fic

Part! One! Fic! Done!

*drumrolls*

It is far too early for me to be attempting to make coherent sense on a Saturday morning. I'm going to go and make some coffee and then hopefully my brain will have woken up enough for me to start scraping together my research essay.

a tangent of etymology

What's really quite bizarre is that the last three books I've read (or found myself in the middle of, as I seem pathologically unable to read one thing at a time, the affliction which is quite possibly responsible for my never being able to write one thing at a time) have contained the word solipsism, and I had never seen that word before in my life.

Don't get me wrong, I adore the word: I adored it when it first turned up in Orwell's 1984 and I adored the thrill of romance and clandestine intellectualism that it sparked when it was used in John Barth's Once Upon A Time in the context 'solipsism à deux', and by the time it appeared in shaping up, Robert Dessaix's essay on the nature of the adopted family, it was an old friend.

(After the fact definition: solipsism, to view the self as the only thing that is real, the only thing that can be verified, a quite literal retreat into and embrace of one's own inner reality)

It sounds vaguely geometrical, which the mathematician in me likes, and it's one of those hissing sibilant-ridden words - like insensate, another recent discovery - that I can happily imagine whistling off a snake-tongue. It would probably take Crowley three times as long as a human to say it, provided he was angry or drunk enough. The sound and shape of words means a lot to me. Cadence has long been a favourite, because not only does it sound musical, it has musical connotations. Twisty. I like it. If paradigm ended in -eem rather than -ime, phonetically speaking, I'd consider it quite perfect; shades of deem, old-fashioned and with Middle English roots, rather than the blatantly American dime. (Intellectual snobbery? Moi? As a random side note, I first encountered the word deem in a Disney movie, which probably says something telling but I'm too lazy to put the paradox together.) As the word stands it's too abrupt, for all I'm fond of the elusive nature of its definition.

(At this point I've worked out why I started writing this in the first place; not only to document one of those little coincidences that pop up from time to time, but to take my pretentious vocabulary out for a spin. I'm not taking any Arts subjects this semester and I'm beginning to feel a bit cramped. There are only so many opportunities for delicious words like juxtaposition, credo and inherent when one is writing about the mechanisms of leukemia on the genetic level or discussing adolescent psychology. All those wishing to abandon ship at this stage are free to do so. Don't trip over the giant sign proclaiming FAHYE'S PROCRASTINATION on your way out.)

( For the tolerant, bored, or fond of semi-organised ramblings: onwards! )