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thwit n. a pang of shame when an embarrassing memory from adolescence rushes back into your head from out of nowhere, which is somehow no less painful even if nobody else remembers it happened in the first place. Acronym of The Hell Was I Thinking?
yeorie n. a certain scent that has the power to sweep you back to childhood—the acrid funk of bug spray, the earthy sweetness of dead leaves on wet asphalt, the rebellious twang of gasoline fumes in the summer heat. From yewthor, a pungent scent + yewre, water-bearer. Pronounced “yoh-ree.”
Maybe it’s not so bad to dwell on the past, as long as it brings you closer to the truth.
But you move as a rower moves: facing backward. You can see where you’ve been, but not where you’re going.
echthesia n. a state of confusion when your own internal sense of time doesn’t seem to match that of the calendar—knowing that something just happened though it apparently took place seven years ago, or that you somehow built up a decade of memories in the span of only a year and a half. Greek εχθές (echthés), yesterday + αἴσθησις (aísthēsis), sensation. Pronounced “ek-thee-zhuh.”
Maybe that’s why we want to believe in ghosts. Maybe it’s just a fantasy. A fantasy that our memories are so powerful that they’ll leave a mark on the wall that would mean something to someone else and can’t just be painted over.
archimony n. anger about an injustice you only discovered long after the fact, after years have passed and everyone else has moved on, leaving you seething with an awkward and antiquated righteousness that you’re not sure what to do with, like a flywheel still spinning long after the engine is shut off. From archi-, earlier, primitive + acrimony, bitterness, animosity. Pronounced “ahr-kuh-moh-nee.”
o’erpine v. intr. to wander through the grounds of a cemetery, glancing over the gravestones as if you were people-watching the dead, imagining all the things they must have seen and the lives they might have led, trying to conjure up an entire biography from a handful of words and dates etched in granite, with barely more than a single dash to cover the unimaginable vastness of their experience. From over, finished and done with + pine, to yearn or grieve for something. Compare the flowering perennial orpine, also called autumn joy or live-forevers, which is often found in open sunny areas of
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Every rule was a decree, every sentence a life sentence.
In the summer, you could make an afternoon last all week long, riding bikes with friends or watching a trickle of water feel its way through the dirt. There were no phones buzzing in your pockets, no schedules, no hormones, no distractions—or maybe it was all distractions.
You are surrounded by event horizons wherever you go.
Surely there’s some adult somewhere, keeping an eye on things.
Even now, the ocean of tomorrow is looming just outside your eyeline.
We’ll never invent a computer that could give us an answer to the meaning of life, the universe, and everything.
Eternity, infinity, forever: these are nonsense words,
Finally, here was a satisfying answer. Yes, my words are made up—but then, all words are made up. Every single one. That’s part of their magic.
Just the act of putting something into words can give you the impression that everything is under control.
Despite what dictionaries would have us believe, this world is still mostly undefined.
