prolegomenon

\proh-lih-GAH-muh-nahn\

noun

: prefatory remarks; specifically : a formal essay or critical discussion serving to introduce and interpret an extended work

My first thoughts: So, why not just prologue?

Oh, well, because PROLEGOMENON cannot introduce just any work; the word specifically applies to introducing a work of scholarly analysis.

I see. This explains why its unnecessarily long and difficult to pronounce.

Yes. Exactly.

*

I really want this word to have something to do with LEGOs. Like, a composite of pro + LEGO + phenomenon. I would like to be a part of this phenomenon.

LEGOs were invented in the 1940s by Danish carpenter Ole Kirk Kristiansen. The term LEGO comes from the Danish phrase leg godt, which means play well. Ole Kirk took his LEGOs seriously; his motto was: kun det bedste er godt nok, or only the best is good enough, a sentiment still used within the company today.

LEGO still produces out of Billund, Denmark, under Kristiansen rule. The LEGO website tells me that, in sales, LEGO is the fifth largest manufacturer of toys. I don't know who are the better four.

I click on the Jobs link, thinking: this could be my future (I think this often about a variety of outcomes). LEGO prompts me to check out their values before researching a career with their group. In case you are wondering, this is what it takes to be a LEGO employee:

The LEGO® Brand values

Imagination:
Curiosity asks, ”Why?” and imagines explanations or possibilities (if.. then). Playfulness asks what if? and imagines how the ordinary becomes extraordinary, fantasy or fiction. Dreaming it is a first step towards doing it.

Free play is how children develop their imagination – the foundation for creativity

Creativity
Creativity is the ability to come up with ideas and things that are new, surprising and valuable.
Systematic creativity is a particular form of creativity that combines logic and reasoning with playfulness and imagination.

Fun
Fun is the happiness we experience when we are fully engaged in something that requires mastery (hard fun), when our abilities are in balance with the challenge at hand and we are making progress towards a goal. Fun is both in the process, and in the completion.

Fun is being active together, the thrill of an adventure, the joyful enthusiasm of children and the delight in surprising both yourself and others in what you can do or create.

Learning
Learning is about opportunities to experiment, improvise and discover – expanding our thinking and doing (hands-on, minds-on), helping us see and appreciate multiple perspectives.

Caring
Caring is about the desire to make a positive difference in the lives of children, for our partners, colleagues and the world we find ourselves in, and considering their perspective in everything we do.

Going the extra mile for other people, not because we have to – but because it feels right and because we care.

Caring is about humility – not thinking less of ourselves, but thinking of ourselves less.

Quality
From a reputation for manufacturing excellence to becoming trusted by all – we believe in quality that speaks for itself and earns us the recommendation of all.

For us quality means the challenge of continuous improvement to be the best toy, the best for children and their development and the best to our community and partners.

________________________________________________

Wow. I especially like the idea of "systematic creativity," logic + imagination. Lovely.

As far as I have found, there is yet to be a scholarly analysis of the LEGO in cultural history. THIS is where a PROLEGOMENON would be most appropriate. Literal + figurative + ironic. An instant classic.

autochthonous

\aw-TAHK-thuh-nus\

adjective

1 : indigenous, native

2 : formed or originating in the place where found

A self of the earth. Sprung from the land one inhabits. Born and raised. Local. Indigenous. The breeding ground for pride, nationality, ethnicity.

When I was recently visiting the east coast, I spent one night at my friend Josh's place in a little town called North Attleboro in Massachusetts. I am no stranger to this place; it hovers in the outskirts of metro Providence where I lived for five years. For four of those five years I worked at a store in North Attleboro, but I spent hardly any time there and I barely ever made it off the main drag of retail shops exiled to the southern end of town.

The next morning while Josh was still asleep, I wandered down the road to the nearest Dunkin Donuts to have a cup of coffee. I sat in the pink and purple shop for an hour, watching people come in and get their breakfast. I guessed most of the people were locals, AUTOCHTHONOUS to North Attleboro; many greeted each other in line, inquiring about children and camp and plans for the fourth of July. I sat there by the window with a notebook, probably the only notebook that Dunkin Donuts has ever seen, writing about how jealous I was of this life, living and being who you are in the place where you came from, and how elitist I must be, sitting there taking notes on the indigenous peoples of southern Massachusetts. After living in cities for a decade—especially the second half of that decade in Portland, Land of Non-Natives—I have this incredible appreciation for the authenticity of self that must exist outside the production that is city life.

