The phenomenon of lost words- new favourites

As some of you may be aware, one of my favourite things in the world to think about, to talk about, to read about and to know exists is the phenomenon of lost words. Or should I say- the words that have been lost from our vernacular with the elapsing of time, the changes in our cultures, the amalgamations of different and foreign nations giving rise to new amendments to our native tongues- are among my favourite things: the contemplation of their once-existence. I have before written posts that have included some of these lost words but I have recently come across some new ones that captured my attention, so I thought I would not only list them but attempt to use them in sentences.

My 66th collage by Daisy King at Voilà!Collage – desing multimedia collage online

apanthropinization (n.)- withdrawal from human concerns or the human world
Once he’d passed the age of thirty, he retreated into a closed-mindedness and didn’t try to conceal his increasing apanthropinization.

archiloquy (n.)- first part of a speech
The assemblies always began with the Headmistress’s archiloquy, but today was different.

artigrapher (n.)- writer or composer of a grammar; a grammarian
My dream job is to become a professional artigrapher.

autexousious (adj.)- exercising or possessing free will
Those devoted to their God argue that it is only because humans were created as autexousious beings that sin exists in the world.

boscaresque (adj.)- picturesque; scenically wooded
Hansel and Gretel fell asleep under a tree in boscaresque and unfamiliar surroundings.

brochity (n.)- projecting or crooked quality of teeth
It was actually her idiosyncratic brochity that made her such a successful fashion model.

caprizant (adj.)- of the pulse, uneven or irregular
With a finger to my inner wrist, I felt the caprizant rhythm of my panic.

circumbilivagination (n.)- going around in a circular motion; circumambulation
When she recited aloud the dates she needed to memorise for her history examination, she was prone to circumbilivagination around the common room whilst muttering them to herself.

citharize (v.)- to play the harp
I have never seen someone citharize as effortlessly, the sound so mesmerising. 

coherentific (adj.)- causing to become coherent; causing cohesion
A daily dosage of risperidone eventually had coherentific effects on his thought processes. 

cosmogyral (adj.)-  whirling round the universe
In the waiting room of the psychiatric hospital, I met a woman who claimed she'd been on cosmogyral excursions, which seemed serious until she told me it had been 4 days of inpatient care, and I'd been there six months.

essomenic (adj.)- showing things as they will be in the future
She feared that her first son's failed marrage was essomenic with regards to how his own's son's nuptuals would transpire. 

eveniency (n.)- coming to pass
Even though he waited for the signal every night and it failed to make an appearance, he was certain of the eveniency of his last beacon of hope.

excutient (adj.)- shaking off
When someone deliberately tries to hurt you, try to be excutient the bitterness as soon as you can, or you'll carry it around with you and it will just weigh heavier.

fallaciloquence (n.)- deceitful speech
I've always hated politics, especially discussions about politics at parties, possibly because I believe that inherent in the political profession is the aptitude for fallaciloquence. 

hecatologue (n.)- code consisting of 100 rules
Sherlock Holmes was the sole creator of this task in deductive logic, but he'd cleverly set it out as a game with a hecatologue to adhere to. 

hirquitalliency (n.)- strength of voice
She didn't possess the hirquitalliency to get anybody's attention, so that is why she broke her glass tapping her knife against itt. 

icasm (n.)- figurative expression
He assured his lawyer that the death threat he had penned to his neighbour was an icasm and nothing more.

inocciduous (adj.)- of a star, never setting
I don't believe much of what goes on in the Bible but the imagery is quite lovely, especially that of the inocciduous and singular star that led the way to Bethlehem. 

inobligality (n.)- quality of not being obligatory
She didn't turn up to work wearing the uniform because her co-worker had said uniform was an inobligality but she ought to have trusted her instincts. 

interfation (n.)- act of interrupting another while speaking
His incessant interaftion was symptomatic of Tourette's Syndrome, and his family were accustomed to surprise obscenties being bellowed without warning after twenty-five years of it, but he still couldn't ride the bus or underground train for fear of the abuse from strangers, for to them it was intrusive and impolite.

kalotypography (n.)- beautiful printing
There is one room in the museum that is hung with work featuring kalotypography, and whenever I visit I come away with the after-image 'read me' intricately emblazoned behind my eyelids.

keleusmatically (adv.)- imperatively; in an imperative mood
One legislation that was keleusmatically passed in Parliament was the new NHS privatisation bill, which was so loathed by many yet such a relief to move discussion away from.

