part one:
About wielding power: it’s not like it’s not commonplace. We are so surrounded by illusion that it becomes hyper real. I have semiotician friends, postmodern lovers. I can draw the bowl of fruit, I can write about it, I can smell it if I try, but I don’t think I can see it. Not really. I keep declaring that “it’s all just a matter of taste” yet in the back of my mind the letters in the phrase encounter a forced process of distillation, until they tetragrammaton themselves into “just taste” / “it’s matter” / “all of.” I say ‘tetragrammaton’ in lieu of ‘rearrange’ with purpose: it’s true I often confuse the precise meanings of words and all sorts of other things (as my semiotician friends will readily tell you), but I see the letters disappear before their rebirth; the separate creations then exist in their own realities.
I say ‘in lieu of’ instead of “instead of’ because it’s prettier. I use ‘tetragrammaton’ as a verb because it’s awesome.
It makes perfect sense to me, more perfect than if you had told me straightforwardly, here Izz, here are the numbered steps to follow if you want to achieve or understand so-and-so. I began this life vaguely, hazily, Neptune in the 1st. My birth time, per my mother, was “right after General Hospital ended.” She means that day’s episode; GH is still, miraculously, on the air. Somewhere in the basement, I have a signed photo of the actor that played Nikolas Cassadine stuffed in a box. I guess what I mean is the story of definitions. My sister and I fight about Taylor Swift vs. Katy Perry more often than I care to admit. In the end it’s futile, since our criteria mirrors what we each value (Taylor’s undeniable marketing genius, Katy’s ability to be simple yet powerfully real). So the bowl of fruit I see—in purely straightforward reasoning, nothing (yet) about quantum physics or the possible possibility of rearranging (or tetragrammatoning, if you prefer) the particles of this universe—might not be the bowl of fruit you see. I see colors, shapes, dents, whorls. You see placement, angles, light, and shadow. You see colors too—red apples, say. My red is filtered through eyes that have seen the reds they have seen. Your red might be different.
It has been extremely difficult for a very long time to understand the world. There are so many people, so many opinions. For the purpose of this argument let’s say that everyone, no matter how much their opinion might differ from ours, has achieved their understanding of the world honorably: through personal experiences, a long series of decisions and thought processes and feelings and culture, history, environment, education, and whatever else they have been exposed to throughout their lifetime. Let’s say they hate a specific group of people, but have come to that conclusion honorably. (I do not believe hate is honorable. I hope you follow me.) Then it becomes the vast, inarguably impossible task of untangling all of humanity; you can’t just scold people and tell them their experience is incorrect. So the only hope is to grasp power. The only solution is control.
And power on that scale is xxxxx. Power ebbs and flows. It infects good people and lets bad ones do bad things. Benevolent utopian societal ideals, socialism, communism, free will. Capitalism, commerce, the flow of thoughts and ideas, art: the volcanic hearts of mankind. I’m afraid there isn’t a real way to circumvent this system (tetragrammaton it to ‘pow’ / ‘per’ / ‘owe’ / ‘we’ / ‘woe’) (I play a lot of word games on my phone).
It’s true I often confuse the precise meanings of words, but maybe I don’t believe in precise meanings.
I always knew writing was a tool for me to funnel and make sense of my thoughts, but only now am I realizing that perhaps its charm lies more in the lack of dialogue. It’s me, it’s what I think, and of course I’m right.
part 2 (but it’s also about words):
There is a song I’ve been listening to a lot lately, a classic ’90s Greek song by Pantelis Thalassinos called “Karavia Xiotika.” I must have heard it hundreds of times growing up, but only recently have I taken the time to understand it. It’s a love song, obviously, and the lyrics are almost agonizingly pure and beautiful.
All the translations I’ve found are beyond lacking in nuance; I can’t even fault them. I’ve tried myself, and the best I could come up with for the chorus is this:
from
Στου κορμιού σου τ’ ακρογιάλια
θα με φέρουν μαϊστράλια
και καράβια χιώτικα
Και θα λάμπουνε για μένα
τα φεγγάρια τα κρυμμένα
και τ’ αλλιώτικα
to
mistral winds and ships from chios
will bring me to the shores of your body
and the myserious hidden moons will light up for me
Six lines distilled to three, and rhyme and lilt destroyed. That’s not surprising, but the real problem is that the subtly nuanced meanings of the actual words can’t be translated into English without stripping their beauty bare. Each was chosen; once chosen, they were strung together like lights; once assembled, they opened up a world. And chasms between languages, and languages as mirrors, and words for things other parts of the world can’t name, and for some reason it makes me so sad, the kind of sad where you can’t get out of bed on a rainy day.
the daylight also suits you
Painting: Konstantinos Volanakis (1837-1907), Boat at Moonlight
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