Word: passion
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...usual case for boxing as art or science is rougher to make in the face of this face. Valor can be redeeming; so can grace, poise, bearing, even cunning. But this is a nightmare. The monster that men have worried was at the heart of their indefinable passion, of their indefensible sport, has come out in the flesh to be the champion of the world. Next Monday night, he will be served Michael Spinks...
Most gardeners, at the outset, seem to think that their new passion is profoundly good for them and that the world would be not just a prettier but a healthier and better place if more people joined them in the out-of-doors. There is some theory to this: the smell of basil was long thought to strengthen the heart and take away melancholy, while the scent of violets was considered an aid to digestion. It cannot be an accident that gardeners so often last so long. Cato the Censor, a fine source on growing cabbages, lived...
...only it were that simple. No matter what is growing out back, whether catnip, horehound and fleabane, or chubby cabbages and Creeping figs, or heirloom roses and masses of delicate ranunculus, the garden will eventually become all consuming, of time, money, concentration and passion. Around the time that new gardeners are feeling most warm and gratified with their endeavors, delighted with the fresh vegetables and thrilled with the view from the porch, they also discover the risks involved. "A garden," warned Ralph Waldo Emerson, "is like those pernicious machineries which catch a man's coat-skirt or his hand...
...roses because I once had a passion to create a rose garden. I had a vision of something sheltered and beautiful and serene. I spent several years planting and nourishing these wonderfully named creatures -- Etoile de Hollande, Mister Lincoln, Duchesse de Brabant, Chrysler Imperial, Peace -- in a secluded spot among the oak trees that shadow the southern side of my house. I worked, I weeded, I watered, I fertilized, I pruned, I sprayed, I decaterpillarized, and I fondly admired what I had created (God and I). In 1971 I even wrote a little book, The Rose Garden. But to anyone...
Punctuation thus becomes the signature of cultures. The hot-blooded Spaniard seems to be revealed in the passion and urgency of his doubled exclamation points and question marks ("Caramba! Quien sabe?"), while the impassive Chinese traditionally added to his so-called inscrutability by omitting directions from his ideograms. The anarchy and commotion of the '60s were given voice in the exploding exclamation marks, riotous capital letters and Day-Glo italics of Tom Wolfe's spray-paint prose; and in Communist societies, where the State is absolute, the dignity -- and divinity -- of capital letters is reserved for Ministries, Sub-Committees...