Cashmere / Kashmir

[robinturner]

I am now the owner of a cashmere sweater. This happened when my wife lured me into a shop descriptively entitled Cashmere and Silk, plonked me in front of the menswear shelf and said "Choose one". It turned out that this was because I had mentioned that I had never, in my whole life, owned anything in cashmere. Despite wishing that instead I had said, "You know, I've never owned a 64-bit CPU in my life," I was happy with the resulting purchase, and yes, cashmere really does feel gorgeous.

Coincidentally, I now have three versions of Kashmir on my MP3 player: the original version, the one with the Moroccan orchestra from No Quarter and the Puff Daddy adaptation ("Come With Me") which some regard as sacrilege, but I rather like.

Comments

[oblomova.livejournal.com]

I'm years late to this trend, but my sister-in-law got me a pashmina shawl for Christmas this year and I've been happily wrapped up in it all weekend (warming up here in the Upper Midwest of America, but still nippy). It does feel awfully amazing.

[solri.livejournal.com]

And you can wear it next to your skin without getting itchy!

There again, if you were wearing a shawl next to your skin, that would be ... interesting.

[chr0me-kitten.livejournal.com]

The Diddy version? Really? I always figured Jimmy Page must have lost a bet for participating in that bit of musical horror.

[solri.livejournal.com]

Well yeah, but it's still fun! If I took Diddy-Daddy seriously, I'd probably hate him passionately, but I can't take him seriously. It's a kind of camp rap.

[xlnyc.livejournal.com]

yes the puff daddy version is sacrilege
especially when he starts a verse to early stops and starts again and it makes the final cut of the song

Yet the song gets me motivated to a degree

[solri.livejournal.com]

I just love the way he can sound alternately menacing and silly.

I fought my enemies
I fought my foes
Damn these ho's
They're steppin' on my toes

[solri.livejournal.com]

I hate that word "metrosexual". I know that it originates from a contraction of "metropolitan heterosexual", but the etymology suggests to me "a person of moderate sexuality" by analogy with the Aristotelean term metropatheia. (By the way, I've just found out that if you miss out the final "e", you get a disease of the womb, which just shows how tricky Greek is.) Anyway, I don't see what grooming has to do with sexual preference.

That said, yes, I probably am becoming a bit of a metrosexual these days. I blame the Fab 5 ;-)

Oh yes, and there are loads of versions of "Kashmir". Most of them probably aren't worth listening to, but I'd like to hear Ofrah Haza's version.

Love the icon by the way.

[solri.livejournal.com]

In Greek, "metro" meant "measure", from which we derive "metre" in both the length and rhythm senses, and I assume this is where "metropatheia" in the Aristotelean sense comes from: measured emotion ("pathos" means "disturbance", and it was thought that emotions were physical movements of the soul). It also meant "womb" (as I've just found out, thanks to the good old OED), hence "metropathia" as a disease of the womb. A metropolis was a "mother city" of a colony, so presumably that has the "womb" sense rather than the "measure" sense. "Metropolitan" was the Latinised adjective.

"Hysteria" is also a Latin-from-Greek word. "Hysterical", in the sense of being emotional and out of control, comes from the ancient Greek idea that the womb is hot and can dry out, causing said symptoms, if not regularly watered with semen. Hmmm.