For Sure by France Daigle Page A

axillary, axiology, ay, ayah, aye, ayin, ayurveda, azygos.
    196.21.5
    More or Less Useful Details
    Flattened against the glass platen, pages 14 and 15 of the paperback edition of Jean-Paul Sartre’s Les Mots ( Words ). A series of dizzying flashes (brought on especially by the punctuation) lead to my overheating. But I get a grip and, after a bit of coughing, I finally manage to expel the copy with my customary elegance.
    197.57.1
    Photocopies
    198.104.3
    Worries
    â€œI said person, not poison.”
    â€œAwh.”
    Don’t the little cubes along the edges serve a double function?
    199.141.6
    Obsessions
    The Babar did good business on Thursdays. Customers began arriving after 4 p.m., already happy to see the approaching weekend. The few elderly people who were in the habit of coming in to linger over a beer, a tea, or a coffee in the afternoons now reconnected with the reality of the working world.
    â€œOh sure, dey expects you to be doin’ every little ting perfect, don’t dey, but where are dey, I’d like to know, when de time come to pay?”
    â€œDon’t I knows it. I knows dat bunch.”
    The two young men who’d just come in had a lot to get off their minds.
    â€œI says to ’im: you wants me to do dat, it’s gonna cost you five hundred dollars more in labour. Well, all of a sudden he’s got a face on ’im like a hen’s arsehole in the norwest wind. Mine’s an Alpine.”
    â€œSleeman Cream.”
    â€œI only hopes dey doesn’t call me. I got plenty udder work aside from dem. What’s up, ol’ man? Are ya laughin’ at us again?”
    The old man enjoyed a bit of attention from the young ones.
    â€œI bin der meself. ’Twas a whole lot better den bein’ old, I can tell ya dat much.”
    â€œCome along wid us to work one of dese days, I can promise you’ll be rid of dem blues terrible quick. An’ wot is it yer drinkin’ in dat cup anyways?”
    The young man leaned over and pretended to smell the contents of the cup.
    â€œYer not gonna try ’n tell us dat’s jus’ coffee in der!”
    â€œWell, dat’s betwixt me and the waitress, init.”
    200.6.8
    The Babar
    There are five types of stitches in embroidery: cross-stitches, amongst which are included the catch stitch and the chevron stitch; flat stitches, including the long and short stitches and the fishbone; line stitches, including the Romanian couching and Oriental stitches; knotted stitches, such as the bullion stitch and the French knot; and finally, daisy stitches, among which the chain and the feather stitch. The Holbein or double running stitch, for its part, is the basis of blackwork or single-colour embroidery, which uses a single colour of thread. In the beginning, that colour was black. Contrasts in tone are produced by using threads and patterns of different densities.
    201.71.1
    Intro Embroidery
    In his preface to the album La lettre et l’image ( Letter and Image ) by Massin, at least in the new and modified edition published by Gallimard in 1993, Raymond Queneau reminds us that there are 52 playing cards in a deck, not counting the jokers. This number, he goes on, is double 26, which is the number of letters in the French (and English, among others) alphabet. If we count the lower and upper case of each letter, there are 52 in total, the same number as there are playing cards in a deck, which is composed of four suits, each made up of 13 cards. The number 52 is therefore divisible by 13, as is 26. Here ends Queneau’s observations which, unbeknownst to him, have tipped over this story of the number 12 — the dynamic of which leads eventually to plenitude — into the number 13, generally regarded in European and North American cultures as bad luck: a limit, ultimately death, or the beginning of a new cycle. And yet, 13 was the fundamental sacred number of the ancient Mexicans, equal to the number of days in