latibule (n.)- hiding place
His father built a wooden cabin for someone just his heigh up in the sycamore tree visible from the kitchen window, and it became his latibule and sanctum when he heard his parents' voices begin to grow more malevolent in tone, and louder in decibels. 

lococession (n.)- place for giving
In thar corner we have set up another lococession because there isn't enough space for all these gifts under our tree. 

logarithmotechny (n.)- the art of calculating logarithms
So avid was he about logarithmotechny that he sought that spiral everywhere he looked, he dreamt of his life spun out as the golden ratio, a perfect galaxy. 

montivagant (adj.)- wandering over hills and mountains
For days the Von Trapp family had to stay montivagant in order to cross the border from Austria to Switzerland. 

murklins (adv.)- in the dark
I was staggering murklins after that bottle of wine by the time I got the key out of my bag, only to find I was at someone else's door.

namelings (n., pl.)- persons bearing the same name
They weren't just sworn enemies, they were namelings, and there could only be one Esmerelda on this Earth, they agreed. 

nequient (adj.)- not being able
These days I am nequient when it comes to social arrangements and find myself wringing my hands and longing for an invisiblity cloak. 

nubivagant (adj.)- moving throughout or among clouds
When she left her physical body, she felt what could have only been her mind, as something else not physical but definitely there within the atmosphere, nubivagant and far above everything earth-bound.

parepochism (n.)- error in dating or assigning time period
It was a parepochism on his part, not mine, and that's why I was absent for the lecture. 

patration (n.)- perfection or completion of something
In pursuit of the patration of his newest piece, the playwright sat at his keyboard all day and then from twilight through until the following dawn, for three days, until hallucinations made him take to his bed. 

phlyarologist (n.)- one who talks nonsense
He isn't just a phlyarologist, even though he is a paranoid schizophrenic- there is method in madness, like Hamlet said, and there is sense to his speech if you listen.

phylactology (n.)- science of counter-espionage
If I'd had the option to study phylactology, it would have been at the top of my list, but I don't know where I'd even start should I ever go looking for a way in to that field of work. 

pocilliform (adj.)- shaped like a little cup
I imagine my mind, pocilliform, tornadoes swirling and nebulous within it, storming but not spilling, yet, and stifled. 

radicarian (adj.)- pertaining to the roots of words
A radicarian knowledge of Latin is definitely an advantage when making educated guesses about the etymological origins of words.

recineration (n.)- second reduction to ashes
Once was enough, he did not think he could withstand waching the recineration of his home, for he'd only just put his heart back there where his first loved walls once stood. 

roomthily (adj.)- spatially; with respect to space
Perhaps you should re-evaluate how you have funished the room, but in thinking roomthily, because feng shui really does work for some. 

sospital (adj.)- keeping safe and healthy; preserving from danger
The bald bearded man had sospital duties he took on with honour and humility, and he would have died for them, should the bullet have come from somewhere he may have been able to see it approach, instead of from a 46-storey skyscraper window across the busy road. 

sparsile (adj.)- of a star, not included in any constellation
You say you don't fit in, but I see you as sparsile in an otherwised predictably decorated sky. 

starrify (v.)- to decorate with stars; to make into a star
After deciding to putting on his Ziggy Stardust costume, he could barely contain his excitement, his hand shaking as he tried to starrify his face with Bowie's iconolastic make-up.

stiricide (n.)- falling of icicles from a house
It wasn't the weather that caused the stiricide, it was your snowmobile and your inability to drive it smoothly on his terrain. 

succisive (adj.)- of time, spare or in excess
Between revision each scene in Hamlet, they took succisive rests to eat fish fingers for fuelling brainf food and to swallow caffiene pills to keep their all-nighter plans on track.
.
tortiloquy (n.) - crooked speech
This is my courtroom and I do not permit such tortiloquy here, or anywhere else in my presence.

tremefy (v.)- to cause to tremble
There is nothing that can make me tremefy like the sound of the footsteps up the corridor, the janging of heavy keys, and the anticipation of the figure that had become the one constant in my ongoing varaition of nightmares with every sleep, all the details disparate enough to bring me a new reason for cold sweats upon ewaking but never varied enough veer back into the realm of remotely pleasant dreams.

tristifical (adj.)- causing to be sad or mournful
The attendants at my funeral all dressed in black will be too tristifical, and I didn't live that way so I won't die that way either, and everyone will wear sequins, striped socks, rainbow-coloured suits and sideways caps. 

