Sending love. My daughter is also there. My heart is also broken. And yet so much love for one another is being shown. May the love bind up the brokenness.
Could I use your words on a sign? I post thoughts on a poster in front of my home. I’ve put out this: “if you are not outraged you are not paying attention. Heather Heyer 2017.”
I like your thought too. It better explains my outrage.
Thank you Paula for the words you shared today! I woke up feeling sad, depressed, alone. When I read your words of outrage, they sparked a feeling of courage within me. I remembered Tara Brach's words that anger can be an initiatory feeling to spark action helping us to feel more alive, connected and purposeful. Then, I noticed that Heart was at the very center of your words as they shifted to grief and broken-heartedness. I felt Love welling up for all the brave souls standing for all of us in Minneapolis.
PSM - hard to say I ‘liked’ what you wrote. My heart is broken and outraged with you. I echo - May the Love keep you together and strong. My friend has 13 family members in .Minneapolis. They are delivering food for folks afraid to go out on the street.
Paula, I have taken a screenshot of your reply, is that ok? In and of itself, it looks, sounds, and feels beautiful and aching, but seeing your city, where you're coming from in this moment in this history... I want to hang on to this.
"Delight" is in my heart a lot just now. I grew up in a faith tradition with a deep suspicion of things that might be too lovely. A sense that beauty and art are secondary to struggle and perfectionism. I'm shedding that piece by piece, and relearning (I hope!) how to feel delight and joy in the everyday.
As I complete my sixth decade on this planet - & particularly in these fraught times in which we live - I find the attention necessary to discover "delight" in our daily lives a form of recentering & joyful resistance.
I’m with you. Our priest gives us this blessing at the close of each service: “Beloved, you are the one in whom Christ *delights* and dwells. You live in the unshakeable kingdom of God. The kingdom is not in trouble and neither are you.” The word “delight” is often my touchstone for the week ❤️
Thank you Gyda. I agree completely - taking in the awe and delight from Beauty is what gives us strength to persevere. Today I accessed a post for the best birds photos of 2025. There was a breathtaking scene of Red Crowned Cranes in a full snow scape. Here’s the link:
I understand that so well! And beauty makes you lose your focus :-/ I was so pleased with the paper candle I made when I was young, but my father was not!
Thank you for your comment! I hadn't really thought of reclaiming the word "delight" in relation to my childhood.
A paper candle? I have to know more about that. You have me thinking about how our light in literal and poetic sense needs kindling but also steady endurance…to be beeswax not paper. And how the beeswax has the smell of honey, sweetness and delight, as it does its work.
It was just a paper representation of a candle. I'm grateful he didn't criticize my ability to make it, he just had no space for the delight that comes with the Christmas season. I suspect he was so worried about getting things right that he couldn't understand something that didn't fit in his rigid sense of how Christmas ought to be.
Thanks Trish for this further sharing. I’m relieved to hear that it was not lit. That was where my imagination had taken me and the only reason I could think of to have a negative response to a paper candle. I’m laughing at myself a little now 🤭 Words do surely have a life of their own in our imaginations.
I'm glad you have a better picture now: toilet paper roll, construction paper, foil tart shell. It really doesn't make sense that anyone would react to a paper candle, but decorations were not a part of Christmas for me, growing up.
It's an interesting question, and I knew the answer right away: "vulnerability." It's very common in some of my circles for people to respond to your stories or sharing with the phrase, "thank you for your vulnerability." It's well meaning, and I think vulnerability is probably a good trait and all... and also my brain immediately thinks, "hey now, why do *you* get to define what I do as vulnerable?" I often feel quite powerful when I'm telling a story, actually, and I find the well-intentioned phrase makes me second-guess that strength.
I am teaching a philosophy of art class as well as an Indigenous identities class, and *authenticity* plays a central point of discussion in both. To have genuine conversations about authenticity requires *vulnerability* which requires discomfort and a willingness to walk with care…but damn if embodying both of those concepts is an ongoing struggle of revelation!
I joined your substack to get away from 'resilience' - as a federal employee living abroad, I've had to be strong because things are just... broken... for us right now. As a sarcastic joke, I even bought a t-shirt I found "You had me at resilience" since the word was coming up so much at work.
It's a world where the systems Americans had faith in, both in our country and worldwide, are falling apart. Although I'm doing what I can within the bounds of my finances and faith, I also look to things like poetry to help. It's not so much escapism as it is remembering that not all the world revolves around politics.
Thank you for your post. Yes, the word, "resilience" is a favorite for federal employees. We are a military family, and we receive many mailings about family resilience, mental health resilience, etc.
