Weeks ago: friend Jon and I walk up 2nd Avenue, and I tell him of a fantasy I have of moving to the woods. Walden comes up, and I say I had difficulty reading it. He recommends Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, saying it holds more relevance to our generation since it’s more contemporary.
Today, I haven’t finished it even though I enjoyed it well enough. The book contains lots of vocabulary I didn’t know – perhaps one of the reasons why I slowed with reading. Anyway, here are some words I learned while reading.
insouciant
Definition:
casual: marked by blithe unconcern
Her Usage:
I had just rounded a corner when [the falling bird’s] insouciant step caught my eye
sere
Definition:
dried-up: (used especially of vegetation) having lost all moisture
Her Usage:
I couldn’t see whether that sere rustle I heard was a distant rattlesnake, slit-eyed, or a nearby sparrow kicking in the dry flood debris slung at the foot of a willow
bivouac
Definition:
camp: temporary living quarters specially built by the army for soldiers
Her Usage:
No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest.
sonant
Definition:
a speech sound accompanied by sound from the vocal cords
surd
Definition:
a consonant produced without sound from the vocal cords
Her Usage:
The wind shrieks and hisses down the valley, sonant and surd, drying the puddles and dismantling the nests from the trees
hummock
Definition:
knoll: a small natural hill
Her Usage:
the ridges bosses and hummocks sprout bulging from its side
eidetic
Definition:
of visual imagery of almost photographic accuracy
Her Usage:
But there is more to the present than a series of snapshots. We are not merely sensitized film; we have feelings, a memory for information, and an eidetic memory for the imagery of our own pasts
frangible
Definition (from wikipedia):
A material is said to be frangible if through deformation it tends to break up into fragments, rather than deforming plastically and retaining its cohesion as a single object
Her Usage:
because a sycamore’s primitive bark is not elastic but frangible, it sheds continously as it grows
memento mori
Definition (also wikipedia):
Latin for, “Remember you must die”
Her Usage:
That, I wanted to say as I recognized the prize she held, is memento mori for people who read too much.
susurrus
Definition:
susurration: the indistinct sound of people whispering; “a soft susurrus of conversation”
Her Usage:
I never merited this grace, that when I face upstream I scent the virgin breath of mountains, I feel a spray of mist on my cheeks and lips, I hear a ceaseless splash and susurrus, a sound of water not merely poured smoothly down air to fill a steady pool, but tumbling live about, over, under, around, between, through an intricate speckling of rock.
lambent
Definition:
softly bright or radiant
Usage:
the leaf was so thin and etiolated it was translucent, but at the same time it was lambent, minutely, with a kind of pale and sufficient light