Elne, elne, elning.

Enough already, I say. It's time to get on with things. Stop with the wheel-spinning, the tooth-gnash, the hands-on-hips protest against things as they are. They are as they are. Enough. Get going.

It's been that kind of day. We're on break, but break means "a stop in the daily routine long enough to clear out the things that were meant to be done weeks ago." And I am impatient with my own sorry suffering. And I am impatient with all that has built up and blocked me from being able to be clear, for weeks and weeks. And so I say: get going.

And yet: tonight, a walk off the east side of the hill, down to my beloved classicist friend's house for tea and dinner. And on the walk, the sun, for the first time in days. And though I was walking away from it, and though it was in speedy decline though it was only 4:30, it was still just what I required.

And then, upon returning to the officehouse for more painstakingly slow grading, the gift of new words. I found them while checking up on "eloquent" in the OED. I pass them on to you, because if you are anything like me (which you might not be), they might be just what you require. You will want to pronounce these first two "EHLnuh," I believe, when you start working them back into the English language; they are all obscure words whose last citations in the OED date to around the middle of the thirteenth century.

elne, n. Strength, courage (also, in Old English, zeal); in theology, strength vouchsafed, comfort, grace.

elne, v. To strengthen, hearten, comfort.

elning, vbl. n. Comfort, grace.

Somehow the noun "elne" seems to me one of the most sustaining things I've heard in a long time. It has a sound so solid, a sound that is itself the simple, unshakeable strength the word signifies.

Elning to all of you tonight, you my readers and my non-readers.