Dear Bernie, kudos to you from a retired Fed spending a few months in Rome visiting family. I am burning with the irrational Faith that we can put things right in a short while. There are special elections happening, and there are defections from the hard line that will allow us to right some terrible mistakes, like unleashing ICE violence AND cutting off all USAID. In the meantime, drink in beauty, be with friends and stay strong. There is much work ahead - and poetry will help us deal with everything - together. You have my respect and best wishes.
Mine is more a phrase…’living your best life”. There is a celebrity onslaught of using this term. All of your life has meaning, the dark parts maybe even more. How do you attain your best life and who determines what it is. I know what it is not, more stuff, more wellness diatribe, more directives to be more, have more, do more. Thanks for this space.
Yes!!! Hiraeth!!! This word found me months ago and I loved it. I love it now…there’s something in it that I’m meant to find. I love its spelling…it’s meaning…the space where it sits in my being when it’s here…it’s just that I can’t seem to hold it …yet. It feels like a gift again today. Thank you!
I love to learn words from other languages that capture a range of experiences and context and which doesn’t or can’t translate nicely. What is the etymology of *hiraeth*?
At last. A chance to get this publicly off my chest. "Crepuscular". This marvelous word, having to do with twilight (which is itself such a lovely word), sounds to me like a medical term. Like, perhaps, "stage 4 of a boil". I loathe the word. And I'm very sorry to anyone who is a crepuscular fan. I have tried to convert myself, watching all the crepuscular feeders at dawn and dusk (I myself am a crepuscular feeder), and I genuinely adore these spaces on either side of sunlight. But the word makes my skin crawl. I am most grateful to a poet friend who, years ago, offered me instead the word "gloaming". Admittedly, it is not an exact swap, one being an adjective, the other a noun, but what a word. Gloaming. The sample sentence in my on-line dictionary is this: "hundreds of lights are already shimmering in the gloaming". Ahhh. So much better. Thank you for the prompt, Padraig, and for reminding me that today is Sunday because your name is in my inbox.
If you like the word “gloaming”, Lyn, you might like the music of the Irish traditional music group, "The Gloaming". This piece is particularly beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdi7WdXPMmE
I can’t hear the word “gloaming” without hearing the song we used to sing on school bus trips as children:
“Roaming in the gloaming on the bonnie banks of Clyde, [insert boy’s name] said to [insert girl’s name], will you be my bonnie bride?”
It was an instrument of much teasing, as the bus iterated through pretty much every boy/girl combination on board. But “gloaming” is still a nicer word than “crepuscular” for sure!
Ooooh crepuscular gets under my skin too... Maybe it's the 'creep' in it 😂 weirdly, not a fan of gloaming either. Lol. But I did enjoy reading your comment 🤗
Yes what a glorious word. Do you know Crepuesule with Nellie? Thelonious Monk's song for his wife, it is the most moving piece. I had the singular honor from Nikki Giovanni to pair her poem "Resignation" with the tune. https://lisamariesimmons.bandcamp.com/track/crepuscule-with-nellie
LOVE!!! What is the word for a word that sounds and feels the opposite to what it means? Crepusculous? Crepusculogism? Crepuscuonomatopoeia? Cue sub-thread!
Seamus Heany introduced me to the word "twila-go." Meaning twilight-goes. I've always loved this word. I think it's Welsh although Mr. Heany was a great Irish poet.
Reminded me of one I hate -- "obsequious." It rolls in the air like a squeaky, rusty, bicycle tire for me, with a squeal on the "se" syllable for me. Like nails on a chalkboard for others.
I think the word I really don't like is "survivor" as in Cancer survivor. Did I survive breast cancer? Well, I completed all the required awful soul sucking treatments and am now in remission. I rang the bell after my final chemo treatment, I live with my four little radiation tattoos. I'm here, present and accounted for and after 6 years the thought of recurrence is pushed further to the back of my mind. But the fear never ever leaves you and I find "survivor" an alienating term and not my reality or that of other cancer "thrivers".
Nora, I am thankful you are alive and that your experience has made you an educator, someone who could teach me in only 4 sentences to begin to understand what that experience meant for you.
Thank you for your kind words Deborah. I re-read my cancer journey journal last week as I found it while tidying up. Brought back memories that I don't want to experience again! Plus, I'm feeling grumpy today as we are in the midst of an arctic air mass deep cold - minus 25C right now. Not getting outside makes me twitchy.
Yes, that's another word "Battle" which I didn't like to use, reminds me of war and the military. Did/do we wage war on cancer? Personally, I feel I looked it in the eye, eventually made peace with the diagnosis and simply got on with the treatment journey. The tumour was not my friend, but it was part of me until it wasn't. What other choice do I/we have if we wish to banish it from our bodies? Now I am allowed to "thrive" once again.
