The Disambiguation of Pain (produced the Pisan Cantos): A working theory

What follows is a live-action demonstration, from July 2009, of how to control pain using the art of distraction.

To employ this method at home, you will need internet access and some sort of writing platform (a blog, spare bits of tissue, rice paper with ink and paintbrush, etc.).  Also, if you have a legal and appropriate pharmaceutical at hand, you may take it, but take the lowest necessary dosage, decreased by half.

[Your first few times employing my proprietary blend of distraction, though, consider not using any medication at all. It may not be necessary to your relief.  Not while you have a brain!]

Tell yourself, aloud:  "I will feel better in 15 minutes. 20 minutes, tops." For a successful outcome, position yourself, your internet-accessed device, and any external writing paraphernalia (beware the literati cops!) within comfortable reach. Place everything with such care of thought that should you drift off in a cloud of painlessness, nothing will be harmed. That means, for instance:  no hot beverages!

There.  You are all set.  Breathe in, breathe out, slowly.  Engage your creativity and release your inhibitions and prohibitions.

You are about to disambiguate your pain.  Bon voyage!

***********   ***   ***********   ***   ***********   ***  ***********   *** 

Ezra Pound

I had a night full of crazy nearly-nightmarish dreams and woke to the indescribable pain caused by Uncle Kitty Big Balls licking my CRPS-stricken right big toe. [He's obsessed with toes... maybe because we had to have one of his chopped off to save his sorry hide.]

I don't plan to scrape UKBB:-:Pickle Head:-:Little Boy off the wall anytime soon. Yeah, go ahead. Report me! Turn me in! Drag me off to the slammer, the big house, get all touchy-feelly about mistreatment of cross-eyed, streetwise, stinky-pooping cats.

Lately, UKBB:-:Pickle Head:-:Little Boy has accumulated even more monikers, none of which have definitively stuck, alas. Bugsy. Gus. (I was watching, for the umpteenth time, Lonesome Dove. I have an enduring love for Robert Duvall, and had just announced that I really, really wanted a Gus of my very own, when UKBB promptly announced himself with that weird, raspy half-*ack*-*ack*, half-mee-row that also managed to denote a scruffy beard and teeny-tiny cowboy hat.)

Also: Aeolus -- Greek God of the Winds, for reasons that are air-borne and truly, truly unfortunate. Dirty Harry.

Ah, the serendipity of internet searches and plain old, errant, mindless keyboard clicks. As I began to write about UKBB and his assault, it occured to me that I did not know many synonyms for jail, prison.

What?

Is that not normal mental function? Don't you jump from allusion to allusion, gleefully following each verbal twist until your childlike wonder is definitively shown up as your unique form of mental retardation?

The first thing that popped up was "Yahoo! Answers," where someone had posed the same query -- wanting some slang for prison. Pen, pokey, cooler, lockup, clink.

Not terribly familiar with this Yahoo! feature, I decided to look into what pressing questions were on the mind of the world wide web citizenry:

What's wrong with my cat?
In Cats - Asked by Aida-Christine - 11 seconds ago

How is the average speed solved using the ticker tape?
In Physics - Asked by Dulce Amor - 11 seconds ago

What does human context mean in terms of the elements of drama?
In Words & Wordplay - Asked by LittleMiss - 15 seconds ago

HIS and STORY = HISTORY. should it be HER and STORY = HERSTORY?
In Gender & Women's Studies - Asked by Bored Observer - 16 seconds ago

Where can I buy thermal printers for embossed printing on invitation cards?
In Printers - Asked by Mitch - 16 seconds ago

I cant check my email. Some help please?
In Other - Yahoo! Mail - Asked by infantry_wife - 23 seconds ago

Do I need to be in the center of my surround sound?
In Home Theater - Asked by kc17170 - 24 seconds ago

Are muscly calves genetic?
In Diet & Fitness - Asked by єℓιzα©™ - 24 seconds ago

How do you Say this in Japanese?
In Languages - Asked by Areazel - 27 seconds ago

