The answer to 101 is either or both. Traditionally the river Thames was thought to be a confluence of the Thame (male) and the Isis (female). This would make it an intersex or hermaphrodite river. Ancient rivers most probably took identities from their associated deities
No knowledge of that but highly probable. Lots of others are just the word ‘river’ in ancient languages, so often become the river River. Same with hills, as with Pendle Hill, where ‘Pen’ comes from a Brythonic Celtic word for hill, then ‘dle’ comes from the OEword hyll, with Hill added later resulting in the name Hill Hill Hill. How imaginative we are…
I forgot to mention, I have an answer to 141: it's what sings outside my bedroom window all night long, and also it's what serenaded me the entirety of this morning's long dog-walk (until the dog disturbed two of them nesting on the ground by the brook below the house). I bloody love living here at this time of year!
When I went to Brighton my friend Leo gave me three curlews in silhouette, cut out of paper and painted with pigments made from earth: ochre, blue, and grey
Why are all the pagan environmentalists turning to Jesus? Because there is fluidity in spirituality, maybe. And something about love. I caution them, Christianity is not Jesus and has a terrible environmental record. I have been an environmentalist for over 50 years and moved firmly from Christianity to something closer to the earth a decade ago, I can't see myself ever moving the other way.
i think we're both in agreement that the city belongs to no one but the city. could the question be better phrased as "who belongs to the city?" no, not quite right either: do all the little cuneiform bones in my feet "belong" to me? "who is part of the city," then. we have such impoverished language in English for "feeding and being fed" by something. the baby "belongs" to the mother, in a slantwise legalistic sense, except that doesn't begin to describe the symbiotic relationship of co-nourishing. coming at it a bit high for the relationship between a person and a city, anyway, since we're less like children of our cities and more like microfauna in the gut: we're performing a function, creating our own little sub-habitat within the larger organism, and even though things would quickly grind to a halt without our microscopic striving, you'd have to squint to notice us most days—at least until things start getting rowdy. luckily, unlike our own little microscopic friends, thanks to the metaphysical lensing of Mind, we do have opportunities to make ourselves known to our city/host, in more productive ways than abject distress and burn-it-down displeasure. so we can ask the city how we are a part of it, how we can deepen our relationship, and expect to get a response. maybe. those who can expect the clearest response are probably the natives who know the city well already—both because they'll be the most likely to recognize the subtle nods of the city's auguries, the ornithomancy of park pigeons, the scrying of sidewalk puddles, etc., and because they're the most likely to be recognized. i'm sure most cities appreciate respectful visitors but any language barrier can be hard to overcome, and really, what is there to say beyond a brief exchange of pleasantries during a short stay? no need to burden a traveller with real wants and needs, a true relationship, if they're not planning to stay.
so i guess the answer is that we and the city decide together, where and how we belong, what part we fit in, once we've demonstrated a certain degree of commitment. just like any healthy romantic relationship.
"As the human mind and body interact, argue, collaborate, so the City's 'body' (its matter, its buildings, beings, and structures) interacts with its 'mind' (its mood, thoughtforms, cultures.) Is the group-city actually 416,828 personal cities intertwined? Or are the citizens neurons and ganglia of one big urban brain?
If the city is a body, what is your function? Are you a blood cell, a brain cell? Are you a bacteria, a bioflora? Are you a piece of bone, or skin? Are you serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline? Is a Wizard a psilocybin molecule?"
I agree that travellers get at most a fling. Falling in love can be heady, but the tourist doesn't know the city at all, only its pretty face. A long-term relationship with a city (or any place) is much like a marriage. One has to forgive and compromise a lot.
230 - yes. 222 - which tarot card were you? 204 - footnote 18. Which makes me think 222 was water/The Star or Ace of Cups. you make things into treasure. 158 - I worry about this too. Convince them first that you are water and might take a different shape on a different day. 152 - Shudder, let your hairs stand on end, look away. Look back finally. touch the skin, shudder more. Peel the skin, lest your teeth experience what your fingertips just did. Eat. Wonder if the juice was worth the squeeze, decide it was. 142 - Like danger, if you're a curlew. Like love/heartbreak/cookies, if you're a crow. 141 - Sad. Longing. Beaky. Vulnerable eggs. 140 - I felt the ghost of Leonard Cohen and Lorca here. 129 - All the great comets are coming. 128 - This was the name of my middle school. Not the whole thing, just The Weald. Schools should have question marks at the end of them though. 110 -Someone once broke up with me for eating cake in bed and getting crumbs on the sheets (my sheets), but not before stripping the bed and remaking it for me. 102 - https://youtu.be/Aztulcg9ipM?si=gq_yxgEN60MLpx5u 98 - a Top 100 word, like gumption, and celestial. 68 - more. I wrote a whole answer about worms and birds and their bank accounts but I couldn't get the grammar right because I went to schools that didn't know they were meant to have question marks at the end. 36 - I'm so curious about this too. 1 - Am. Only Magicians have scented dreams.
