Adventures in Logophilia Day 2: Downwelling (Jillian)

I've decided to choose these gems at random, because it's more interesting that way instead of going through it all in some semblance of alphabetical order.  This morning, I scrolled through my lists, not sure which word was "calling" me until I happened upon...

Downwelling (noun): the downward movement of fluid, especially in the oceans, the atmosphere, or deep inside the earth's mantle and core. 

Like upwelling, I love this word because of its simple imagery.  Upwelling, they told us in geology class (that was really more oceanology), is when the circulation of the ocean's water comes upward from the ocean floor.  This cycle of upwelling and downwelling is what maintains the temperature of those waters, the cold water coming down (sinking), the warm water coming up (rising).  One of the main fears about global warming is that if the temperature of the oceans is warm enough, the welling stops for a time.  It stops and the oceans eventually get colder.  They get colder, and the rest of the Earth gets colder.  So, global warming would lead to a global freeze, an ice age.  Or, worst case scenario, a snow-ball planet.  But that is again, how I understand it, which isn't very well.  Take this with a grain of salt, but keep the imagery in mind.

To me downwelling and upwelling, could also describe one rising to the surface or delving deep.  It is a lovely metaphor, physical movement to set the mood or direction one is going towards in life, whether good or bad.  Upwelling as a positive, optimistic course.  Downwelling as determination and bravery in the midst of darkness, going deep to confront problems or life in general at the core.  Downwelling is not sinking.  Whatever goes down, of course, must and will rise up again. 

Adventures in Logophilia - Ab Inito (Jillian)

It has been two months since I've put words into this blog.  It has been four years since Michelle and I launched this project, and life continues to meander, ebb and flow in different directions, in different moods.  We've been busy bees, going to school and writing novels.  I completed my grand endeavor, a novel, on 1 September, and as I go through the process of writing query letters and sending them out and waiting for responses, I'll be here resting from the long slog of the last fifteen months.  Depending on the weather (both figuratively and literally), I might document some of my experiences in the black hole that is publishing. 

But what will hopefully bring me to the blog on a regular basis is my lexicon.  I have been collecting fun, interesting, complicated, brilliant words for the last several years, and now have a whopping 2100 at my disposal.  I've gathered this definitions from Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, but they are paraphrased and illustrated here in my own words.  Where better to explore them than Daedalus?  I won't blog on them all, of course, because that would take me six years.  I'll blog on the words that are most useful, most special to me.  Hopefully, you will find yourself becoming a logophiliac as well.

I'll begin at the beginning with...

Ab inito is an adverb from the Latin, meaning "from the beginning." 

Contrary to popular belief, in my opinion, Latin is most certainly not dead.  Though no one goes about this day in age striking up conversations in Latin, it is everywhere.  We still read it, pour over it, become captivated by the sound of its language, the way it's sung and spoken in some Christian circles.  Latin provides the foundation for so much of our language, and sometimes asserts an authoritative voice into an other wise dull statement, a grain of wisdom into what could be a shabby string of words.  Maybe it is like the physical vestiges of the Roman empire left standing all over Britain (Hadrian's Wall).  Or maybe it just sounds cool.  We could all do with a little more Latin in our daily lives!

Garden Metaphors for Writing (Jillian)

I've dabbled on and off with the curious magic that is gardening.  I say "dabble" because I could never quite accomplish the splendor and variety of my parents' garden growing up.  I've had dreams in recent years of planting roses and filling beds with flowers, but most of my successes seem to dwell with seeds in pots and little indoor projects.  Through this dabbling, I have learned a few things that have been astoundingly helpful in my writer's life.

• Michelle once compared a novel I have been working on and struggling with to berry bushes.  This is a para-paraphrase of her lovely metaphor, but hopefully it works.  You plant berry bushes and they grow for a few years before they produce any fruit.  But the plant is still alive, still growing, still getting ready for that fruitfulness. 

• Along the same lines, I've thought about seeds.  You have a seed.  You plant it in the ground or a vessel of some sort filled with soil.  You water it.  You put it in the sun.  Notice how it doesn't sprout up immediately.  For weeks you water the seemingly empty, fruitless pot of dirt.  The days pass and you wonder why nothing is growing, why nothing is beginning to show for all the effort.  And then at last, with enough patience, a little green shoot pushes up and into the open air.  Just when you'd given up hope.  The point of this is that you have to keep watering the little pot of dirt.  You can't see the plant yet, but it's there.  Same with writing.  Something may not be working.  A chapter or a scene might be stalling, but you never know what might be happening underneath the surface.  You have to keep watering it - or writing it - until it pokes up through the surface.  Never abandon it.