veprecose (adj.)- full of brambles
Over time, the garden I'd kept knowledge of to myself grew so veprecose, the next time I went through that hidden door and tried to cross it to the bench where I had found more than just somewhere to sit outside but a sactuary to recline and write,  my tights and skirt were shredded and tangled as I fought a path to get to it, but every thorn's pinch was worth it when I at length put up my legs and wrote in my notebook under the warm afternoon sun. 

viduifical (adj.)- widow-making
The nickname 'man-eater' was not fitting, because she did not devour the men and make them disappear, but was convicted for her viduifical crimes by means of the poison she could put in any dish, but usually chose breakfast. 

xenization (n.)- fact of travelling as a stranger
This was to me my life now and as for how long, I cannot tell. Characterised by xenization, will I be given many opportunities to find friends along the way as I make my journey? 

Stranger words

Stabbing likeness, purple light-bulb, chewing glass, as if the entire planet were to sing three fine songs and the deepest canyons would swell, inside out, touch face, slip a hand in yours, say, all poetry is made up of overly metaphorical sentences; touch face, now safe, a blue blanket in the rain, shrunken over her frame, "You're going to kill me," she says into her hands, and unintelligent nonsense could sound better if only it were coming from someone different, someone close, but away, someone strange who is strange and often alone. Stranger gloves in winter, found beneath the car seat; hands so cold, no one should have to bear that, but I know, regardless, some do.

A Not-So-Lovely Love Story: The Tragedy of Infatuation Meeting Indifference

PART I.

PART II.

PART III.

Drawing and writing- and all that makes me happy

The first pages of my new scrapbook/notebook/diary/keepsake/evidence that I existed.

Things That Went Unspoken; What They Wished They Had Said; What Should Have Been Said

"I would be happy doing anything with you."

"You remind me of thoughts I've unintentionally left behind."

"Keep breaking your heart until it opens."

"If I could take away your insecurities, I would, but I can't so for now, I'll love you enough for the both of us."

"Don't ever go."

"You need to learn how to care, that's the problem."

"There are people, and then there is you."

"You make me think, even just for a second, that I can do anything."

"Will you please get the fuck out of my head, thank you."

"I've never found the words to say what I mean, and body language fails me- you will never know."

"No, I don't think about you anymore, but I don't think about you any less."

"I really hope someday you find someone to help and heal you, but it's not going to be me."

"I'm not worthless, I'm afraid you are just feeble-minded."

"Please don't look at me like that, because I will fall apart if I see you cry."

"Please don't ask this of me, because I know I am going to hurt you."

"You're braver than people give you credit for, but you're brave enough not to need that credibility."

"I thought I was her."

"If I loved you, I should have let you go."

"I'm scared, every day, all the time. Please tell me the truth, if you ever feel that way."

"I'm the word your lips forgot."

"Happen, with me."

(Footnote- these are from fictional sources, some drawn from personal experience but none are actually personal.)

Other Lives (Reincarnation Imagined)

TRANSCRIPT:

I don't know if I can tell you this: that there's something sinister waiting to happen. It's a rattlesnake beneath the floorboards type of feeling. A falling to your death just before you wake up because you've been dreaming type of feeling.

Do you believe in past lives because I never have, but if I did, I'd like to make them up for myself the way I make up the meaning of this whole universe, just because I know there isn't going to be a big reveal at the end or at any point, and nobody is going to let me in on the secret.

In one past life, I'm sitting on a porch and the evening is humid, I'm looking out over a creek, hearing but not listening to a cacophony of crickets and insects' monotonous drone, and splashing. I think I'm somewhere in the dustbowl I've read about in all the books about the American Dream. Or the shattering of that Dream. Or the illusion of that Dream. Or a dream of a Dream. But in this dream, or past life, there are two boys throwing punches at each other and they are in the water.
On one side of the creek, there's a pile of clothes. I know that there's a pistol hidden in it. On the other side of the creek, there's only warm darkness, hot night.

Another life now. I am a we. There's a you and a me, but he isn't my you and I can't be his me, or her- we are just somebodys. We are trying to find out what our insides look like using only words. His handwriting is messy, messier than mine is in this life. I mistake his scribbled hearts for small butterflies tacked to the end of a message he penned in a card. Anniversary. Valentines. Birthday.
It's another life. A harvest moon means something in this life. A heartbeat like an insect hitting the window pane. Again. Again. Again.