Yes, oh yes. "Survivor" is also my problem word. When my dear one didn't survive her cancer at 38, did she fail? I was so angry at "survivors." Several decades later, I have myself survived cancer, changed and alive. I still feel that monkey on my back when it's time for the monitoring scan - I think he's (why a "he"?) a permanent resident. Having lost more dear ones to the beast since, it feels so random to be labeled "survivor." Lucky? Some days I wonder.
Hi Yvonne, yes, cancer certainly does change you forever. Are we lucky? Maybe? We have "survived", yet I'm more anxious than ever some days especially scan time - the He? in the room. Will we "fail" in the future? Possibly, it's always lurking in the background. But we are here and I rejoice for the second chance at life!
Obviously I have no authority to grant you permission, nonetheless I grant you permission to frame it any way you would like. I'm curious to know if there is a word or phrase that you like? I have coped with depression all my life, but I refuse to say I have "suffered" from depression.
My chosen word is "Here." I take no day for granted or as deserved in any way. I will look for beauty in all the infinite ways of the universe, often brightest when contrasted against the dark abyss.
HI fifi, I think I would say I'm "thankful". That's how I feel today, thankful that I live in a country where I have free medical care, thankful for family support, thankful to be living in a warm home in the dead of winter.
I, too, have “suffered“ from depression during periods in my life. Severe. However, I also have come to view it as an important time of pause, an arrest from life as normal, a space in which I learned more about being human. Suffering, as normally understood, doesn’t quite cover it.
I struggle with this too, as one who has faced and come through cancer twice, however my precious daughter did not. To me the word survivor implies that I somehow won and those who die lose. I will never accept this as anything but false!
“Chiaroscuro”. It is a word introduced to me in a sonnet by a stranger-turned-Substack-friend this Advent season when we lost my 49 year old sister-in-law. I was seated in front of my Christmas tree early one morning, tears streaming down my face not feeling particularly joyful. The phrase in the last line of the sonnet was “the chiaroscuro of eternity.”
It’s not often I have to reach for a dictionary, but in this case I did. And what I found was perfect… the interplay between light and dark (most often in art), but also between clear and obscure in life and eternity.
As I sat gazing at my twinkling tree, contrasted with still dark mourning, I saw was my friend meant in the eternal room I was seated within. Light and dark - clear and obscure - really do dance with one another. One is made more potent by the presence of the other. So, even in the pain I feel from my sister’s loss, I am grateful for her presence as well.
Such a beautifully bittersweet articulation of the two sides of love, Megan. The 17th century Italian painter Caravaggio was a master of chiaroscuro, with figures in his paintings seeming to emerge from the darkness into light, blending raw realism with spiritual dimensions. My favourites are “The Seven Acts of Mercy” for its scale and grandeur and “The Taking of Christ” for its close-up intensity…
Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss of a beloved person. That phrase “the chiaroscuro of eternity” and the explanation so aptly describes the loss of a loved one.
For me, the word is "special" — it sounds like it should feel good to be seen that way, as though this implies that you are of particular importance. But when you grow up, as I did, with the messaging that you are special, then you must become this to be loved. But it does not ever work. Being "special" can be a profound barrier to love. It is a relational death sentence for a child. What I'd prefer is to be cherished, to be held close and deeply considered. Being "special" meant that I was groomed to hold something for other people that they could not hold for themselves as I missed so many opportunities to be held and to know myself.
Ah, that word "special", so icky with children...my sister was "special", I was not. I was also not cherished - at least by my mother. My father did take an interest in my life so at least one parent made me feel loved.
Who would have thought that working to bring in and celebrate that we are not all the same, that we have different ideas, backgrounds, ways of solving problems, colors, accents, praying, and simply being would be discouraged and even punished?
Community. I’ve been volunteering at Maine Needs, an organization built over the last five years to support and develop community. We provide household and personal necessities, clothing and bedding to Maine’s less fortunate and unhoused members. Many in this community are being threatened today more than ever. Threatened by its own “leaders”. Destroyed in many ways. This, in turn, has led to a strengthening of surrounding communities of support. We can’t keep up although we keep trying. How long can one survive these attacks on our communities?
True, community is an overused word for an underused practice, but the term I struggle with here is "less fortunate". Commonly used, embedded actually, and is a grouping that lends no dignity to its people. Who are we to judge another's fortune? I understand most often it refers to financial means, but still often it refers as well to other factors. At any rate it is a term of judgment
People who may need extra assistance is a term that lends more possibility for authentic empathy, more accurate and less comparative. Who doesn't need assistance in a course of a lifetime?
Faith. What does it mean when I'm losing it, have lost it, am seeking to find it? In what? What causes a poet to lose their words? It's when there are none, in moments like these, that the faith I once had in good over evil feels tenuous at best.