Whats a good acne medication or cream or something !?
In Other - Skin & Body - Asked by Selah - 29 seconds ago

Production of atp in prokaryotes?
In Botany - Asked by yashwanth - 33 seconds ago

What is the best FREE MUSIC MIXING softwware to download?
In Software - Asked by JasonC. - 37 seconds ago

After a tattoo is pretty much healed is it ok to use cocoa butter without fading?
In Tattoos - Asked by Angie - 37 seconds ago

A quetion about herbal essence shampoo?
In Hair - Asked by BoPeep - 43 seconds ago

How much are Alternators for a 1998 dodge 1500?
In Dodge - Asked by iaskquestions - 43 seconds ago

Is male pregnancy possible?
In Other - Pregnancy & Parenting - Asked by Phylisia Y - 43 seconds ago

What album tracks do you always skip when listening to your favourite bands?
In Rock and Pop - Asked by mark j - 45 seconds ago

What will the human race look like in 1,000,000 years time?
In Other - Social Science - Asked by x-jessicalouise-x - 47 seconds ago

Can you guys use the search feature?
In Yahoo! Search - Asked by Artanis186 - 47 seconds ago

Pls help me with my homework?
In Homework Help - Asked by oyoboy - 49 seconds ago

It's enough to put Darwinian theory in doubt.

So, I am almost in danger of losing the train of my thought, the choo! choo! choo! so dear to coherent conversation and logical composition. Ah, but my darling Reader-Friends, after years of living with an ADHD-driven sweetheart, a cartoon diva, and the neurotic feline Sam-I-Am -- not to mention the impact of inhabiting the Tête de Hergé? I got a mind like a steel trap.

Okay, Beloved Students, let's take a moment to assess things.  
Have you noted The Method in the madness of my various circumlocutions? 
Observe:

Feel pain; Immediately invoke the pain management technique of DISTRACTION.

Not quite there yet, FREE ASSOCIATE; Discover a strong stream of consciousness around the concepts of PRISONS, CATS, and ROBERT DUVALL.

Effective pain management requires a more narrow focus, for which I FISH, using the apparently contrarian method of SEEKING THE SYNONYMOUS.

In so doing, the hard-and-fast rule of "when in doubt, Google," returns the oddly appropriate suggestion of SEEKING THE SYNONYMOUS by visiting Yahoo! Answers.

Having achieved considerable pain relief by such perfect use of DISTRACTION, toss in some deep breathing exercises, maybe a coffee and cannoli.

EXTRAPOLATE WITHIN THE CONFINES OF THE SYNONYMOUS.

This almost brought me to the edge of disaster (located near the stream of consciousness), even unto the brink of the aforementioned Darwinism.

Ah! But as Ezra reminds me, daily:

When the mind swings by a grass-blade

an ant's forefoot shall save you

the clover leaf smells and tastes as its flower.

--from LXXXIII

And so it is that I arrive... at pain relief by DISTRACTION, and you, my darling Reader-Friends, once again scratch your heads and roll your eyes, wondering about drug abuse, mental stability, and why I can't just stave off CRPS' impact by sheer force of will.

That's okay, I understand.

But -- the process is not over. There is much more to this pain management technique of DISTRACTION.

My mind now calm, even if my body still occasionally gives in to the odd writhe, and the voice to disembodied moan, I complete things. I "choo" the "choo," as it were! (You are not successfully circumlocuting if the ends never meet.)

Usually? I don't trust you or like you enough to show you the ending, the meeting of the circle ends. You don't know of my love for Euclid, and my secret glee, inasmuch as I am a writer, of the writerly things I find everywhere:

A circle is a special ellipse in which the two foci are coincident. (Wikipedia)

Wikipedia frequently offers its efforts at disambiguation, in which I delight, for I will refuse all efforts at disambiguation of my own text, while hungrily acquiring the nit-and-grit of that dialogue of contrariness. To wit, I usually would not go on to share that an investigation of ellipse necessarily includes a parse of its use as a rhetorical figure:

a rhetorical suppression of words to give an expression more liveliness.