A word like AUTOCHTHONOUS seems pretty relevant in our increasingly globalized culture. I can make a fair guess that very few things solely exist in the place from which they came anymore. And there is an observed appreciation for the authenticity indicative of AUTOCHTHONOUSNESS—I imagine eating Linguine alla Marinara in Italy is an entirely different experience than it is here, just as native North Attleboroeans seem way more exciting to me in a Dunkin Donuts in North Attleboro than they would had I been observing them anywhere else.

stand pat

\STAND-PAT\

verb

1 : to play one's hand as dealt in draw poker without drawing

2 : to oppose or resist change

It's extremely satisfying when the phonetic spelling exactly matches the original, as though the word hides nothing. It is what it is. I had a boss once who used to hate that phrase. It is what it is, he would say, I hate that. Of course it is what it is—what else could it be? I didn't know how to explain to him that often times things have indefinite interpretations; I was so envious of the simplicity of his thought. I didn't want to destroy it.

I use metaphors regarding a dealt hand of cards quite often, mostly in describing people who are negative. My point with this metaphor is usually to suggest we are all handed a set of circumstances and forced to make due. Realistically speaking, there's always going to be someone with a better hand and someone with a worse hand in any given moment. This thought is extremely grounding for me. Relativity. But I suppose this doesn't satisfy everyone.

STAND PAT seems to suggest two ideas:

1) accepting circumstances, and

2) resisting change

These two ideas are not the same thing, nor to they need to exist symbiotically, though they could. You can accept circumstances without resisting change—maybe you do have a good hand. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, right? And if you resist change, it certainly doesn't mean you're accepting circumstances. It usually just means you're afraid of change and, henceforth, stuck with your circumstances by default. On the other hand, if you resist change long enough, you may eventually realize you accept the circumstances.

So, while STAND PAT is phonetically clear cut, the meaning is complicated. The word began at the poker table and segued into a life metaphor, contorting itself a bit along the way. Perhaps its complexity reflects the difficulty of the decision making process. There is a very thin line between content and complacent—you are lucky if you choose not to see it.

perfidious

\per-FID-ee-us\\

adjective

: of, relating to, or characterized by faithlessness or disloyalty : treacherous

First things first—

treacherous : characterized by faithlessness or readiness to betray trust; deceptive, untrustworthy, or unreliable

I see a slight variance here. PERFIDIOUS seems to describe the effects of said behavior—how you might call someone after they have committed an act of disloyalty, or a way to describe the act itself. Treacherous has an air of intent; if one is treacherous, he is untrustworthy to the bone, born as such and bound to this definition. PERFIDIOUS strikes me as a close companion to words like despicable or hooligan. It doesn't propound the same inherent maliciousness that oozes out of a word like treacherous. Treacherous just sounds more threatening.

All that aside, I'm curious about how faithlessness translates to untrustworthiness. Beware of the non-believer. Faith has been a constant struggle for me; I grew up without religion, out from under the umbrella of an ultimate authority. I was always a skeptic, never entirely believing in anything without question, coming close only to the idea of "self"—a concept in which family and inspirational children's book suggested I should believe.

Faith, to me, is a concept that is earned, not just blindly granted. Thirty years in, I have found I have faith in a handful of people in my life. I have faith in my judgment calls. I have faith in unpredictability. I have faith in the earth's counter-clockwise rotation, and if the earth decided to be unpredictable, I might have faith in that as well. In general I have faith in more than I give myself credit for.

Regardless, I don't feel that my faith, or lack thereof, has any bearing on whether or not I'm a loyal or trustworthy person. I can be loyal to something I don't have faith in. Case in point: Whole Foods. I've worked for this company for four years. It's a decent company. They do some good things. I never bought into the idea that WF is the end-all be-all of philanthropy in the world of food service. But that doesn't mean I'm a disloyal or unreliable employee. It just means I'm realistic. In fact, I think a blindly faithful employee would be more dangerous; one who never questions will ultimately be crestfallen when he discovers the truth of imperfection. That blow might send a believer to the opposite end of the spectrum, to desperate acts of PERFIDIOUSNESS. I, on the other hand, have accepted WF's flaws and stayed, henceforth there is little room for reactionary behavior.

Maybe I am misinterpreting my faithlessness for a different kind of faith—a faith in the natural fallibility of everything. This seems to me a more solid ground to stand on, or perhaps, less of a distance to fall.

sinew

\SIN-yoo\

noun

1: tendon; especially : one dressed for use as a cord or thread
2 a: solid resilient strength : power b : the chief supporting force : mainstay — usually used in plural

I took SINEWS for granted until one of mine got sliced in half during a mixed cocktail of haunted hayrides, knife-play, and generally being seventeen. I now have a great story and a bump underneath the skin above the middle knuckle on my right hand. As I move my fingers, so moves the bump, sliding smoothly over my bones like mildly sedated gerbil under a bed sheet. Sometimes I make people feel the bump—it's eerily intimate.

