parallel in the semantic
development of climate n.1; in fact, mun¯ak, man¯ak is the usual modern stan-
¯ ¯
dard Arabic word for ‘climate.’
Compare Occitan almanac (1548 as †almanatz), Catalan almanac (14th
cent.), Spanish almanaque (first quarter of the 15th cent.), Portuguese alma-
naque (15th cent. as †almenaque), Italian almanacco (a1348 as †almanaco in
sense 1, 1725 in sense 2); also Middle Dutch almanag (1426; Dutch almanak,
†almanack), Middle Low German almanak, almenak, almanach, almenach,
etc., German Almanach (early 15th cent.; < Middle Dutch).
It has also sometimes been suggested that post- classical Latin almanac,
almanach is derived < Hellenistic Greek ἀλμενιχιακά (neuter plural), de-
noting an astrological treatise (4th cent. a.d.: Eusebius De Praeparatio Evan-
gelica 3. 4, citing Porphyrius concerning the Egyptian belief in astrology, in
horoscopes, and so- called lords of the ascendant, ‘whose names are given in
the almenichiaka, with their various powers to cure diseases, their risings and
settings, and their presages of things future’). However, this Greek form in the
text of Eusebius probably shows a scribal error for an original neuter plural
noun σαλμεσχινιακά, which is of unknown origin.
Further etymology uncertain and disputed.

c o n t e n t s
On the Street Where You Live 1
(Elements)
Mood of Perfect Kinship 21
Mood Modulations 27
Of Clouds and Moods 45
Gong Bath 69
Sonophoto: Boy, Screaming 77
(Charts)
Is It Possible to Die of a Feeling? 93
The Flower Inclines toward Blue 101
They’re Playing Our Song 121
Mood Questionnaire 125
In a Studious Mood 131
(Rooms)
Life Breaks In 149