What language!

“The other day I couldn’t help looking over Nola Farman’s shoulder while she was doing some research. I as struck by the use of language in an article she was reading about Shape Memory materials. Having recently met a poet with a background in Physics I was alert to how words when taken from one context and dropped into another might ‘change their shape’ in a manner of speaking – just as the found object can move from a mundane sense to something containing surprise. For example if I talk about ‘creep strain’ in physics what implications might it carry ‘out in the street’? There is a ‘dependence on maximum strain’, ‘dependence on stress’, ‘creep recovery’, ‘recovery by heating’, ‘stress relaxation’ – a ‘stress-strain-temperature relationship’. For a day I reeled about in the Department wondering what might happen next. I was brought down to earth only when I found that some under-graduates had stolen all the milk from the lunchroom fridge and I had no hope of coffee for the moment. Meanwhile Nola was deeply engrossed in her research. When I mentioned the state of the milk situation she grumbled at me and said, ‘Just get over it Permangelo!”. I realised that as her agent, I had not been paying enough attention to her affairs lately. I was particularly aware of this when Nola said to me, ‘Permangelo, why is it you think, that we are not getting many responses to this blog? ” ‘Well,’ I said, ‘the pictures are pretty enough.” At this, without blinking an eye, she looked at me over the top of her glasses , as if to say, ‘Go figure.’ At that, I decided to at least make an announcement on Facebook.” Permangelo E. Regularis