• I also had an amarylis bulb, bought on clearance in January.  It already had a green shoot coming out of it, so I assumed it was ready to grow and blossom.  Nope.  I let it sit out for two months, and watered it.  It didn't grow.  I despaired and finally put it in the garage so I wouldn't have to look at it.  Fast forward to April, and I'm gathering pots and soil to grow violas, when I rediscover the amarylis, still sitting there.  On a whim, I pick it up, plunk it in a pot and forget it out side.  Two weeks later, I look out and see that it has shot up a foot and is sporting at least six bright red buds, all of which open to full glory for a month.  Yes, I abandoned the amarlysis, but it came back.  It proved me wrong, as these things tend to do.  You may think a piece of writing is dead when it only requires a little patience, a little time to be dormant, and a little love.

• Violas.  The seeds are tiny.  The flowers are sweet and resilient.  I bought white ones on clearance last year and they grew till September.  This spring, I was excited to discover they had seeded themselves in the landscaping in front of the house - white faces thriving in lovely clusters in the wood chips and in cracks in the side walk.

• I went wild with the idea that if little tough flowers could grow in between the cracks in the cement, like weeds do, they could grow in tinier vessels as well.  Hence, a thriving viola, grown from seeds (above) inside a glass votive holder and broken (and otherwise useless) tea cups, straightened by a paper clip, and sporting a blossom and two buds. 

So... if violas can grow in the cracks in the sidewalk, my ideas can thrive in unusual places.  I just have to be a little patient.  And try not plant too many seeds in one little jar. 

Descrying the Future? (Jillian)

Friends, most of April and all of May passed with nary a word from my keyboard - I am finishing and editing a novel.  You know how utterly possessing that can be.  What calls me back today is an article from the Telegraph.  Linguist Nicolas Ostler, an expert on world languages, says that English will decline like the classical languages did before it, "English is already in decline and may become more of a 'text language' before dying out completely as a dominant language."

Usually what bothers me about these predictions is their totality.  Like the belief held by some (not me) that electronic books will replace our beloved hardbacks.  If that was the case, I'd say, people would have also decades ago, reliquinshed the typewrier and the pen for the laptop or the iPad.  The reality is, typewriters are cool (I want one), people still write novels by hand, and paper-books are still in existence. 

Ostler is a learned author and knows 26 languages.  I expect he knows what he's talking about.  And he's probably right. But part of me wonders, why must we know whether or not English is going to survive another millennia?  I feel like the tools we survive by - our language, our art, our music - are precious things.  These predictions seem like a cruel tease - to enjoy what we have now because they won't be around in the future.  Or oddly enough, it sounds a little bit like mockery - "haha, the English language thinks it's so cool... haha".  But do we really know?  Something could happen.  Technology might not continue on the present trend (which seems to be a matter of slowly, steadily swallowing our independence).  Or technology might preserve what we have.  Either way, English will change, not disappear.

English has accomplished too much from the writings of the Venerable Bede to Chaucer to Shakespeare to Dickens to... I dunno, Harry Potter.  It's not going to be lost any time soon.  In fact, with these examples in our midst (and MANY MORE), English might very well last forever! 

Word-smithery: Halcyon Days (Jillian)

A word has been dancing in my head these last few days. Since the bizarre 85-90 degree heat of March has finally retreated (anything goes in the Midwest), we have returned to halcyon days: temperatures not quite at 70 during the day, cool nights, blue skies with a swirls and daubs of cirrus cloud here and there. The violas and pansies are growing. Birds (and the gibbons at the zoo just a few blocks away) are in chorus from the wee hours of the morning till sunset.

Halcyon? It is a simple adjective, really, meaning "calm and peaceful." A halcyon is also a bird out of Greek mythology, but probably refers to the kingfisher. According to Ye Olde Wiky-pedia, it is "said to breed in a floating nest at sea during the winter solstice, during which time it charms the wind and waves into calm." The myth tells of Alcyone and Ceyx who angered Zeus. Ceyx was killed at sea, and Alcyone threw herself into the sea in grief. Out of pity, Zeus turned them into halcyon birds.