I hope you recover your words. This has been helping me lately:
"Hope ... can be based on the evidence, on the track record of what might be possible ... but faith endures even when there's no way to imagine winning in the foreseeable future. Rebecca Solnit, 2015, Nation Books, Chicago IL. P 64. 'Jaime Cortez tells me...'"
Dear Jae, I wish you Sean’s Untold Histories and Wild Possibilities. It sort of feels what it make have been like just before they tore down the Berlin Wall.
Apologies in advance for what might end up as a bit if a rant. The word that has me vacillating between anger and despondency is 'tidy'.
This weekend I took an early morning walk around my neighbourhood listening to the birdsong - or at least would have if there had been any. Our area is very suburban where wilderness is simply not tolerated: gardens concreted over, driveways paved to ensure there is a space for beloved motor cars, everywhere devoid of life (other than human life inside their tidy dwellings).
Then today I noticed that one of my new neighbours had destroyed the most beautiful Hawthorn - in May, had they waited, they would have seen and smelt the most beautiful blossom but no, out it came to leave a bland space. But then to add insult to injury they placed a neat bird feeder there after removing the place the birds settle to feed!
Anyway that's the word: tidy. I could go on to extend the rant (sorry) to borders and other places forced into unnatural order but I shan't and hope some of the other words I read in the comments are a bit more enriching than 'tidy'.
I don’t much like ‘unstable’. I think of how it’s applied to people as a judgment as if there is one standard of ‘stable’ we must all adhere to. But that feels like a dull, bland place to spend all my time. When I’m writing a poem I often paddle in unstable waters. If I stay too far up the beach behind my windbreak I’ve no chance of finding the mysteries of the seabed. We should allow ‘unstable’ to be an attribute not a (too easy) condemnation while always accepting its good to dry our feet some of the time!
Outrage
Outrageous
Rage
Heart
Heartbroken
Broken hearted
Broken
Paula from St Paul, Minnesota
Sending love. My daughter is also there. My heart is also broken. And yet so much love for one another is being shown. May the love bind up the brokenness.
I’d like to second that karen, may the love bind up the brokenness.
Amen, Karen.
And also "courage" to you and your city.
Thank you for your courage, Minneapolis.
me too…
Could I use your words on a sign? I post thoughts on a poster in front of my home. I’ve put out this: “if you are not outraged you are not paying attention. Heather Heyer 2017.”
I like your thought too. It better explains my outrage.
Powerful, Paula; you are not alone.
Thank you Paula for the words you shared today! I woke up feeling sad, depressed, alone. When I read your words of outrage, they sparked a feeling of courage within me. I remembered Tara Brach's words that anger can be an initiatory feeling to spark action helping us to feel more alive, connected and purposeful. Then, I noticed that Heart was at the very center of your words as they shifted to grief and broken-heartedness. I felt Love welling up for all the brave souls standing for all of us in Minneapolis.
PSM - hard to say I ‘liked’ what you wrote. My heart is broken and outraged with you. I echo - May the Love keep you together and strong. My friend has 13 family members in .Minneapolis. They are delivering food for folks afraid to go out on the street.
Paula, I have taken a screenshot of your reply, is that ok? In and of itself, it looks, sounds, and feels beautiful and aching, but seeing your city, where you're coming from in this moment in this history... I want to hang on to this.
Sorrow too deep for words.
I can't even imagine!
We all see your resilience.
Sending good vibes
Oh yes!
Feeling deeply heartsore for you all especially grieving families and friends.
"Delight" is in my heart a lot just now. I grew up in a faith tradition with a deep suspicion of things that might be too lovely. A sense that beauty and art are secondary to struggle and perfectionism. I'm shedding that piece by piece, and relearning (I hope!) how to feel delight and joy in the everyday.
As I complete my sixth decade on this planet - & particularly in these fraught times in which we live - I find the attention necessary to discover "delight" in our daily lives a form of recentering & joyful resistance.
Yes! Defiant joy...which seems ridiculous as I watch the news feeds but it is a resistance!
I’m with you. Our priest gives us this blessing at the close of each service: “Beloved, you are the one in whom Christ *delights* and dwells. You live in the unshakeable kingdom of God. The kingdom is not in trouble and neither are you.” The word “delight” is often my touchstone for the week ❤️
Love that blessing - a benediction "good word"!
How beautiful Carolyn. I will share that with our Liturgy with your blessing!
Delight is an essential word. I love this- Have you read Ross Gay's Book of Delights? One enormous delight all the way through. In these times we need radical joy. https://goodreads.com/book/show/38746152-the-book-of-delights
I have, but you have reminded me to get it back out again - I wonder if I wasn't ready to read it first time round.
I highly recommend it. Here's a great video of Ross reading "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude" from it. It is astonishing! https://youtu.be/uURnrX_-v6o?si=nWjc2rEFAfusqorJ
Oh Lisa Marie -
That reading is amazing!! Thank you so much for posting it. I didn’t know Ross Gay. You started my day off in awe and gratitude.
