Let’s Risk it All
You
looked pretty
today
but
I said something
you didn’t
like
so
I don’t get
to
appreciate
your beauty
make you
pasta
drink
extra wine
laugh
and make
love
after
the eleventh
hour
and
you’re gone
driving
mad
while
I’m
listening
to
Chet Baker
and not you
however,
there’s always
more vino
de rojo
more music
to go
go
more this
before
the moon
falls
dead
once again
and we
must
repeat
the vicious
cycle
of the
wild werewolf
with
each
drop of blood
but
who can say
it’s not
worth
doing
it
without
howling.
--Corinne Reid
"Vino de roja" is Gringo-speak for red wine; "vino" is wine, and "roja" is red. However, Spaniards refer to "vino tinto" instead. Centuries ago they would have called the beverage color "colorado" or "encarnado" or (as in modern Portuguese) "bermejo." But usage changed to "tinto" (rarely used in any context other than wine) because of its qualities; it is from the Latin "tinctus" (dyed, strained). Aimilarly, "tinta" means ink. (It has been claimed that when the US invaded Mexico in the 1840s, Irish-American soldiers sang the popular folk song, "Green Grow the Lilacs," which the Mexicans misheard as "gringo." However, the word was already in use as early as 1787, referring to foreigners who spoke Spanish poorly, especially the large number of Irish exiles and mercenaries who fought the British under the Spanish flag. In the 1840s the Swiss naturalist Johann Jakob von Tschudi reported that "gringo" was commonly used in Lima as a nickname for Europeans: "It is probably derived from griego (Greek). The Germans say of anything incomprehensible, 'That sounds like Spanish', — and, in like manner, the Spaniards say of anything they do not understand, 'That is Greek'."
ReplyDeleteAlthough Herodotos in the 5th century BCE claimed that the Neuri people, who lived west of the Dniepr river, changed into wolves for a few days every year. Various other Greek and Roman authors mentioned human wolves from time to time, but the accounts did not become widespread in Europe until the 14th century, although Vseslav Bryachislavich, an 11th-century ruler of Polotsk and Kiev, "prowled in the guise of a wolf" at night, according to the epic poem "Slovo o plŭku Igorevě" (The Tale of Igor's campaign), and at about the same time bishop Burchard of Worms used the word "werwolf" from the Old English "man" + "wolf"). Essentially, two rival traditions developed: the Germanic "werwolf" in wstern Europe and the baltic, and the Slavik "vikolak" in Hungary, Romania, and the Balkans (which became associated with the vampire). The character did not make a cinematic appearance until Stuart Walker's 1935 film "Werewolf of London."
Chet Baker was a 1950s "cool jazz" trumpeter/vocalist whom James Prior and Dave Gelly regarded as a cross between James Dean, Frank Sinatra, and Bix Beiderbecke, three mid-20th-century romantic popular culture icons.