Now, really, friends, isn't that a pure HOOT?! Coming, as it does, from the figurative pen of Retired Prof, Profderien? A freaking SUPPRESSION of words! Mwa-ha-ha-ha!

Okay, to be honest, as this has been composed in actual time during an actual episode of severe pain, I took my breakthrough pain medication (15 mg Endocet) about 40 minutes ago.

DISTRACTION as an effective pain management technique? Maybe for those perfect souls who are into suffering as means of spiritual purification. Maybe for those stellar people whom I truly admire, whose minds' natural ability to focus does indeed allow for it, like Jeisea, down under at her blog crps/rsd: a better life -- though such sites tend to irritate me because of the pride of suffering (no, I won't unpack that -- you know what I mean -- don't be coy). Also, I am jealous.

I used to be one of both of those -- seeing an overarching good in learning to live with severe chronic pain and able to hone my mind's eye to the razor's edge of a laser beam, and so hope to escape that damned pain.

But no more, unless I have to. When did the "I-have-to" Era arrive? I think when the reality of my immunosuppression and the seriousness of this apparently untreatable osteomyelitis finally made me see that the Ketamine Cure (think Keystone Cops) was too dangerous for *me* to try, that I'd never be accepted in a trial, that the SCS and pain pump were no longer available to me as pie-in-the-sky options.

Now? I try to write through it, perform it. But I also take the medication prescribed me, as it is prescribed me. Well, hmmm, that's a lie. I take less pain medication than my doctor knows or suggests. I force myself through monthly "drug holidays." I try to explore adjunct pain medications, so as to narrow the focus and thereby treat the pain more *precisely*. Mostly, that has come to mean use of baclofen to ease spasm and tics, and ibuprofen to attack inflammation.

And so, let's see: through writing this weird blog and the work that goes into it, there is significant distraction from pain, even though it usually means blogging on that very topic. Writing has become a process undertaken while waiting for conventional pain medications to kick in and do their job, or it is a Hail Mary Pass when I have taken all that is allowed. Anger emotionally fuels and informs my pain, once it has started, and so writing, again, is a way to get through that -- a way to bring the circle's ends back in line, and my mind to a measure of quiescence.

Having literally said, and also performed, this real cycle of pain -- allow me to finish. This is usually the secret part.

When last we left our intrepid painkilling thread, we were citing one of the more predictable quotes from Pound, that crazy, dangerous fool. You know, the ant's forefoot, from the last of the Pisan Cantos.

Here is a brief map of Pound's route to Pisa and on to trial and twelve years at St. Elizabeth's:

Pound met the Fascistleader Benito Mussolini, and it was in this man that Pound saw the opportunity for economic and social reform. As a supporter of Fascism, Pound's statements broadcast over radio became infamous, such as his anti-Semitic statements against what he saw was a Jewish control of the economic systems of Europe:

"..if some man had a stroke of genius, and could start a progrom against
Jews... there might be something to say for it."

These World War II broadcasts, made in Rome, were openly Fascist (it was clear that he hated U.S. President Roosevelt and usury banking), so it came as no surprise when EzraPound was arrested in 1945 by U.S. forces on charges of treason - Pound was still a citizen of the United States of America. For twenty-five days, Pound was imprisoned within the 'gorilla cage', an open cage which was situated outdoors, and was moved into a tent at the end of this time for medical reasons. This incarceration at Pisa lasted for six months in total, and during his time here he continued to translate Confucius and work upon his most famous work, the Pisan Cantos, writing it on scraps of papers and typing up his poem in the medical tent, after-hours.

Leaving Pisa to stand trial for treason and broadcasting Fascist propoganda in the United States, Pound arrived, and was examined by a panel of four mental illness experts before the trial began. Their conclusion was as follows:

"He is abnormally grandiose, is expansive andexuberant in manner, exhibiting pressure of speech, discursiveness and distractibility... He is, in other words, insane." - The judgement made by the four examiners.