Well hurrah and yay! Also get the book, you'll feel that way after every essay, now, my work here is done :D
Thank you Gyda. I agree completely - taking in the awe and delight from Beauty is what gives us strength to persevere. Today I accessed a post for the best birds photos of 2025. There was a breathtaking scene of Red Crowned Cranes in a full snow scape. Here’s the link:
Https://macaulaylibrary.org/asset/637093739. I hope you are able to see them!!
Thank you! Stunning!
Indeed, beautiful! Thank you!
How lovely!
I understand that so well! And beauty makes you lose your focus :-/ I was so pleased with the paper candle I made when I was young, but my father was not!
Thank you for your comment! I hadn't really thought of reclaiming the word "delight" in relation to my childhood.
I'm glad it resonated - more delight, less striving!
A paper candle? I have to know more about that. You have me thinking about how our light in literal and poetic sense needs kindling but also steady endurance…to be beeswax not paper. And how the beeswax has the smell of honey, sweetness and delight, as it does its work.
It was just a paper representation of a candle. I'm grateful he didn't criticize my ability to make it, he just had no space for the delight that comes with the Christmas season. I suspect he was so worried about getting things right that he couldn't understand something that didn't fit in his rigid sense of how Christmas ought to be.
Thanks Trish for this further sharing. I’m relieved to hear that it was not lit. That was where my imagination had taken me and the only reason I could think of to have a negative response to a paper candle. I’m laughing at myself a little now 🤭 Words do surely have a life of their own in our imaginations.
I'm glad you have a better picture now: toilet paper roll, construction paper, foil tart shell. It really doesn't make sense that anyone would react to a paper candle, but decorations were not a part of Christmas for me, growing up.
It sounds charming! Like paper chains and paper snowflakes…
If “Delight” is moving you, give Ross Gay’s Book of Delights a go. It’s heaven.
It's an interesting question, and I knew the answer right away: "vulnerability." It's very common in some of my circles for people to respond to your stories or sharing with the phrase, "thank you for your vulnerability." It's well meaning, and I think vulnerability is probably a good trait and all... and also my brain immediately thinks, "hey now, why do *you* get to define what I do as vulnerable?" I often feel quite powerful when I'm telling a story, actually, and I find the well-intentioned phrase makes me second-guess that strength.
I am teaching a philosophy of art class as well as an Indigenous identities class, and *authenticity* plays a central point of discussion in both. To have genuine conversations about authenticity requires *vulnerability* which requires discomfort and a willingness to walk with care…but damn if embodying both of those concepts is an ongoing struggle of revelation!
I've found there is an invulnerability in what people think is vulnerability, and thus freedom.
Authenticity may be a better word here... Just my thoughts as I read this 😉
So true!
I joined your substack to get away from 'resilience' - as a federal employee living abroad, I've had to be strong because things are just... broken... for us right now. As a sarcastic joke, I even bought a t-shirt I found "You had me at resilience" since the word was coming up so much at work.
It's a world where the systems Americans had faith in, both in our country and worldwide, are falling apart. Although I'm doing what I can within the bounds of my finances and faith, I also look to things like poetry to help. It's not so much escapism as it is remembering that not all the world revolves around politics.
Also a fed.
At first, I misread your t-shirt as “You had me at resistance.” Which led me to resistant resilience / resilient resistance …
I love the rabbit warrens this discussion of words is creating!
Thank you for your post. Yes, the word, "resilience" is a favorite for federal employees. We are a military family, and we receive many mailings about family resilience, mental health resilience, etc.
Touché. And the T-shirt is hilarious.
Thanks for that reminder, Bernie.
Dear Bernie, kudos to you from a retired Fed spending a few months in Rome visiting family. I am burning with the irrational Faith that we can put things right in a short while. There are special elections happening, and there are defections from the hard line that will allow us to right some terrible mistakes, like unleashing ICE violence AND cutting off all USAID. In the meantime, drink in beauty, be with friends and stay strong. There is much work ahead - and poetry will help us deal with everything - together. You have my respect and best wishes.
Mine is more a phrase…’living your best life”. There is a celebrity onslaught of using this term. All of your life has meaning, the dark parts maybe even more. How do you attain your best life and who determines what it is. I know what it is not, more stuff, more wellness diatribe, more directives to be more, have more, do more. Thanks for this space.
I cringe when people I know tell me "oh, you're living your best life" just because I am out in the world and staying very active in retirement.
Oh I dislike that too. It always smacks of smug superiorityamd almost pushes people away.
There is a selfishness inherent in that phrase that always bothers me. What about the rest of the world?
This resonates deeply!
Hiraeth is:
A homesickness for something that may never have existed.
