Hello!
Well. A lot has happened! To everyone and everything.
I am not really going to write this blog anymore. I still am personally fascinated by words, how they connect to each other, the past, us, and the future, but writing here hasn’t called to me for a bit.
But, I have recently started something, and if you want to come along you are so warmly invited. I am writing a newsletter via substack, approximately weekly. It is called lichen practice and it’s about interdependency as a thing to be for, and as resistance to our current shitty systems. If you are in a leap-first mood you can subscribe here. If you are in a check-it-out mood you can read this description.
And, I am planning a word-related component. Though I haven’t been reaching into my 1934 Websters International much, I recently did at the request of a friend and remembered the tactile and aesthetic joy that it is. When I have a curiosity about a word, satisfying it is more simply accomplished by using the online etymology dictionary, and I am not pretending otherwise. But the true delights of the 1934 Websters are what is unique to it: the illustrations, and the guide words.
The guide words are extra special as they are so specific to the exact pagination of this edition: exactly what’s first on the left page and last on the right. And these are often what I find most delicious as I thumb through to find whatever I’ve ostensibly come for. Most especially when they are words or phrasal words that are ticklingly familiar but with usage lost to history. They feel ripe for reclamation, co-option even, towards the future we hope to live in. So from time to time I will offer one, and invite us to answer: what do we hope this can someday mean?
This is the one that tickled me today. It will show up soon in lichen practice, but I offer it first to you, to think on. For our visionary lexicographic pleasure:
Ok…well….you don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here! (jk I will leave the site up, visit at will).
I hope to see you soon for some lichen practice, if it sounds good to you. Since the last time I wrote here, I’ve lost a very dear reader and friend, Greg Farrell. I both wish so much that he could come along for what’s next, and also am inevitably bringing him with me, for every meeting with him was lichen-making. I’m bringing all of you, too. <3
interlexionality 