Following this 1946 judgement that he was "insane and too mentally ill to stand trial" (and consequent acquittal of the charges on thesegrounds), Pound was taken to St. Elizabeth's Hospital in Washington, D.C. where he remained for twelve years until the continual appeals made by his writer friends ensured his 1958 release.

The ten cantos comprising the Pisan Cantos were composed in the weeks immediately following Pound's several week stay in one of the camp's death-row wire cages, where he had been exposed to the elements, and where he was deprived of the comfort of the human voice, as he was considered too dangerous to be engaged in conversation. When it was finally decided that he was not a high risk prisoner, after all, his health -- physical and mental -- was already in decline. They moved him to one of the medical tents, and there he composed LXXIV-LXXXIII (84 was added later, as coda).

Indicted for treason, found incompetent for trial, Pound ended up, as most crossword-puzzlers and American Lit 101 (or some other introductory course on modernism) know, at St. Elizabeth's.

Just a few months back, a very sweet woman -- who turns out to be my aunt -- filled me in on some of the more fascinating tidbits of Our Family History. My great-uncle Otis spent the last third of his life as an inmate at St. E's, the unwitting victim of tertiary syphillis.

See? It's not all coincidence and serendipity. Nor is it self-indulgence. Well, nor is it entirely self-indulgence -- this defeat of pain by DISTRACTION.

And haven't you had a wonderful time?

Dreaming Chakras

It just now occurred to me that the novel I am reading may have something to do with it: The Interpretation of Murder by Jed Rubenfeld. Freud and Jung figure prominently among the characters. Rubenfeld also includes G. Stanley Hall, Abraham A. Brill, Ernest Jones, and Sandor Ferenczi.

In 1909, Freud, Ferenczi, and Jung truly did travel to the United States, to a bustling New York City that was enthralled by the idea and actuality of skyscrapers, bossed by Tammany Hall, and obsessed by the idea of modernity, before continuing to Massachusetts.

Clark University, of which G. Stanley Hall was president, was honoring Freud with a doctorate and an invitation to deliver a week's worth of lectures on psychoanalysis -- for which Freud was pulling down a hefty $714.60. Jung was also to lecture. Ferenczi, a close friend to Freud and disciple of psychoanalysis, seemed to be along for the ride, thrilling to America.

After insuring his life for 20,000 marks--$4,764--Freud took a train to Bremen to join Jung and Ferenczi the day before boarding their ship. Hosting a farewell lunch, Freud ordered wine. Jung, a teetotaler, didn't want wine, but at Freud's insistence he agreed to have some. Curiously, after Jung capitulated and drank,Freud fainted.

(Jesus wept.)

While the three were in the city, Brill served as the primary tour guide. Jones came from England, via Canada, to join the group.

The first place Brill took his illustrious friends? Coney Island.

After the success of his lectures, and the receipt of his first, and only, academic honor, Freud spent 8 more days in the U.S., "...and most of it was downhill. He was in constant pain not only from his prostatic condition but also from intestinal disorders, which he blamed on American cooking. He felt that his hosts were not sympathetic enough toward his illness. He disliked not being understood when he spoke in German, resented the lack of Old World manners, disapproved of the inhibitions and prudery he perceived in most Americans. Forever after, Freud rarely had a kind word for the U.S. He told Jones, 'America is a mistake; a gigantic mistake, it is true, but none the less a mistake.' He told Hanns Sachs, who later taught psychology in Harvard Medical School, 'America is the most grandiose experiment the world has seen, but, I am afraid, it is not going to be a success.'"

Rubenfeld couches his fiction in Freud's dislike of America and in a series of murders --which, of course, require the careful application of the new analysis.

A victim survives the murderous attack, but loses her ability to speak, as well as her memory for the event. Certain that the young woman is an hysteric (and was, prior to the attack, of course), Freud endeavors to cure her, so that she will be able to provide police with a description of her assailant.

I'm only about a third of the way into the book.

