“I have come to understand that although place-words are being lost, they are also being created. Nature is dynamic, and so is language. Loanwords from Chinese, Urdu, Korean, Portuguese and Yiddish are right now being used to describe the landscapes of Britain and Ireland; portmanteaus and neologisms are constantly in manufacture. As I travelled I met new words as well as salvaging old ones: a painter in the Hebrides who used landskein to refer to the braid of blue horizon lines in hill country on a hazy day; a five-year-old girl who concoted honeyfur to describe the soft seeds of grasses held in the fingers. When Clare and Hopkins could not find words for natural phenomena, they just made them up: sutering for the cranky action of a rising heron (Clare), wolfsnow for a dangerous sea-blizzard, and slogger for the sucking sound made by waves against a ship’s side (both Hopkins). John Constable invented the verb to sky, meaning ‘to lie on one’s back and study the clouds’. We have forgotten 10,000 words for our landscapes, but we will make 10,000 more, given time.”
Robert Macfarlane, from Landmarks (Penguin, 2016)
Where lies your landmark, seamark, or soul’s star?
Gerald Manley Hopkins, from “On the Portrait of Two Beautiful Young People,” Gerard Manley Hopkins: The Major Works (Oxford University Press, 2009)
Thus the wanton earth breathes her amorous desires, and all creatures follow headlong their mother’s example.
Griffin: You f–k up a whole lot when you start doing a podcast, and you hear from people who really, really, really like you, who let you know very politely that you hurt their feelings and ostracized them, and then you stop doing it. And then after enough of those, you kind of stop doing it to everybody, or you try your f–king best to. Literally, that’s it. I think it’s easy to get defensive, but I just always felt so miserable when I heard, “I’m a big fan of yours and you hurt my feelings.”
Travis: When someone tells you, “Hey, what you just did hurt me,” you have two options. One is to say like, “You’re wrong, and I didn’t do anything wrong.” Or your other option is to say, “Okay, well if you feel that way, let me take a step back and really look at what I did.” Do that second one every time.
I know I told this, sort of, in August at the time that it happened, but I’ve been thinking about it a lot today.
I was working at Wizard World Chicago in August 2016, so I had some extra money to spend as I was on an exhibitor pass. I couldn’t pass up a Carrie Fisher autograph so I bought a ticket, but I waited too long and ended up in group B on Saturday afternoon.
Group B was supposed to start at 5:00 PM. I got in line at 4:30 and waited. And waited. And waited. The convention floor closed at 7 PM; I (hi, line friends) waited. She’d been signing autographs, more or less, since 10 AM. We could see Gary next to her, his tongue sticking out.
I got to the front of the line at around eight o’clock at night. I was tired; I’d been working the booth all day and perpetual cheerfulness is exhausting. I can only imagine how tired she must have been. “No personalizations,” said the assistant as I handed her the book I’d brought to have signed, which I understood (I was the front of Group B, and there were easily another fifty people at least behind me).
A minute later, I was standing in front of Carrie Fisher. I’m pretty sure, being a creature of vast social awkwardness, I made a stupid joke about being on the wrong side (I was wearing my Imperial Officer uniform).
She looked up at me, opened the book, and said, “They’re trying to stymie me. I will not be stymied. Who would you like this made out to?”
I will not be stymied. A life in five words, and all I can say is that I’m so, so very glad I stayed in line.
Izzie’s tumblr archive 