weird satisfaction

i love when i tag something on delicious and find out i've used a weird tag before and i'm continuing to build a history for it. example: today while tagging Morgellon's disease*, i realized i'd tagged something "freaky"^ before. the other "freaky" page? this "Indian Pediatrics page," describing bilateral triphalangeal thumbs. it is, indeed, freaky.



*my note in delicious on what makes Morgellon's freaky:

A weird disease - "undiagnosed dermopathy," also referred to as "delusion of parasites" - first "discovered" by a woman whose son complained of "bugs" under his skin. She noticed hairs and "fibres" sticking out of the sores. Doctors refused to see her and c/wouldn't give her a diagnosis, saying she was suffering from a psychological condition. Really weird and freaky stuff.

^"freaky" and "creepy" are distinct. only a couple things are "freaky," according to my tagging practices on delicious, while many things (27) are "creepy."

wisdom, served

"How does a man die when he's deprived of the consolations of literature?"
"In one of two ways, petrescence of the heart or atrophy of the nervous system."

-Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle

*petrescence: (noun) the process of turning to stone; petrification

rusticate

(verb)
definition: to go or send to the country.

example: I am going to enjoy my winter vacation in rustication. Destination Rustication.

I am homesick for my old Kentucky home...

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in other word-related news: my laptop's dictionary just tried to tell me there was no such word as "fustigate." incredulous, i resorted to the internets, which confirmed my suspicion that yes, the word exists, and furthermore, it means "to beat with a club; cudgel."

now with your broadened knowledge of the English lexicon, go forth and wield hefty conversations!

subtleties

in combination with observation, experience has led me to conclude the following about human adolescent semantics:

"cute" - used by boys to describe girls who are playful, funny, sporty, tomboyish. what a women's magazine would replace with the word "gamine."

"beautiful" - used by men to describe a woman whose beauty they admire, someone sophisticated and perfect, but in a sexless way. the perfection is more suited for looking than touching.

"sexy" - interestingly, the least descriptive of the three, a vague combination of beautiful and cute, but in a way that consumes the sexual imagination. usu. thrown out in the throes of passion, when mental capacity lacks imagination or energy for better suited descriptors ("captivating," "sultry," "muy caliente" etc.)

"gorgeous" - a word used almost solely by women, and reserved for describing architecture, landscapes, design details, or exotic birds.

hmm.
-stephan!e

tragedy

n. definition: having exciting things to talk about, or exciting activities or adventures in mind, having a good hair day, etc. but the only people around to appreciate it are obnoxious eleven and twelve year-olds.


example of use: my life as a 6th grade teacher has become increasingly tragic.

time lost

if nostalgia is the experience of concentrated regret for lost time, as i wrote previously, then cosmic irony is the experience of feeling sore from being victimized or mocked by the world and circumstances.

as i was up late musing about time, i failed to realize that today was the beginning of daylight savings time, which meant i lost an hour. what turned out to be an already late morning turned into an early afternoon. curses! just as the mornings were beginning to look so beautiful.

i am doomed to be perpetually maladjusted.

i'm listening to Band of Horses' first album on repeat. the songs always make me think of sophomore year in college, springtime, and my room in Peabody, lying on my back on a carpeted floor with friends, and late nights that turn to early mornings. Oxford is really bewitching in the early hours just before sunrise. i'd like to go back there, but being back physically wouldn't be enough. it'd have to be a metaphysical transportation. a time machine would have to be involved. oh well. for now, listening to Band of Horses is enough.

this album also makes me think of the summer i spent in chicago. i listened to the songs "St. Augustine" and "Monsters" every night before going to sleep. i still sometimes do. i listened to it then for the same reason i do now, to quiet homesickness and have something familiar.

certain albums have a way of shaping and preserving our experiences. i think this phenomenon is unique to our digital media generation; we have had the luxury of constant play, constant access, and ease of repeat. we are self-sufficient in building our own soundtracks.

i think an important skill to have as an adult is the ability to create yr own atmospheres. when we are children, our parents do this for us. they wrap us up in nurseries and warmth for our protection, but when we get older and see the world in all its unsafe honesty, we have to design these atmospheres ourselves. candles, pillows, bottled water, heavily laden bookshelves of poetry and fiction, these are some of the devices that come most readily to my mind.

and familiar, comforting music, of course.



-stephan!e

some musings on the passage of time

i realize that in some form or another, this blog has largely been devoted to chronicling the passage of time: noticing the changes demarcating the stages of life, nostalgia, the seasons, the future, the past, memories.

but, if this blog is supposed to be a reflection of my most persistent thoughts, then that seems about right.

Time is an interesting phenomenon to behold, and thus my fascination. such an intangible thing, a deception, but relentless. 15 minutes goes unnoticed, but what about 5 years?

i can lament the sweet brevity of childhood, but feel tormented in the endlessness of a single day at work, fail to understand how short the days are while at the same time, counting down the days until the summer or my next vacation.

does it seem accurate to say a year is 365 days? somehow a year seems so long, but when i think about the days that comprise a year, it seems so swift. and how quickly a month passes! it's already march...

and yet, june can't come quickly enough...

some things you take for granted until you stop to think about them, and that's the trouble with Time. perhaps this is why nostalgia is such a poignant emotion; it is a form of concentrated regret for lost time. it is regret for our readiness for the future, our persistence in pressing onward and forward, regret we feel when we reflect on how far we've come and see the distance and extent of our own removal.

usually, we don't remember Time until we see its signs in the accumulation of little changes: the appearance of first wrinkles (laugh lines around the eyes), childhood clothing no longer being appropriately whimsical for the workplace, high school references no longer being recent enough to be relevant, "child" actors now in their 30s or 40s (sometimes it takes seeing someone else's aging to understand your own).