In this instance, the Proto-Indo-European feels so distant: *kwel-es. This is not an example of irony. But I am so removed from that part of my brain that even these two sentences remain a challenge.

A noun. The ultimate aim or goal. Similarly, the Greek brings ‘ the end, limit, fulfillment, completion.’

And back again to PIE - to revolve, move around, sojourn, dwell.

I can pull myself back to here, end my day where I began, and this is the truth more often than it is not anymore. Those other days are so few and far between; the images have all but faded, and all I carry now is the smell of my own bed.

For Aristotle it was the final cause. To that most esteemed philosopher, all things had cause.

All things had telos.

I never knew that teleology was, well, a thing, as they say. Perhaps I did at one point during my formal education. The stacks in my mind are a bit dusty from lack of use. The study of purposiveness. I would have nodded along with him - the idea that all things must have purpose fits nicely into the worldview I have stumbled into. But when I pause, I want to resist.

Goal, though, is not always an end.

Purpose is not, should not, be a goal or an end. But this is too crude, too oversimplified.

It would be a la mode to trace some faint line to Telemachus. I will not pepper this with that. Telos means far or afar or distant. Not so precise, but you see what I see, don’t you?

This is my aim - to spiderweb my way through words, broken up and pestered until they find a relationship with each other.

The film forgot Telegonus - also far, afar, distant. It feels unfair.

∴

Lesson 7: flūo

I have been settling into these simpler Latin words - not so much to tease out. Being gentle with myself, which I am not known for.

Flow. A Flowing. The first that comes up is a mention of chemistry: ‘minerals readily fusible.’

Flowing.

Fluere meaning to flow, stream, run, melt.

A verb. But it feels stagnant despite the meaning. Maybe I need one more consonant, another syllable to feel more fluid.

There we go. One small change - the root remains intact.

Well, not exactly. Fluidus is flowing; it is that dreaded word moist.

The PIE is ‘swelling.’

Sometimes, when my fingers swell with the heat during summer months, I fear that my rings won’t fit again. Specifically, the engraved ones, the non-resizable bits of gold. Alternatively, I worry that I may never get them off. This is an example of my catastrophizing. All because of the expansion of blood vessels - the widening.

Which isn’t exactly flowing, but this is where we have ended up.

I can imagine the flow of blood vessels on their way to the surface, widening, expanding, swelling. Small bubbles waiting to break the tension. I don’t have the natural images or language to show you what I mean, but I trust you can come up with your own waves, valleys and canyons slowly or quickly filling, those little jelly-like orbs swelling when submerged.

This is unsatisfactory.

Clawing my way out of something. Forced ‘morning pages’ or whatever nonsense you want to call what I have been attempting to create. That is not meant to be denigration. I just don’t know what else to call the attempt to write. Ireland ruined my practice here at home.

My shadow. My dog. A wall in SE PDX.

More soon I hope.
S

I’m constantly surprised by the way that my mind drifts back to theology, to biblical stories, despite my lifelong devotion to Agnosticism. Devotion is a stretch. Agnostic leaning is more accurate. But I want to claim devotion to something.

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I am dreading writing this because I don’t feel there is much for me to say. But there is always so much for me to say - just nothing that fits here.

The typical lull in writing, in reading, in creation during the spring has extended into fall. The collegiate coaching posit…

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First there was sound and light. A terrible reckoning.

This is how all worlds come to exist. A cracking open with all manner of hues bleeding out, sometimes a trickle, but more often a cascade, a drenching, a flood. One may begin to lose track of which is which, if the sea is the sky is the land is the woman birthing it all. If the throa…

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It feels less like coming home and more like a sigh.

I’ve spent an afternoon sweeping pine needles and gluing corkboard to wooden frames, making coffee in the F…

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Last year, I didn’t attend either the festival in Dublin or Portland, and I blame my failing writing practice on that. Failure is maybe too harsh, as well.

The poem conceived in Dublin bor…

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I’m reminded of sentience: the capacity to feel, perceive, and experience. It’s meant to be subjective. It is “full of meaning” from the Middle French sententieux; of course, sententia in Latin is “thought” and more specifically “expression of thought” or even “full of meaning.”

Do all thoughts carry meaning? Must every thing posses…

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I take S. to his favorite Thai restaurant.
I make him eat something.
I listen to him tell me stories about A. that I want him to repeat and repeat and repeat until
we are both able to pretend that this isn’t real.

His hair is longer now and his eyes are clearer and he laughs
and I want to record this moment so that I can find it again when I wake up

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At first, diu comes from dyéw, which means ‘during the day,’ and is the locative case of dyḗws. It is a long while, a long, long while, even. My pronunciation may be off, as well as my grammar; parts of speech do not always come easily to me.

This may reference the diurnus, in other words, the Cestrum diurnum, which flowers during the day and mimics minuscule white trumpets. It is also called the Day-Blooming Jasmine. In Urdu and Hindi, it is Din ka Raja. King of the Day.

Must ‘king’ always be masculine?

That is a word for another day… for now, there is just ‘day’ and an inferred ‘long enough’, but there is an oversight here: the sky exists outside of the day; the heavens don’t disappear just because there is no one to witness them.

This holds an assumption that there is a god, or gods, presiding. Do they allow more than flowers to bloom? Do they care?

∴

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*small park on the walk past Harry’s
cut grass
flowers along one border near the houses
the black and white cat with the pink collar and a single bell
sometimes women sunbathing on the odd sunny day
clusters of buttercups
blackbirds and crows begging

7/13
we land…

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Unfinished - erosion can be more than just a bottom, an end that no longer exists. There is always a last page even when you rip it out. So why do you insist on ripping it out? The act seems pointless - as if by pulling words away from the spine the story could or would shift into something else entirely.

I can mutate if you want me to, grasp at my stomach as if anything I could spawn could be enough, could be the end of it. I try to speak from my stomach. To digest is not the same - this is not my body’s attempt at decomposition. I can self-destruct if I need to; self-sabotage is easy to recognize in others because I’ve watched myself do it: an out-of-body experience, viewing from a window three stories up, steamed up glass, can’t get the whole picture, but just enough of it. Decay, erode the sense of self, erode any sort of truth. There doesn’t have to be an end.

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It’s the same gold ink that’s been in the fountain pen for going on three years now; I’m not remotely close to finishing the bottle purchased in 2020. I am not writing enough. Or I am using too many different pens—or both.

I also say I want to write the next meditation on paintings or my mother or the vani…

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In part and in full, the Proto-Indo-European root *gwora- becomes carnivorous and devouring. It becomes gorge and gorging. It forms the basis of all things consuming.

From Late Latin and Old French, the jaws and gullet, a narrow passage or a deep valley.

I’d prefer it was relegated simply to the mouth, to the teeth I had neglected…

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I am always attempting. In the last bit, the In Summary, ‘try’ became the refrain.

I’m beginning to write letters, finding postcards I never sent from this time last year, two years ago even, tucked into the same small brown paper sleeves, worn thin from being pressed b…

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In a strange turn of events, 10 months of writing in Ireland led to months of sterile pages, ink dried up and stubbornly refusing to clear out of the fountain pens I carry with me despite the knowledge that I will not use them.

I’ve gone back to simple ballpoint, thrown carelessly in the bottoms of my bags, tucked into…

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So here are three of those little bits, lines I spent far too long arranging and rearranging and poking and prodding and damn near strangling.

So here are some poems that make me more of a poet now than I was ten years ago.

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I try to explain that this isn’t my house. I try to explain that I can’t make a decision like that and certainly couldn’t instruct him. I try to explain that I do not live here and I am really not the person he should be asking. I …

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