I've also learned that "halcyon days" refers to a seven-day period in wintertime when storms do not occur. Apparently, this is when Alcyone (or the kingfisher) lays her eggs. Nevertheless... "halcyon" as a descriptor for a period of mild, calm weather in Spring... or Summer... or any season is appropriate. I think so, anyways.

I hope at least the halcyons of Spring stick around for a little bit longer before the heat returns and scorches all this lovely greeness.

To-Do Lists from a Master (Jillian)

Leonardo da Vinci's to-do lists.

Hello, all. Though I've been idle as far the blogosphere is concerned there are one or two things that catch my writer's eye now and again - and tickle the grand thirst for whimsies. (I've recently joined Pinterest as well, which is home to a delightful plethora of visual whimsies.) This week, for example, I came across this tidbit from the Telegraph. Apparently, Leonardo da Vinci's do-lists and to-get lists are going on display next month at Buckingham Palace in Great Britain.

First of all... I was mildly surprised that an artist so, well, historically immortal would ever need to write out to-do lists. Or take notes. Or remind himself to pick up a set of chalk along with shirts and stockings before going off on a journey to Pavia to, um, dissect some cadavers at the medical school there.

Second, his lists and notes put mine to shame. This man truly had to have been a genius. Even these scribblings and anatomical drawings are beautiful, whereas mine have wound up in the recycling with absolutely no regrets.

Third, I am fascinated that someone found these lists and kept them. They're important little glimpses into an artist's process, and allows us to wonder at him several hundred years later. It is not necessarily that he was a genius or that his masterpieces appeared on canvas fully formed (uh, no) - but that he possessed the same drive to know and to explain and to imagine the universe that we do today... sketching and dissecting and creating as he did.

Charles Dickens: 200 Years Young (Jillian)

In case you live in a cave somewhere without internet, a newspaper or even a handy-dandy novelty calendar to remind you, today is Charles Dickens' birthday. My favorite websites are, of course, all over it... so I don't need to wax poetic quite to their degree. (Check out Google's banner for the occasion. Awesome!) Still, I could not let the day pass without adding my own little offerings on the occasion.

I was one of those who was exposed to Dickens early and never really knew why. First there was A Christmas Carol in middle school; then A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations and Nicholas Nickleby in high school. This in conjunction with later offerings of Moby Dick, Pride & Prejudice, Return of the Native, offerings from The Canterbury Tales and Wuthering Heights; it is hard to read Dickens if you're a teenager with her head in a galaxy far, far away or in Neverland or floating out in the cosmos somewhere in a Tardis.

Of course, if you're anything of a Whovian, you'll know that the Doctor met Charles Dickens and saved Cardiff from an invasion of ghostly aliens in 1869. But I digress...

Dickens is awesome - but you knew that, of course. It may have taken my little brain a while to realize it, but it is quite obvious. In recent years, I've become blissfully lost in all the plot paths, back alleyways, shadows and sudden turns of his work. It takes patience. The man uses a lot of words. He can ramble. He can paint a very intricate political allegory (case in point, the plethora of Barnacles in the useless Circumlocution Office in Little Dorrit). It is not easy to begin him young. But he is a delight to dive into a little later.

Claire Tomalin puts it this way (as I read it in Linda Wertheimer's article on NPR today): "He did these great walks — he would walk every day for miles and miles, and sometimes I think he was sort of stoking up his imagination as he walked, and thinking of his characters. The way he built his novels was through the voices of his characters."

That, I think, is the fundamental reason his stories resonate so clearly with us today. It is a piece of advice from beyond the grave, as it were, from one Great Writer to this little writer: "think of your characters and their voices."

What I celebrate today is a Writer of Writers, whose stories move us. Films and plays of his works will forever challenge filmmakers, actors and writers for years to come. Today, the Prince of Wales, Dickens' descendants, and many, many others paid their respects, and placed white roses and snowdrops on his grave. Ralph Fiennes read a passage from Bleak House. In so many ways, it was clear how Mr. Dickens is alive in all of us.

What a wonderful thing it is to remember a writer, a wordsmith, a story-teller, to continue to laud his accomplishments and consider the mystery of his life. It demonstrates what we hold onto as human beings - how much we cherish the art of Story, and how that will carry us into a hopeful future.

Thank you, Mr. Dickens, for the ways in which you inspire all of us to write and imagine.