Your list made me cry. I don't know what part of it did that but I finished reading and my eyes were all wet and the tip of my nose was cold. I came back to it later and read it a second time and the same thing happened. what if an essay and a poem had a baby and it grew up and had a baby with a list? Wet eyes, cold nose.
222: That was a strange one... I experience hypnopompic hallucinations from time to time (upon waking). In this case what I was actually holding in my hand was the rounded back-end of my bedside lamp: as I struggled to keep it upright it suddenly dropped downwards as if magnetised-- that's how my sleeping mind interpreted it, it had hit a magnetic patch-- but actually I had pulled it off the bedside table and it had dropped a foot or so to the ground. That's what woke me up. (Is a light a cup?)
158: I try to work with this by thinking of what I make as byproduct, traces, imprint, snapshot, a record of change.
102 <3
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Such avenues and byways
We talked about this later, and Amy clarified that these organs are the same because lungs and bowel are connected to the outside, so they too are 'skin' organs.
#21? “Super thanks for asking how are you?” I first read this as Super-Thanks-To-You-the-Asker-for-Asking-a-Question-in-my-Direction, as in mega appreciation, as in truly caring, and thought 'aw'.
But then read the footnote and figured it must be more cynical than that in context? or maybe just rather more habitual, a happenstance default.
So a little saddening flipflop about a totally normal thing.
Hope you *are* super, tho.
#157 this used to be a daily mantra, my version of fight mode - how can these words and ideas serve? - a satisfying thing to pull off certainly, in a lifetime. Real physical change can happen because of clear conviction adding up. I've seen it. It may never be 'recognised' as individual talent but still do the thing of value in the world. But to see even a small change for good in the world... magical, fleeting wins possibly, but now part of the flow of humanity
#136 A city may fade away slowly or be crushed? but an intuitive feeling here is that the buoyant law of averages amongst people existing together means it wont sink. It will dissipate, spill like a crowd, float away slow like dust and smoke. the reverse of accumulation.
#139 Another eye sees the expansive (and often terrifying) possibility of paths being unbound, of humans re-centring themselves, coming home to raw-being at the same time that other humans are loosing their heads. Always a counter balance
Endnote#19 "like panning for gold; which would make my journals water rather than earth."
...I like this idea of elemental aspects of writing for the self. Fire might be the riskier aspects of digging into the self - the content that might spark and burn something, if not contained. But also applying more heat is an effective way to smelt metal nuggets into something new.
Some breaking down of inner filters is needed to get to the jewels of transformative processing. The inverse of a boundary for others [#163], the gathering of self to refine lifeforce into impulse, emotive energy. So that those more airy playful ideas hastily scribbled in the back can become something attached to Will...
this comment is probably too much from a very tired brain, but maybe it interests someone... please take it as a small offering
Beautiful answering Lily, thank you! I definitely feel writing is elemental, and although in the gold-panning metaphor I said that makes my journal-writing water, really gold-panning is earth as much as it is water, it's the interplay of the two. Then the metal needs to be refined, fire & air. I do think writing is like metallurgy in the way repetitive processes are brought to bear on the raw material of thought, making it finer & / or sharper.
Regarding Amy's response-question really I think it is a kind of tic or habit of speech, like when people ask if her sister is her sister and she always says "Her Mum is my Mum & her Dad is my Dad"...
WHAT IF AN ESSAY & A POEM HAD A BABY?
I think that’s called “Anne Carson.” 🙂
The answer to 101 is either or both. Traditionally the river Thames was thought to be a confluence of the Thame (male) and the Isis (female). This would make it an intersex or hermaphrodite river. Ancient rivers most probably took identities from their associated deities
That's so interesting Bill! I knew the association with Isis, but not the other bit. Is it true that 'Thame' is a word meaning 'river'?
No knowledge of that but highly probable. Lots of others are just the word ‘river’ in ancient languages, so often become the river River. Same with hills, as with Pendle Hill, where ‘Pen’ comes from a Brythonic Celtic word for hill, then ‘dle’ comes from the OEword hyll, with Hill added later resulting in the name Hill Hill Hill. How imaginative we are…
Some answers (or at least responses; I claim to have no answers), in no particular order:
Twelve
Musk and cinnamon
There is a tavern in this town
Yes
No, I really don't think so. Or at least, I hope not.