I'm in a car taking a moonlit drive with Jim Morisson. He's feeding me pieces of heaven. We are midnight heroes. This is another life entirely. But he bites his fingernails, and above his bed is a ceiling fan that whines like a dog in pain, and I hate myself in this life.
The mornings are ugly and my lips look like something I've fallen on. I am cold all the time. I am not introspective, and I do not know why I want to end my life, but I do, so it doesn't last long.

Next life, I chew the inside of my cheek when I am angry or nervous, or both, which is often, and in this life a man is yelling at me in Japanese but I know what he is telling me- you are not worthy. I want to tell him- yes I am- but I do not lift my eyes.
I think I made a long life in Japan but never spoke back. It wasn't the right time, not the right life. But this one, this could be the one.

I'm missing three fingers. I'm probably going to lose half of my nose. My skin is turning to the colour of chrome, it glows amongst all the white. I'm at the top of the world. I made it to the top of the highest mountain in the world.
We may not make it back down alive, but we got here, and this is a feeling I want to package, to put away in a bottle or small box and bring back with me to this real life.

But that was another life, that never happened, forever ago, never ago, and there were many and there were none and I was so special in some and so insignificant in others. See- it doesn't really matter. You can say it's a dream- you can take that pistol out and shoot a bird, you can let the warm dark swallow you, you can put your hands into his chest, you can take your last breath in a dimly lit bathroom, you can say nothing, you can say everything, you can be brilliant, or you can be worthless, but in the end it means exactly the same thing.

It's all gone to the dogs

Glimmering and pale on the storefronts that were now just litter and tattered signs, everything must go un-spelled in shredded ribbons, rust-clatter cages pulled down over them. It was as if a long rain had come and washed all their insides away but the shells remained, which made it more miserable to drive past if you couldn't avoid it- there were promises there, not quite broken yet without a doubt never to be realised, because nobody cared enough to kill it all off, for certain. They could have brought it all crumbling down. They could have swung a wrecking ball at every building and roof until not a single brick was left standing upright. A pile of dirt would have been more settling. But the ambiguity that hung over those forgotten places left it sickly and unfinished. Groups of anonymous drifters in hooded sweatshirts huddled over crack pipes in the alley between what used to be a dry cleaner and a once-whitewashed estate agent's office. At night, the darkness disappears down the drains and into the sewers. The air forgets that it's made of oxygen. They say a girl was cycling down that road one March midnight and dropped dead. The coroner said the cause of death was drowning.

There was another death by drowning a couple of months later. Mr Rubens was taking his dogs for a run in the chilly mist of dawn, under a sky so silver-white with cloud cover there was no evidence of the sun having risen at all, except for the lights that were beginning to flicker on in the windows of nearby houses, the sound of car engines starting as commuters pulled out of driveways, and the birds. You could always tell by the birds. He thought it was a swan at first, or a bird at least, with white feathers. When he trod down the reeds by the water and got closer to what one of his dogs had dragged from the shallows with its teeth, he saw it wasn't a bird at all. It wasn't even an animal. It was a woman's nightgown, dirty, sodden. Mr Rubens' head frantically whipped from one side to the other, he thought about yelling but the thought was fleeting and a silly one anyway. He walked his dogs down to the police station and told them what the hounds had sniffed out. The area was taped up in yellow for a few days but the barriers were cut before the week was through. No evidence left behind. No body. No crime. 

//

Thoughts in dream textures. 

Too scared to write anything down.

Nothing is obedient enough.

Fluttering - breathing - praying -

I watch my eyes change colour like the sky, from black to blue to purple to pink again. 

Staircases looming towards me. Walls falling into me. I crack against them. 

I crack and I heal, which means there's some power left in me.

While he sleeps I daren't close my eyes, but for a moment I do, and I do not see the non-colour of my eyelides. I see a field, I see water, I see weeds gently moved by the swell of the stream, and mud, sinking sands, and sky, stretching farther than this world. Another place, another pathway. I see another person, she's running. In another time, another space, she could be standing in the shallow surf of the sea. Perhaps the planet is an entirely different one. Wherever she is, she's unreachable. The waves crash around her, blossoming and booming. They whisper. She can feel the water when she stretches out her hand, right there, where the bedsheets should be. A small gasp of air is drawn from her lungs- 

in that second, she decides to become a ghost.