The book has to be behind it, don't you think? Behind the dream, my incredible dream?

I didn't think it possible to dream so intricately within a 45 minute period, a time marked by severe discomfort and a measure of indigestion from a surprise dinner of Chinese food -- one dish of which was coated with a questionable garlic sauce.

My dreams are notorious for their boring and literal nature. If I have spent the day correcting papers, by night I dream of working through essays with a trusty red pen. Even interesting opportunities for rich dreaming are made facile by my mind -- the day I first read Saussure and discussed the arbitrary nature of signs, I simply re-experienced a long walk down Shattuck Avenue, seeing once again the lone cast-off black patent leather Mary Jane shoe sitting in the middle of the sidewalk, pristine. Thoughts of a [one-legged?] goth with style. Worry for that goth. Was she alright?

Wow. Where in the world did that come from? The mind, the mind! What a wonder. Even one like mine, in decline, my mind! The arbitrary nature of signs has been the fundamental nagging element since the dream was dreamed.

Strange, isn't it, that I am psychically caught up in these early years of the 20tho century?


Fred served up a surprise dinner and you'd have thought we hadn't had proper food in weeks, the way we devoured it. We ate in that awful way -- with the television blaring, sitting up in bed, surrounded by cats. And not ten minutes afterward, I was asleep.

In the dream, I resided in a large house that may have been a museum -- it was empty except for a central area that contained only one piece. A piece of art? No... it was a beautiful thing but the sense was that it had utility. And was very important. I was its guardian.

My brother-unit TW arrived. There were moments of long silence, and we walked and talked on a rolling green lawn that stretched out from the back glass walls of the house/museum. From the outside, you could see that the house/museum was built of distressed white brick.

We spent a long while standing in the dark, out on the lush green (it sort of glowed), looking in at the lights and airy space inside the house. Always, though, our eyes were drawn to the careful kaleidoscope of color of the... beautiful thing.

I don't know what to call it. There was a moment there at the end when I knew precisely what it was -- in the dream. But, awake and remembering, I cannot see how it could actually be what it was.

We went back in and stood in front of the beautiful thing.

Suddenly, it was reduced to a single item, a lovely, gleaming glass bowl, full of highlights of various blues with swirling creams. I held it up, told TW that I was entrusting it to him "for keeping, for keeping safe."

"She will need it," I declared, adding: "It is worth 5.5 million dollars."

Don't ask me, I don't know -- who *she* is, why $5.5 million?

And I handed the bowl to him. He reached out to take it, but instead came away with what looked like a large coat button. The button, like the bowl, was swirling blue-cream glass, but broken. In half.

He looked at it, quizzically. "It's a chakra," I said.

"It's a broken chakra, and we have to have it fixed."

At that point, TW delivered a speech, the content of which is fading.

That's a lie. It's not fading, I just don't want to remember it.

It was about feeling unworthy, and sad at having missed so many occasions of import in *her* life.

Uncomfortable listening to him, I shushed him by saying that he had been chosen to safeguard this gift, this broken chakra, worth so much. He obviously mattered, he obviously was a part of a whole.

Transformed back into the bowl alone, TW and I carried the glass swirl of a beautiful thing out the back, down across the long, long lawn, and out onto what looked like a busy old-timey English village -- consult your own subconscious for that visual!

We took the first road to the right, which dipped down into a sudden, unexpected forest. Suddenly, we stood before a wonderfully stereotypical cottage -- right out of Hansel and Gretel. A very nice, and obviously fairy-tale wise, elderly woman invited us in.

Somehow, we knew she was An Expert. In Chakra? In beautiful things? In brother-unit feelings of abandonment and worthlessness? I kept waiting for her to fall fully into her role of wise and wizened matron, hoping, to be honest, that she might serve tea.

The bowl turned back into a broken glass button. I handed it to her, and she smiled, then did magic.

The button became whole, vibrant, shiny, milky-blue, smooth.
It grew, with a sound like a ((pop)) -- but was only briefly in its prior incarnation as a bowl -- it kept going, morphing.

