nocturnal voids
A term I came across while proofing a proof for an article discussing nocturia (=nocturnal urination). But I’d rather have it out with nostalgia, the definition of.
Honing closely in on a word’s meaning kickstarts in me a case of scatter-and-slip. Look closer, closer—meaning buckles under observation.
The dictionary offers this: a bittersweet longing for the past, rooted in the Greek word nostos (=a return home), which is a word repeated multiply in The Odyssey, a book I truly always return to. My perspective on the use of nostos is gridlike.
When in college I translated a few books of The Odyssey from the Greek. Most of the words I needed to look up, which made for very slow reading; however, nostos was a posit of safety, a word I knew well because it recurred so frequently, spots of light in the grid.
A tidy definition still is made of words--semblances of solid lines, each composed of many separate points of meaning, pointillistically unstable close up, thereby defying definition. I hope some day this drives me truly mad.
Nostalgia slings arousing balance between dichotomous times and their emotions. Urn material of the Keatsian Grecian sort. Some days I want to dive into my photo album like Mary Poppins dove into chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Poof--unmoving semblance alive!
I know I can’t, for physics’ sake (though I hold onto a pea of hope). The stably unstable tension is magically, perversely invigorating.
Face a fever and eyes glass, tomorrow I embark on a five-day trip home. Tonight I will sleep with sirens and hydra in a bed of lotus.
* * * *
End-of-year lists begin and I am a sucker for them:
music
books
End-of-year lists remind me each year that I have no common sense of time. Ask me the best or worst this or that for a given year. I can name a couple before I start naming representatives from two or three or more years earlier. Lunatic amnesiac or sailor of cyclical time? I arbitrarily and affirmatively confirm the latter.
Honing closely in on a word’s meaning kickstarts in me a case of scatter-and-slip. Look closer, closer—meaning buckles under observation.
The dictionary offers this: a bittersweet longing for the past, rooted in the Greek word nostos (=a return home), which is a word repeated multiply in The Odyssey, a book I truly always return to. My perspective on the use of nostos is gridlike.
When in college I translated a few books of The Odyssey from the Greek. Most of the words I needed to look up, which made for very slow reading; however, nostos was a posit of safety, a word I knew well because it recurred so frequently, spots of light in the grid.
A tidy definition still is made of words--semblances of solid lines, each composed of many separate points of meaning, pointillistically unstable close up, thereby defying definition. I hope some day this drives me truly mad.
Nostalgia slings arousing balance between dichotomous times and their emotions. Urn material of the Keatsian Grecian sort. Some days I want to dive into my photo album like Mary Poppins dove into chalk drawings on the sidewalk. Poof--unmoving semblance alive!
I know I can’t, for physics’ sake (though I hold onto a pea of hope). The stably unstable tension is magically, perversely invigorating.
Face a fever and eyes glass, tomorrow I embark on a five-day trip home. Tonight I will sleep with sirens and hydra in a bed of lotus.
* * * *
End-of-year lists begin and I am a sucker for them:
music
books
End-of-year lists remind me each year that I have no common sense of time. Ask me the best or worst this or that for a given year. I can name a couple before I start naming representatives from two or three or more years earlier. Lunatic amnesiac or sailor of cyclical time? I arbitrarily and affirmatively confirm the latter.
2 Comments:
happy holidays!
happy holidays to you, princess!
finnegan--that choice thing i don't think is valid. i just made it up to glitter myself sound for a spell.
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