A yearning for a place, a time, a self, a version of life that feels true but is out of reach.
A sense of belonging that lives more in memory and imagination than in geography. This is my word currently.
Yes!!! Hiraeth!!! This word found me months ago and I loved it. I love it now…there’s something in it that I’m meant to find. I love its spelling…it’s meaning…the space where it sits in my being when it’s here…it’s just that I can’t seem to hold it …yet. It feels like a gift again today. Thank you!
A sister, a cousin of deja vu?
A sense that in a previous lifetime ........
I love to learn words from other languages that capture a range of experiences and context and which doesn’t or can’t translate nicely. What is the etymology of *hiraeth*?
Hiraeth comes from Welsh, and it is deeply embedded in Welsh culture and identity.
It is a beautiful word. Can you give some contexts it which it is used? :-)
I’ve actually written a poem with it in my substack
That is a word! A homesickness for something that may never have existed. Wow, I am going to give that a good think. Thank you.
Thank you for that lovely word, I'll try to replace my anger and frustration with hiraeth
I’ve got another word I found today !! Sorry to jump
On the comments but I wanted to share- eucatastrophe
At last. A chance to get this publicly off my chest. "Crepuscular". This marvelous word, having to do with twilight (which is itself such a lovely word), sounds to me like a medical term. Like, perhaps, "stage 4 of a boil". I loathe the word. And I'm very sorry to anyone who is a crepuscular fan. I have tried to convert myself, watching all the crepuscular feeders at dawn and dusk (I myself am a crepuscular feeder), and I genuinely adore these spaces on either side of sunlight. But the word makes my skin crawl. I am most grateful to a poet friend who, years ago, offered me instead the word "gloaming". Admittedly, it is not an exact swap, one being an adjective, the other a noun, but what a word. Gloaming. The sample sentence in my on-line dictionary is this: "hundreds of lights are already shimmering in the gloaming". Ahhh. So much better. Thank you for the prompt, Padraig, and for reminding me that today is Sunday because your name is in my inbox.
If you like the word “gloaming”, Lyn, you might like the music of the Irish traditional music group, "The Gloaming". This piece is particularly beautiful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdi7WdXPMmE
https://youtu.be/i-KA3ygqBl8?list=PLBYzlTT3NKFJZWcYlP_BTihSW7B5Edmgr
Opening Set by The Gloaming is often on repeat at my place, for hours, even though it is very long. Very centering for me.
I do the same! LOVE it so much. I initially got it for helping me as I am learning Irish and feel quite in love with the music.
Many thanks NMC❣️ the music is a *delight*
Thank you for sharing this, Anne. This is beautiful. I'll look for more!
This piece is so deeply felt. Thank you for posting this.
Hauntingly beautiful
Such beautiful tunes
I can’t hear the word “gloaming” without hearing the song we used to sing on school bus trips as children:
“Roaming in the gloaming on the bonnie banks of Clyde, [insert boy’s name] said to [insert girl’s name], will you be my bonnie bride?”
It was an instrument of much teasing, as the bus iterated through pretty much every boy/girl combination on board. But “gloaming” is still a nicer word than “crepuscular” for sure!
I hear: Campfires burning, campfires burning, in the gloaming, in the gloaming, come sing and be merry!
Maybe from girl guides?
Beautiful sung together.
Thank you for a new word. Never heard of this one! It's a great project for a day of near single digit temperatures and double-digit snow!
Hilarious. Thank you. Yes, crepuscular sounds like a terrible skin affliction, not the wonderful in-between day and night.
Oh no! Sorry you don't like one of my favourite words...mind you I'm expecting backlash for my own!
Ooooh crepuscular gets under my skin too... Maybe it's the 'creep' in it 😂 weirdly, not a fan of gloaming either. Lol. But I did enjoy reading your comment 🤗
😊😂
I love crepuscular— I think it’s because of how fun it is to say it, all the moments of lips & tongue.
Lisa, you can keep it :))
Mine, too.
Yes what a glorious word. Do you know Crepuesule with Nellie? Thelonious Monk's song for his wife, it is the most moving piece. I had the singular honor from Nikki Giovanni to pair her poem "Resignation" with the tune. https://lisamariesimmons.bandcamp.com/track/crepuscule-with-nellie
Such a delight, Thanks for sharing.
Thank you for listening!
Lyn, yes, goodbye to creepy-scullery-hairy and hello to sweet gloaming!
Yes! Also pulchritude. It just doesn't sound like what it means.
LOVE!!! What is the word for a word that sounds and feels the opposite to what it means? Crepusculous? Crepusculogism? Crepuscuonomatopoeia? Cue sub-thread!
Seamus Heany introduced me to the word "twila-go." Meaning twilight-goes. I've always loved this word. I think it's Welsh although Mr. Heany was a great Irish poet.