Jonathan
If you want peace, you have to make it together with your enemies
Sunlight, lime, Queen Anne's Lace, and burnt sugar
Dancing like mad things until we fall down panting, half-hysterical with laughter, and then we are kissing
Deep blue
Probably not
Like a stone into a pool, but leaving no ripples
Da capo al fine
Angst
Wine
I love you
Yesss
I feel ya, re: the discomfort of certainty?
This is is that constantly prevents me from writing more?
It's not a question, just spoken with an antipodean accent?
(That wasn't a question, despite ending on an upward inflection?)
Yes, what *if* a poem and an essay had a baby.
Antipodes / California...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_rising_terminal
Yep, I remember Valley Girl 😁
Also now large swathes of the younger UK population. (And, no doubt, elsewhere).
6⁰, feels like 3, so you will need a jumper in Iceland. But, oh never mind...
I forgot to mention, I have an answer to 141: it's what sings outside my bedroom window all night long, and also it's what serenaded me the entirety of this morning's long dog-walk (until the dog disturbed two of them nesting on the ground by the brook below the house). I bloody love living here at this time of year!
When I went to Brighton my friend Leo gave me three curlews in silhouette, cut out of paper and painted with pigments made from earth: ochre, blue, and grey
I've been buying my mum pottery curlews for the last couple of christmases ☺️
Why are all the pagan environmentalists turning to Jesus? Because there is fluidity in spirituality, maybe. And something about love. I caution them, Christianity is not Jesus and has a terrible environmental record. I have been an environmentalist for over 50 years and moved firmly from Christianity to something closer to the earth a decade ago, I can't see myself ever moving the other way.
#73 struck my fancy, for some reason.
i think we're both in agreement that the city belongs to no one but the city. could the question be better phrased as "who belongs to the city?" no, not quite right either: do all the little cuneiform bones in my feet "belong" to me? "who is part of the city," then. we have such impoverished language in English for "feeding and being fed" by something. the baby "belongs" to the mother, in a slantwise legalistic sense, except that doesn't begin to describe the symbiotic relationship of co-nourishing. coming at it a bit high for the relationship between a person and a city, anyway, since we're less like children of our cities and more like microfauna in the gut: we're performing a function, creating our own little sub-habitat within the larger organism, and even though things would quickly grind to a halt without our microscopic striving, you'd have to squint to notice us most days—at least until things start getting rowdy. luckily, unlike our own little microscopic friends, thanks to the metaphysical lensing of Mind, we do have opportunities to make ourselves known to our city/host, in more productive ways than abject distress and burn-it-down displeasure. so we can ask the city how we are a part of it, how we can deepen our relationship, and expect to get a response. maybe. those who can expect the clearest response are probably the natives who know the city well already—both because they'll be the most likely to recognize the subtle nods of the city's auguries, the ornithomancy of park pigeons, the scrying of sidewalk puddles, etc., and because they're the most likely to be recognized. i'm sure most cities appreciate respectful visitors but any language barrier can be hard to overcome, and really, what is there to say beyond a brief exchange of pleasantries during a short stay? no need to burden a traveller with real wants and needs, a true relationship, if they're not planning to stay.
so i guess the answer is that we and the city decide together, where and how we belong, what part we fit in, once we've demonstrated a certain degree of commitment. just like any healthy romantic relationship.
this was fun! thank you for the inspiration.
Curiouser and curiouser... I think we're twins...
"As the human mind and body interact, argue, collaborate, so the City's 'body' (its matter, its buildings, beings, and structures) interacts with its 'mind' (its mood, thoughtforms, cultures.) Is the group-city actually 416,828 personal cities intertwined? Or are the citizens neurons and ganglia of one big urban brain?
If the city is a body, what is your function? Are you a blood cell, a brain cell? Are you a bacteria, a bioflora? Are you a piece of bone, or skin? Are you serotonin, dopamine, adrenaline? Is a Wizard a psilocybin molecule?"
From this old one: https://rosiewhinray.substack.com/p/the-city-is-a-body-you-are-a-group
i shouldn't even be surprised. goddamn. we should do this on purpose more often, yeah?
(also, i will graciously accept "twins," despite it being overgenerous: i'm positive you have waaay more street cred than i do.)
I agree that travellers get at most a fling. Falling in love can be heady, but the tourist doesn't know the city at all, only its pretty face. A long-term relationship with a city (or any place) is much like a marriage. One has to forgive and compromise a lot.