//

One house was abandoned, without warning, the same week the dogs found the nightgown. There was no reason to believe the finding and the disappearance of the inhabitants were connected. There was nothing untrustworthy about them. The head of the police department knew the man of the house from years ago, when they were both on the police force, but marriage, his colleage had said, changed everything. He said he didn't want to carry a gun anymore. He said he wanted to keep his wife safe, make sure she never had reason to fear for her safety and want to move elsewhere, want to leave. He left out the part where he ought to have added 'with or without him' but they were old friends, they'd been cadets together, they drank beers at the local brewery most nights, they went to the run-down, unpeopled strip club once in a while, where the music was melancholy and the drinks were flat, but that's not why they went. They stumbled home, parted ways, with a lot of back-thumps and hollered praises. When his friend had disappeared, the head of police knocked on the door, looked in the windows, but didn't stay long. He'd look him up in the pages, figure it out, when he had the time. There was too much to deal with right now- drugs being sold in the old part of town that used to be all yellow and blue and pink, sunny, uncluttered, and glossed-over, like it was all new and for sale. A long time ago. It didn't take him long to stop wondering about the sudden disappearance of the couple in that house. Maybe they'd just moved, maybe she had felt unsafe, and had reason to now the town was falling apart. Maybe they'd gone on a trip. Maybe someone's relative was sick. There were so many assumptions, so many dead ends, and he was too busy to find answers, and it wasn't his business anyway. He was watching the sky from his bed the same night he'd checked the house, watching the moon swinging amongst the drooping clouds. He had a fleeting conviction, all of a sudden, that he hadn't checked the back windows. He hadn't gone through the gate in the fence and into the yard to check the back of the house. And he wasn't going to. He steeled himself to sleep, thinking soporific thoughts of the cigarettes he'd like to smoke, the women he'd like to see in that slip of a nightgown, standing there in the moonlight, and the summer that existed, surely, just out of sight. Things must be easier to forget than they are to remember. Surely he could let the heaviness in his chest and stomach slip away by just forgetting the thought, forgetting where it had come from, retracing his steps backwards. In his dream, he walked through the fence and saw the back bathroom window was broken, stained with blood, and strips of pale fabric, the same ribbons of satin that had been missing from that dirty nightdress, were clinging to the edges of the glass, gently murmuring in the wind.

Train Song

My Evil Genius Split Brain: Read More

Spreading the word about transient experiences of psychosis and how you can come out of them without a life-long and monumentally detrimental diagnosis of schziophrenia or psychotic spectrum disorder...

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People Think/I Think

People think that someone must pay.
I think that thinking that way is only your own loss.
People think that they are entitled to respect.
I think I am not entitled to anything, least of all respect, for there is nothing to respect about me.
People think what goes around comes around.
I think that sometimes it doesn't.
People think that they are not able to make much of a difference.
I think that people can make a lot of difference if they try hard enough and for long enough.
People think that others will have the same responses, inclinations and perceptions as they do.
I think that the most interesting thing about life is the vast diversity in the way people think.
People think that money means success.
I think that money makes people proud and that makes them ugly.
People think honesty is the best policy.
I think you can still be polite and civil to someone, even if you honestly dislike them.
People think that their childhoods inform their futures.
I think that our childhoods can inform our present and future as much as we believe they will, and allow them to.
People think that things will only be okay if there is a resolution or closure.
I think that sometimes you have to be okay without any resolution, and closure is a myth.
People think that your home reflects your inner state of being.
I think they are right but that neatness and order are not indicative of a better or superior state of being.
People think that the appearance of effortlessness is charming and attractive.
I think that people who appear to put in effort and to be trying are the most attractive.
People think that Nietzsche was a depressive nihilist who saw no meaning to life.
I think that he was a hopeless realist who didn't believe in an absolute meaning, but who thought that if there were to be one, finding it would be the end of us existing.
People think that they matter.
I think that they matter so much more and in ways they don't even know.
People think that there's some meaning of life that's in question.
I think that it's a question of what you decide it's going to mean to you, because nobody will ever tell you so you may as well make it up.
People think the best way forward is always following a path or climbing a ladder
I think that I'll always be looking up to people on those ladders or at people far ahead on their paths, but will not go in either of those directions- I'm just here, looking at life as it is now, wandering, sometimes in circles, sometimes between places, sometimes to new territories, and while I'm looking at everything as it is now, I know that it will all look so different in a while, or just a little while, or any moment at all.
People think that forgiving is condoning and forgetting is letting go of something worth holding tight to.
I think that forgiving is freedom and forgiving is letting go of what gets heavier the longer you carry it around with you, and that you should not forget, because you can only learn from what you remember.

Why did you desert me?