I think it had a copper wire "skeleton," the structure that resulted. From the copper wires were hung many bright sterling silver beads and filigree -- delicate wire work, again in silver, but some in gold. Metallic lace. I have the impression of woven baskets supported by all of that airy interlacing wire.

Impression, because when I focus my eyes, they are no longer woven baskets, but rather an expanded set of those magical glass bowls -- now golden swirls along with cream and blue, a deep but distant teal.

Without any of us discussing how it could be so, we agreed that it was the most beautiful bassinet we had each ever seen...

and that *she* would love it.

Origins and Babies: Here is a Brand, Spanking New One

I love babies.

We all do, here at the oft stodgy Marlinspike Hall, deep in the Tête de Hergé. Not that we are getting old, sentimental, or soft in the head. Still, La Belle Bianca Castafiore insists that there be no "répétitions" (rehearsals) of her ear-splitting, inimitable voice and her never-ending aria, l'air des bijoux, from Gounod's Faust, during any of the 2 afternoon hours of TLC's reality shows on birth, babes, and frazzled parents.

Fred is even a greater fan of A Baby Story, a documentary of the actual birth, and Bringing Home Baby, which chronicles the first 36 hours of the infant's triumphant arrival at the homestead.

He even manages to derive a little monetary benefit from his passetemps, overseeing betting opportunities -- such as whether, or when, the birthing woman will scream, "Get it out! Just get it out!"

The felines enjoy the shows, as well, lined up in front of the television screen -- mewling, purring, and swatting. Unfortunately, Marmy sometimes has a PTSD-induced flashback to her traumatic birth experience. At the tender age of 8 months, her huge belly almost dragged the ground, and had The Fredster not guilted me out, she would have likely died, along with her five unborn kittens -- just another ill-tempered stray. Ah, but look at her now! Her lush, long hair -- her tiny, well-muscled body, her fascist, unreasoned ways! See her charge the TV screen, hair blowing in the huff of a self-generated breeze! Bless her paranoid little bones!

My favorite show? Jon and Kate Plus Eight, hands down*. It's not just the cute factor, nor even the unavoidable awe that comes from contemplating eight young children who are well-behaved and happy. It's a little bit appreciation of the occasional parental bickering. It's a lot acknowledgement of the grace and love that kisses the pointy head of each and every Gosselin -- whether in any one of the dozen designated Time-Out corners of their home or sporting plastic purple halos.

Anyway...

"Anyway..."? I don't want Braden of 20 Out Of 10 fame to get a swollen head or anything, but the impetus for this Saturday morning confessional were the pictures of his two gorgeous daughters, the youngest being brand-spanking new**, just a day or so old and the spitting image of her sister***.

Welcome, little one!

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*Origin of hands down:

Jockeys need to keep a tight rein in order to encourage their horse to run. Anyone who is so far ahead that he can afford to slacken off and still win can drop his hands and loosen the reins - hence winning 'hands down'. This is recorded from the mid 19th century. For example, 'Pips' Lyrics & Lays, 1867:

"There were good horses in those days, as he can well recall, But Barker upon Elepoo, hands down, shot by them all."

It began to be used in a figurative sense, to denote an easy win in other contexts, from the early 20th century.

**Origin of brand spanking new:

A hot burned wooden stake has been called a brand since at least 950 AD. To brand means to 'make an indelible mark of ownership', especially with a hot stake or iron. This verb usage has been known since the Middle Ages and is clearly derived from the earlier name (we might say brand name - but we'll come to that later).

The earliest citation of 'brand new' is in John Foxe's Sermons, 1570:

"New bodies, new minds and all thinges new, brande-newe."

Terms that are old often come to us with a variety of spellings. In this case there are many variants, notable 'bran new', for example:

John Gay's, The What d'ye call it? - a farce, 1714: "Wear these Breeches Tom; they're quite bran-new."

The Times from 1788: "The liquor fpoiled a bran new pair of fattin breaches."