I'm curious about the second specification in definition one: "especially : one dressed for use as a cord or thread." What is dressed for use? A tendon? How do you dress a tendon? Does that mean to designate a new role for a tendon as a cord? In this case, my tendons begin to feel like a puppeteer's strings, and then, of course, I think of Being John Malkovich. Truly lovely.

I cannot help but adore John Cusack, even in a film like BJM, in which his character is rather detestable. I especially love him in High Fidelity, another unlikable character he renders as charming and irresistible. I would totally get back together with him, too, I think, watching the film and (very) momentarily regretting all the second chances I never offered. I also love his sister Joan, whose mannerisms, I've been told on more than one occasion, resemble mine. This last idea is rather irrelevant, it simply adds to my adoration of this sibling duo.

I want to make some connection suggesting John Cusack is the SINEW among young actors of the eighties, but that feels like kind of a stretch.

Or is it...?

I think I should just accept that I drastically digressed and move on. I mean, not move on with this blog, but move on with my day. I've said enough. Let me know if you ever want to feel a grotesque bump.

struthious

\STROO-thee-us\

adjective

: of or relating to the ostriches and related birds

My first mission for this word is to find the meaning of "and related birds." Ostriches belong to the order Struthioniformes, genus Struthio. The order is classified as flightless birds with no keel on their sternum.

Keel : an extension of the sternum (breastbone) which runs axially along the midline of the sternum and extends outward, perpendicular to the plane of the ribs. The keel provides an anchor to which a bird's wing muscles attach, thereby providing adequate leverage for flight.

Other birds in this order: kiwis, emus, rheas, and cassowaries. Another commonality among these birds is the incubation of the eggs mostly or entirely by the male.

So let's talk about stay-at-home dads.

The Internet boasts a TV Single Dads Hall of Fame, conveniently organized by decade. But within each decade this website is a mess. Not alphabetical, difficult to navigate, erratic. I'm expecting to see Danny Tanner at the top of the list and I can't seem to find him anywhere. This is a disappointment.

It turns out there's a lot about Danny Tanner that I didn't realize. Apparently he and his wife Pam met in high school and ran off together after their prom to elope at the age of eighteen. Shortly after Michelle's birth, Pam was tragically killed in an accident by a drunk driver. Tanner is neurotically clean, an obsession that apparently developed after his wife's death. He is also the only character to never have a catch phrase of "Cut it out" or "How rude" fame. There was some hefty speculation he was gay, although his inability to keep a girlfriend throughout the series is attributed to his undying loyalty to Pam. Tanners STRUTHIOUSNESS is embodied in his overprotective tendencies over his daughters, as well as his...um...inability to fly.

Truly a dynamic character.

congeries

\KAHN-juh-reez\

noun

: aggregation, collection

Surprisingly, not a plural.

My most recent CONGERIES upon returning to Portland:

- a collection of cat hair on my black comforter after two weeks of being away

- a handful of ABC pieces of gum wrapped in old wrappers at the bottom of my carry-on bag after twelve hours of traveling

- 21 emails in my inbox

- a short stack of mail, including: 2 "explanations of benefits" (THIS IS NOT A BILL), 1 social security statement, and the newest issue of Cabinet

I still want this word to be a plural. To my dismay, CONGERY is nothing but a misspelling. Saying "CONGERIES" sounds strange and ill-fitted. This reminds me of the man who owned the laundromat where I had my first ever job: hand-cleaning wedding dresses with harsh chemicals for $5 an hour when I was sixteen. His name was not Roger but Rogers, with an "s." I was always disturbed by that "s." What does that mean? I look up Rogers on babynamewizard.com to find the name peaked in the 1930's at 551 in rank and plummeted by 1970 into obscurity. Judging by Rogers' (I'm not even really sure where to put the apostrophe...) age, his mother's choice may have been trendy at the time, but now his name just sounds like an inappropriate plural.

After I got my first tattoo—a jack-o-lantern on my inner left wrist—Rogers acted strange around me for a few hours. Then he asked about the bandage.

I just got a tattoo, I said.

Oh, he replied, I thought you had slit your wrist. I was afraid to ask.

Tact: a virtue.