Adventures in Logophilia Day 8: Entropy (Jillian)

Today's word is...

Entropy (noun) is a degree of disorder in a system; an ultimate state of inert uniformity.

So... it is fairies, then? 

Michelle sent me a lovely card once with a quote from A. A. Milne, which has followed me around ever since.  He says, "One of the advantages of being disorderly is that one is constantly making exciting discoveries." This quote was accompanied by an illustration of an 18th century gentleman in an untidy office reading a book with a cup of tea and smiling in contentment. 

It was once explained to me that entropy is what happens when neglect to pick up your room.  I don't know if this was an elementary school science-y thing or what, but all I know is that I cannot come into my bedroom these days and attribute the clutter of neglect to anything but the entropy fairies.  This is how shoes wind up under the bed.  They're taken off and kicked aside.  Papers aren't tidied from a morning of blogging.  Over here is a plate that once held my breakfast.  Under this thing is a copy of Melville's "Bartleby the Scrivener" that I'd printed out 1 August, forgotten since then.  It's like finding a favorite shirt that you've wanted to wear for weeks deep under layers of laundry; it emerges from the wash in a fanfare. 

I think we whimsy hunters are like that, too, when we think about a nugget of knowledge and seek to find out more about it.  And the internet with its twitterings (I like that word better than tweets, by the way, I'm not just being silly), pinterest-ventures and facebookings, is Entropy itself.  You can find anything in that gargatuan sphere!  Anything!  From a tutorial on how to bind your own journals to timelines of the First World War to fan chat rooms for Doctor Who where fans hang out their windows and snap pictures of a Tardis that has magically appeared for filming in the neighborhood.  As intimidated as I am sometimes by the vastness of the internet and my comparative smallness, I know in general it can be a good thing. There are corners on the web to look in and poke about and find little seeds that will eventually grow to fill the garden beds of a story.

Happy hunting!

Adventures in Logophilia Day 7: Petrichor (Jillian)

Today's word is...

Petrichor (noun) is the smell given off by the first rain after a long dry spell. 

I apologize once more for my calligraphy.  That c is rather lopsided and it throws off the whole word. Ah, to err is human. 

Anyway... petrichor.  This harkens back to last season of Doctor Who, the episode written by Mr. Gaiman entitled "The Doctor's Wife."  Petrichor was part of the psychic door code on the TARDIS.   In order to open the door to one of the old control rooms, Amy must think of "the smell of dust after rain."  This is why I love Doctor Who.  And Mr. Gaiman's poetry-in-prose.

Oxford Dictionaries says this is a rather new construction from the 1960s.  Petro, meaning rock.  I gave it to a background character in my recent novel - back ground as in, he lived five hundred years before the characters did, but he founded an important abbey and he needed a last name, and petrichor for some reason was on the tip of my tongue.  No matter how old the word actually is, is a marriage of science with poetry.  I can't say why I'm drawn to words like petrichor and downwelling, except that perhaps these words point to simple but vivid descriptions of things that I would other wise find trouble putting into words.  They're also mysterious.  Did the scientist (I'm only assuming it was a scientist) who invented this word realize how it rolls off the tongue?  Perhaps he didn't know, but that leaves the door open for us.  Not to reinvent meaning, but to add dimensions and colours and shadows to it.  The smell of dust after rain could very easily become some legendary person's name, the name of a ship at sea or a new shade of blue.  The possibilities are endless.

Adventures in Logophilia Day 6: Nephology (Jillian)

Today's word is...

Nephology (noun) is the study or contemplation of clouds.

Yes, there is a sophisticated study-name for something we wouldn't think of. Cloud studies. That's a thing?  Apparently.  When I was in college and had to take a science glass (the second worst thing for an English major to have to do.  The first thing is math.) I chose the most elementary meterology class for the credit.  The most fun I got out of it (if fun there was) was the names of clouds, and what sort of weather they indicate.  I couldn't tell you much about that these days, but the names follow me.  It isn't prophecy, but it's the shape of things.  And it's always a lot of fun to discover a wealth of synonyms and alternative names for clouds instead of, well, clouds.



This fluffy formation here is your basic breed of cumulus.  The weather must have been excellent the day I took this picture from my dorm room five years ago.  Cumulus clouds develop 2000m above the surface of the earth - in other words, relatively low in the Earth's atmosphere.



Cirrus clouds are clouds formed at 6000m in the atmosphere from tiny ice particals.  I always think of them as the brush strokes of God, but I could be overly sentimental. 

We have several different layers of clouds here as they gather over campus (see the stadium?).  You can see the cumulus gathering into cumulnonimbus (gathering into a storm) with those low-lying nimbostratus clouds darkening the sky.  Stratus clouds are thick strata.  Cumulus are more often than not fluffy.

In this picture are contrails (yes, the exhaust trails left behind by airplanes are considered clouds), a little cirrus, and what appears to be (from my layman's eye) a smudge of middle-level clouds called altostratus.

This last picture is an awesome sampling of a cumulonimbus, also known as an anvil head or a thunderhead, rising over the bluffs of Fort Robinson, Nebraska.  There be a storm a coming!  These cumulonimbus clouds are the ones that produce lightning and thunder, rise all the way into the atmosphere and could spawn heaps of trouble, such as hail and tornadoes.

These are just a few of the many different species of clouds.  I find them thought-provoking and perhaps a little prophetic when I am out and about during the day.  It takes one silly writer out of herself, to look up and see something brewing up above.  There is never a dull moment in this sky.

Adventures in Logophilia Day 5: Intrepid (Jillian)

I had a hard time selecting a word today.  Nothing stuck out in my mind, even though I'd combed over the Lexicon twice in hope of inspiration.  Nonetheless, I have today's word, have put it down in ink (however imperfect my calligraphy may be) and it is...