Reminded me of one I hate -- "obsequious." It rolls in the air like a squeaky, rusty, bicycle tire for me, with a squeal on the "se" syllable for me. Like nails on a chalkboard for others.
I think the word I really don't like is "survivor" as in Cancer survivor. Did I survive breast cancer? Well, I completed all the required awful soul sucking treatments and am now in remission. I rang the bell after my final chemo treatment, I live with my four little radiation tattoos. I'm here, present and accounted for and after 6 years the thought of recurrence is pushed further to the back of my mind. But the fear never ever leaves you and I find "survivor" an alienating term and not my reality or that of other cancer "thrivers".
Nora, I am thankful you are alive and that your experience has made you an educator, someone who could teach me in only 4 sentences to begin to understand what that experience meant for you.
Thank you for your kind words Deborah. I re-read my cancer journey journal last week as I found it while tidying up. Brought back memories that I don't want to experience again! Plus, I'm feeling grumpy today as we are in the midst of an arctic air mass deep cold - minus 25C right now. Not getting outside makes me twitchy.
Survivor also implies the "battle" that is used in connection with cancer. Both battle and survivor can be deleted from cancer vocabulary asap.
Yes, that's another word "Battle" which I didn't like to use, reminds me of war and the military. Did/do we wage war on cancer? Personally, I feel I looked it in the eye, eventually made peace with the diagnosis and simply got on with the treatment journey. The tumour was not my friend, but it was part of me until it wasn't. What other choice do I/we have if we wish to banish it from our bodies? Now I am allowed to "thrive" once again.
Agreed. Words I'm trying to avoid.
Yes, oh yes. "Survivor" is also my problem word. When my dear one didn't survive her cancer at 38, did she fail? I was so angry at "survivors." Several decades later, I have myself survived cancer, changed and alive. I still feel that monkey on my back when it's time for the monitoring scan - I think he's (why a "he"?) a permanent resident. Having lost more dear ones to the beast since, it feels so random to be labeled "survivor." Lucky? Some days I wonder.
Hi Yvonne, yes, cancer certainly does change you forever. Are we lucky? Maybe? We have "survived", yet I'm more anxious than ever some days especially scan time - the He? in the room. Will we "fail" in the future? Possibly, it's always lurking in the background. But we are here and I rejoice for the second chance at life!
Obviously I have no authority to grant you permission, nonetheless I grant you permission to frame it any way you would like. I'm curious to know if there is a word or phrase that you like? I have coped with depression all my life, but I refuse to say I have "suffered" from depression.
My chosen word is "Here." I take no day for granted or as deserved in any way. I will look for beauty in all the infinite ways of the universe, often brightest when contrasted against the dark abyss.
HI fifi, I think I would say I'm "thankful". That's how I feel today, thankful that I live in a country where I have free medical care, thankful for family support, thankful to be living in a warm home in the dead of winter.
Oh FiFi, thank you for saying that.
I, too, have “suffered“ from depression during periods in my life. Severe. However, I also have come to view it as an important time of pause, an arrest from life as normal, a space in which I learned more about being human. Suffering, as normally understood, doesn’t quite cover it.
I struggle with this too, as one who has faced and come through cancer twice, however my precious daughter did not. To me the word survivor implies that I somehow won and those who die lose. I will never accept this as anything but false!
Amen!
“Chiaroscuro”. It is a word introduced to me in a sonnet by a stranger-turned-Substack-friend this Advent season when we lost my 49 year old sister-in-law. I was seated in front of my Christmas tree early one morning, tears streaming down my face not feeling particularly joyful. The phrase in the last line of the sonnet was “the chiaroscuro of eternity.”
It’s not often I have to reach for a dictionary, but in this case I did. And what I found was perfect… the interplay between light and dark (most often in art), but also between clear and obscure in life and eternity.
As I sat gazing at my twinkling tree, contrasted with still dark mourning, I saw was my friend meant in the eternal room I was seated within. Light and dark - clear and obscure - really do dance with one another. One is made more potent by the presence of the other. So, even in the pain I feel from my sister’s loss, I am grateful for her presence as well.
Such a beautifully bittersweet articulation of the two sides of love, Megan. The 17th century Italian painter Caravaggio was a master of chiaroscuro, with figures in his paintings seeming to emerge from the darkness into light, blending raw realism with spiritual dimensions. My favourites are “The Seven Acts of Mercy” for its scale and grandeur and “The Taking of Christ” for its close-up intensity…
I am sorry for your loss. You beautifully describe a very deep interplay and being able to find some light in the dark.
Thank you for this.
Can you point us to the sonnet?
Oh, I’m so sorry for your loss of a beloved person. That phrase “the chiaroscuro of eternity” and the explanation so aptly describes the loss of a loved one.
