Sublime
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semantic drift: the slow change in words’ meanings over time. This principle also applies to cultural symbols, which can often come to mean the very opposite.
W. David Marx • Status and Culture: How Our Desire for Social Rank Creates Taste, Identity, Art, Fashion, and Constant Change
glissading,
Gilbert Adair • Love and Death on Long Island: A Novel
an aimless wanderer, a rudderless boat,
a sculler who lost his oars
like a driftwood, wait for the river to take me places,
never aware whether am washed ashore or still floating,
like an oyster in a desert, wait for that odd rain drop
driftwood
Because the Mississippi is always dropping sediment, it’s always on the move. As the sediment builds up, it impedes the flow, and so the river goes in search of faster routes to the sea. Its most dramatic leaps are called “avulsions.” Over the last seven thousand years, the river has avulsed six times, and each time it has set about laying down a n
... See moreElizabeth Kolbert • Under a White Sky
Our Very Strange Search for “Sea Level”
4 avril. DÉRIVER Quand, par une journée étouffante, je me laisse dériver sur les eaux paresseuses du lac, je cesse presque de vivre et commence à être. Pour moi, un marinier oisif allongé à midi sur le pont de son bateau constitue un symbole d’éternité aussi convaincant que le serpent qui se mord la queue. Je ne suis jamais aussi près de perdre mon
... See moreHenry D. THOREAU • Journal (LITTERATURES) (French Edition)
Pemmaraju’s story urges us to consider the occasional senses of temporal dislocation that we all experience from time to time—instances of timecode drift within our consciousness, small insurgencies of slave clocks against a tyrannical master clock.