To be intrepid (adjective) is to be characterized by resolute fearlessness; adventurous.

I'd like to think I'm an intrepid writer.  This year I've been in a sort of quest to try new things and to push my writing in new directions.  Not just where my novel is concerned, but in the everyday slog of the writing life.  Recently, I decided that I needed to get up early in order to tackle the novel before work.  As much as I hated, loathed, recoiled at the thought of getting up even a minute sooner than routine, it was actually a good thing.  I try to get up early now, and I am actually awake (if not bright-eyed and bushy-tailed) and refreshed and ready for the day.  It took a little intrepidation to do so.  And today, struggling to get out of bed when the alarm told me to so that I might blog was an intrepid battle. 

Sometimes we rail against the smallest things in life, but sometimes these little things are worth sacrificing in the greater adventure of our writing... stepping outside the box or the comfort zone or whatever you've been conditioned to call it.  We writers are curious creatures; walls cannot contain us.  I don't mean we should forgo the bonds of grammar and syntax and common sense, but use those "walls" as the starting point, the barest bones of our writing, and seek to find it viscera and blood and skin and clothes in new places.  Does this make sense?  We must go boldly into the Unknown, take risks, do what is uncomfortable or downright scary because the Story is worth it.  So... this Autumn I strive to be intrepid, sending my novel (my brainchild) into the deep, black hole that is the world of literary agents and publishing, trying again for a graduate program, and venturing into the world of online community.  I am off to see the world, pen in hand! 

One last thought: Daedalus making wings for his son Icarus to use to fly.  That's a bold move.  He warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, but he gave him the wings anyway.  The wax in the wings melted, and Icarus fell.  Is it Daedalus' fault?  Or is it the painful price we must pay sometimes for taking a necessary risk?  In our quest we may lose a novel or a story, our brainchildren, but we've gone forward, paving the way for what comes next over the horizon.  There will always be something to inspire.  Sometimes we must meet it halfway, or else wrest it with all our strength out of its hiding place.  As Michelle would say, Corraggio!

Adventures in Logophilia Day 4: Journeyman (Jillian)

The Earth is turning towards Autumn, and slowly the cooler air is forcing Summer into a corner.  It is in the 40s, and I can hear the echoing sound of the gibbons just a few blocks away, mingling with the morning sounds of the occasional dog in a yard and birds calling to each other.  I will never stop finding their call a hilarious sound to be heard in an otherwise quiet Midwestern neighborhood in the ides of September.  Monkeys.  Ha!

Anyway... today's word:

Journeyman (noun): a worker who learns a trade and works under another person; or, more specifically, reliable worker, athlete or performer (actor, musician) especially distinguished from one who is brilliant and stands out.  Oxford Dictionaries indicates this is a Middle English word indicating one is no longer an indentured worker and is paid by the day.  If you think about it, the French word for day is jour, and there was (and is) a lot French flavorings in English.

This is one of those words that sounds more exciting than it actually is.  It does indeed sound like it could mean "man who takes journeys for a living" or "wanderer" or "hitchhiker" or something poetic that vein.  But... I think this is actually pretty cool.  Why?  Words like this open the door for we crazy writers to turn them into something new.  Who says it can't be about a man who takes a journey? 

Several years ago, NBC had a brilliant concept for a television show called, you guessed it, Journeyman.  It starred Kevin McKidd as a journalist (there we go with the "jour" again) who begins to find himself backwards in time, sometimes a year, sometimes decades - suddenly without his cell phone, sometimes in his old apartment with his long-dead girlfriend.  So journeyman, an unassuming noun, now has a world of double meanings.  Oh, he's on a journey all right.  He's a time traveler! 

I have to say NBC cancelled Journeyman in its "freshman" year, but I still remember it, as time-travel is one of my favorite planes of creativity (thanks to Doctor Who).  The word journeyman has never been the same for me since.

 

Adventures in Logophilia Day 3: Widdershins (Jillian)

Today, I started with one of my favorite letters of the alphabet, the mysterious and oft-forgotten W. (Every one has a favorite!  Come on!  You know you do!) I came across...

Widdershins (adverb and possibly an adjective), meaning in a left-handed, wrong or contrary direction, or counterclockwise.  According to Oxford Dictionaries, it is a Scottish word indicating the direction counter to the sun and therefore unlucky.

Widdershins puts a chill through me, like a spell as been cast.  Proof that words are made to invoke physical reactions as well as linguistic meaning.  It's opposite day. Everything that could (and possibly couldn't) goes horribly wrong.  The world has been turned topsy turvy, gone amok, changed completely in a short space of time - either for what it never was or what it always was.  Alice slips through the rabbit hole and a looking glass.  Richard Mayhew helps a dirty runaway on the street and as a result finds his life disappearing, his friends forgetting and blind to his existence.  (Neil Gaiman, in my opinion, as a master of all things widdershins.  Case in in point, the above-mentioned Neverwher, and Stardust and Coraline.)  Rose meets the Doctor, windowshop manakins begin to come to life, aliens are suddenly real, and the Doctor is living proof of things that are supposed to be impossible.  Widdershins is the new normal, the atmospheric character of the setting of a story.  Oh, it's not nonsense.  It's utter brilliance.

***

There are advantages to the seemingly mindless office task of alphabetizing paperwork, I've found.  Why?  It gives one good practice, a daily refamiliarization with the Order of Things.  It's amazing how often we can make mistakes about something that is otherwise incredibly basic.  How else can we sharpen our skills without a little practice?

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.