The fan is on and my shirt is off. The Sonoran spring is sprung. Spring fever in the form of cacoethes scribendi<\/em> has me in her sweet grip.<\/span><\/p>\n A weird mix of Greek and Latin, cacoethes scribendi<\/em> means compulsion to write. \u2018Cacoethes\u2019 is a Latinization of the Greek kakoethes<\/em>, which combines kakos<\/em> (\u2018bad\u2019) with ethos<\/em> (\u2018habit\u2019). It can mean \u2018urge,\u2019 \u2018itch,\u2019 \u2018compulsion,\u2019 \u2018mania.\u2019 Similar constructions: cacoethes loquendi<\/em>, compulsive talking, and cacoethes carpendi<\/em>, a mania for fault-finding. You can see \u2018carp\u2019 lurking within the infinitive, carpere<\/em>, to pluck (Cf. Eugene Ehrlich, Amo, Amas, Amat and More<\/em>, Harper & Row, 1985, pp. 71-72.) To this list I add cacoethes blogendi<\/em>, compulsion to blog, a compulsion with which I have been for a long time afflicted. <\/span> As for my own cacoethes scribendi et blogendi<\/em>: once a scribbler, always a scribbler. My fifth grade teacher had us begin each day by writing a 200 word composition. At the end of the year, she announced in class that my compositions were the best she had ever seen in her teaching career. I decided right then and there to become a free-lance writer, which in a sense is what I have become.<\/span> <\/p>\n Moral: be careful what you wish for. Wishes and dreams are seeds. They just might fall on fertile ground. <\/span><\/p>\n
Aficionados of Jack Kerouac\u2019s not-so-spontaneous spontaneous prose will recall how he got his revenge on poet and critic Kenneth Rexroth in his Dharma Bums<\/em>: he bestowed upon him the name, Reinhold Cacoethes. Sweet gone Jack was a wonderful coiner of names. I\u2019ll have to return to this topic in October, Kerouac month in my personal liturgy.<\/span><\/p>\n