98. Rapscallion = Yes
230 - yes. 222 - which tarot card were you? 204 - footnote 18. Which makes me think 222 was water/The Star or Ace of Cups. you make things into treasure. 158 - I worry about this too. Convince them first that you are water and might take a different shape on a different day. 152 - Shudder, let your hairs stand on end, look away. Look back finally. touch the skin, shudder more. Peel the skin, lest your teeth experience what your fingertips just did. Eat. Wonder if the juice was worth the squeeze, decide it was. 142 - Like danger, if you're a curlew. Like love/heartbreak/cookies, if you're a crow. 141 - Sad. Longing. Beaky. Vulnerable eggs. 140 - I felt the ghost of Leonard Cohen and Lorca here. 129 - All the great comets are coming. 128 - This was the name of my middle school. Not the whole thing, just The Weald. Schools should have question marks at the end of them though. 110 -Someone once broke up with me for eating cake in bed and getting crumbs on the sheets (my sheets), but not before stripping the bed and remaking it for me. 102 - https://youtu.be/Aztulcg9ipM?si=gq_yxgEN60MLpx5u 98 - a Top 100 word, like gumption, and celestial. 68 - more. I wrote a whole answer about worms and birds and their bank accounts but I couldn't get the grammar right because I went to schools that didn't know they were meant to have question marks at the end. 36 - I'm so curious about this too. 1 - Am. Only Magicians have scented dreams.
Your list made me cry. I don't know what part of it did that but I finished reading and my eyes were all wet and the tip of my nose was cold. I came back to it later and read it a second time and the same thing happened. what if an essay and a poem had a baby and it grew up and had a baby with a list? Wet eyes, cold nose.
222: That was a strange one... I experience hypnopompic hallucinations from time to time (upon waking). In this case what I was actually holding in my hand was the rounded back-end of my bedside lamp: as I struggled to keep it upright it suddenly dropped downwards as if magnetised-- that's how my sleeping mind interpreted it, it had hit a magnetic patch-- but actually I had pulled it off the bedside table and it had dropped a foot or so to the ground. That's what woke me up. (Is a light a cup?)
158: I try to work with this by thinking of what I make as byproduct, traces, imprint, snapshot, a record of change.
102 <3
Thank you, thank you, thank you. Such avenues and byways
Lung, bowels and skin are all same
We talked about this later, and Amy clarified that these organs are the same because lungs and bowel are connected to the outside, so they too are 'skin' organs.
The boxes containing my journal archive are buried deep under box mountain
#21? “Super thanks for asking how are you?” I first read this as Super-Thanks-To-You-the-Asker-for-Asking-a-Question-in-my-Direction, as in mega appreciation, as in truly caring, and thought 'aw'.
But then read the footnote and figured it must be more cynical than that in context? or maybe just rather more habitual, a happenstance default.
So a little saddening flipflop about a totally normal thing.
Hope you *are* super, tho.
#157 this used to be a daily mantra, my version of fight mode - how can these words and ideas serve? - a satisfying thing to pull off certainly, in a lifetime. Real physical change can happen because of clear conviction adding up. I've seen it. It may never be 'recognised' as individual talent but still do the thing of value in the world. But to see even a small change for good in the world... magical, fleeting wins possibly, but now part of the flow of humanity
#136 A city may fade away slowly or be crushed? but an intuitive feeling here is that the buoyant law of averages amongst people existing together means it wont sink. It will dissipate, spill like a crowd, float away slow like dust and smoke. the reverse of accumulation.
#139 Another eye sees the expansive (and often terrifying) possibility of paths being unbound, of humans re-centring themselves, coming home to raw-being at the same time that other humans are loosing their heads. Always a counter balance
Endnote#19 "like panning for gold; which would make my journals water rather than earth."
...I like this idea of elemental aspects of writing for the self. Fire might be the riskier aspects of digging into the self - the content that might spark and burn something, if not contained. But also applying more heat is an effective way to smelt metal nuggets into something new.
Some breaking down of inner filters is needed to get to the jewels of transformative processing. The inverse of a boundary for others [#163], the gathering of self to refine lifeforce into impulse, emotive energy. So that those more airy playful ideas hastily scribbled in the back can become something attached to Will...
this comment is probably too much from a very tired brain, but maybe it interests someone... please take it as a small offering
Beautiful answering Lily, thank you! I definitely feel writing is elemental, and although in the gold-panning metaphor I said that makes my journal-writing water, really gold-panning is earth as much as it is water, it's the interplay of the two. Then the metal needs to be refined, fire & air. I do think writing is like metallurgy in the way repetitive processes are brought to bear on the raw material of thought, making it finer & / or sharper.
Regarding Amy's response-question really I think it is a kind of tic or habit of speech, like when people ask if her sister is her sister and she always says "Her Mum is my Mum & her Dad is my Dad"...