It is sometimes put about that 'brand new' comes from marketing jargon, where terms like 'brand loyalty' etc. are commonplace. That's about a thousand years too late as the origin, but again, it does have the same meaning as the early form. A brand in marketing terms comes from the meaning of the word as 'a particular class of goods, as indicated by a trade mark'.

So, that's 'brand new'; what about the double form 'brand spanking new'? Spanking is little more than an intensifier in this phrase. The word does have a distinct meaning; unrelated to 'slapping with the hand', i.e. 'exceptionally large or fine'. For example, Fanshawe's Love for Love's sake, 1666:

"What a spanking Labradora!"

Like the variety of spellings there are variants of the intensified form - 'brand span new', 'spick and span new', etc. These citations pre-date any known version of 'brand spanking new':

Henry Angelo's Reminiscences, 1830: "His feet were thrust into a bran-span new pair of fashionable pumps."

The Whitby Glossary, 1855: "Brandnew, Brandspandernew, fresh from the maker's hands, or 'spic and span new'."

It appears that whoever coined 'brand spanking new' did so by appropriating the imagery of 'spick and span', the rhyme of 'bran' and 'span' and the meaning of 'spanking'. That is, it is a pleasant-sounding phrase with some appropriate associations. Whatever the intent of the early users of the phrase, it is in Eric Partridge's meaning of the term, a catchphrase, i.e. it has caught on. It appears to have been coined around the turn of the 20th century and is still in common use. The earliest printed citation we can find is in an advertisement for a bicycle, in the Daily Review, Decatur, Illinois, May 1894:

"Here is a Brand, Spanking New one."

***Origin of spitting image:

One of the very first questions that was asked at the Phrasefinder bulletin board was about 'spitting image'. There have been numerous such queries there since and some ask if the term was originally 'splitting image', i.e. deriving from the two matching parts of a split plank of wood. That's a plausible idea. The mirror image matching of the grain of split wood has long been used in furniture and musical instruments for decorative effect. The technique is known as book-matching and the resulting pattern is called fiddleback - for obvious reasons. The theory has its adherents and dates back to at least 1939, when Dorothy Hartley included it in her book Made in England:

"Evenness and symmetry are got by pairing the two split halves of the same tree, or branch. (Hence the country saying: he's the ‘splitting image’ - an exact likeness.)"

As so often though, plausibility isn't the end of the story. The numerous forms of the term 'spitting image' - spit and image, spitten image, the dead spit of etc., appear not to derive from 'split' but from 'spit'.

Some commentators have suggested that 'spit' may be a corruption of 'spirit', but that appears to be fanciful and isn't backed up by any early examples of 'spirit and image'. The allusion is more likely to be to someone who is so similar to another as to appear to have been spat out of his mouth. That idea, if not the exact phrase, was in circulation by the end of the 17th century, when George Farquhar used it in his comic play Love and a bottle, 1689:

"Poor child! he's as like his own dadda as if he were spit out of his mouth."

No version of the phrase is especially old. The earliest reference is in Andrew Knapp and W. Baldwin's The Newgate Calendar, 1824–26:

"A daughter, ... the very spit of the old captain."

This pre-dates any 'splitting image' citation by a good hundred years, which tends to rule out the latter as the source. 'Spit' or 'dead spit', with the meaning of likeness, appears in print several times in the 19th century. Here 'dead' means precise or exact, as in dead ringer.

Other languages have their own versions of this phrase. For example, French - "C'est le portrait craché de son père" ("He's the spitting portrait of his father") and Norwegian - "som snytt ut av nesen paa" ("as blown out of the nose of"). These are difficult to date and may predate the English version or may derive from it.

Toward the end of the 19th century we find 'spit and image'. In 1895, an author called E. Castle published Lt. of Searthey, containing the line:

"She's like the poor lady that's dead and gone, the spit an' image she is."

Finally, we get to the first known use of 'spitting image' - in A. H. Rice's Mrs. Wiggs, 1901:

"He's jes' like his pa - the very spittin' image of him!"