For me, the word is "special" — it sounds like it should feel good to be seen that way, as though this implies that you are of particular importance. But when you grow up, as I did, with the messaging that you are special, then you must become this to be loved. But it does not ever work. Being "special" can be a profound barrier to love. It is a relational death sentence for a child. What I'd prefer is to be cherished, to be held close and deeply considered. Being "special" meant that I was groomed to hold something for other people that they could not hold for themselves as I missed so many opportunities to be held and to know myself.
Ah, that word "special", so icky with children...my sister was "special", I was not. I was also not cherished - at least by my mother. My father did take an interest in my life so at least one parent made me feel loved.
I absolutely relate to this - special can be a heavy burden for a child. It was for me as well. The conditional nature baked in
“Diversity”!
diversity diversity diversity
Who would have thought that working to bring in and celebrate that we are not all the same, that we have different ideas, backgrounds, ways of solving problems, colors, accents, praying, and simply being would be discouraged and even punished?
Celebrate with me!
Love this!
Yes! This is the other side of the balance to the word that let's my vote- tidy.
Community. I’ve been volunteering at Maine Needs, an organization built over the last five years to support and develop community. We provide household and personal necessities, clothing and bedding to Maine’s less fortunate and unhoused members. Many in this community are being threatened today more than ever. Threatened by its own “leaders”. Destroyed in many ways. This, in turn, has led to a strengthening of surrounding communities of support. We can’t keep up although we keep trying. How long can one survive these attacks on our communities?
True, community is an overused word for an underused practice, but the term I struggle with here is "less fortunate". Commonly used, embedded actually, and is a grouping that lends no dignity to its people. Who are we to judge another's fortune? I understand most often it refers to financial means, but still often it refers as well to other factors. At any rate it is a term of judgment
People who may need extra assistance is a term that lends more possibility for authentic empathy, more accurate and less comparative. Who doesn't need assistance in a course of a lifetime?
So well said kind one. Thank you
Takes one to know one
This little conversation leads me to want to write a poem about this. Words for the "less fortunate". Gonna work on that
Faith. What does it mean when I'm losing it, have lost it, am seeking to find it? In what? What causes a poet to lose their words? It's when there are none, in moments like these, that the faith I once had in good over evil feels tenuous at best.
I hope you recover your words. This has been helping me lately:
"Hope ... can be based on the evidence, on the track record of what might be possible ... but faith endures even when there's no way to imagine winning in the foreseeable future. Rebecca Solnit, 2015, Nation Books, Chicago IL. P 64. 'Jaime Cortez tells me...'"
To my mind hope is the better part of faith.
Should have noted Solnit title: Hope in the Darkness - Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities.
Dear Jae, I wish you Sean’s Untold Histories and Wild Possibilities. It sort of feels what it make have been like just before they tore down the Berlin Wall.
List of Words that need to disappear:
Perfection - there is no such thing.
Replace it with Wholeness - this allows forgiveness.
Expectations - most are never reached.
Replace it with Invitations - these allow delight.
Deserve - this implies entitlement.
Replace it with Grace - this offers a gift.
Small - this implies insignificant.
Replace it with Miraculous - of which everything is!
Yes!!! It’s so important to find the replacement!
YES Nancy wonderful list and great concept…find the replacement for repugnant or ill-used words. Will be adding this idea to my word repertoire.
Apologies in advance for what might end up as a bit if a rant. The word that has me vacillating between anger and despondency is 'tidy'.
This weekend I took an early morning walk around my neighbourhood listening to the birdsong - or at least would have if there had been any. Our area is very suburban where wilderness is simply not tolerated: gardens concreted over, driveways paved to ensure there is a space for beloved motor cars, everywhere devoid of life (other than human life inside their tidy dwellings).
Then today I noticed that one of my new neighbours had destroyed the most beautiful Hawthorn - in May, had they waited, they would have seen and smelt the most beautiful blossom but no, out it came to leave a bland space. But then to add insult to injury they placed a neat bird feeder there after removing the place the birds settle to feed!
Anyway that's the word: tidy. I could go on to extend the rant (sorry) to borders and other places forced into unnatural order but I shan't and hope some of the other words I read in the comments are a bit more enriching than 'tidy'.
I’m with you.
I don’t much like ‘unstable’. I think of how it’s applied to people as a judgment as if there is one standard of ‘stable’ we must all adhere to. But that feels like a dull, bland place to spend all my time. When I’m writing a poem I often paddle in unstable waters. If I stay too far up the beach behind my windbreak I’ve no chance of finding the mysteries of the seabed. We should allow ‘unstable’ to be an attribute not a (too easy) condemnation while always accepting its good to dry our feet some of the time!
Yes, this makes me want to celebrate being unstable!