Words and pictures

[shewhomust]

I don't know; I turn my back for a moment (well, for the best part of three weeks, actually) and when I look again, there are old newspapers everywhere, and tabs open all over my browser. Can't something be done about this?

Words: Awumbuk:

From a Guardian article about words I didn't know we needed for emotions I didn't know we had (not all equally useful or desirable). Awumbuk is explained: "There is an emptiness after visitors depart. The walls echo. The space which felt so cramped while they were here suddenly seems weirdly large. Sometimes everything feels a bit pointless. The indigenous Baining people who live in the mountains of Papua New Guinea are so familiar with this experience that they name it awumbuk. They believe departing visitors shed a kind of heaviness when they leave, so as to travel lightly. This oppressive mist hovers for three days, leaving everyone feeling distracted and apathetic. To counter it, the Baining fill a bowl with water and leave it overnight to absorb the festering air. The next day, the family rise very early and ceremonially fling the water into the trees, whereupon ordinary life resumes."

Pictures:

Also from the Guardian, the joy of Soviet bus stops (accompanying words, if required)

Comments

[karinmollberg.livejournal.com]

As you might have guessed or feared, I do need to steal this for theboringclub since our pet theme is not only mentioned but explained with a reference to Botox.
However,
not being able to pay in commata (my box full of'em from steepholm only arrives at Christmas) I hereby supply an additional term that may or may not please someone who once said, your default state would be 'disgruntled' so here is a certain Frederick Goodyear writing to Mlle Mansfield; I found this, synergywise by reading her Journal and it immediately came to mind, being bookmarked (dogear and yes, I feel shame) and all:

"The fact is I'm simply in a chronic surly temper with life: and NOTHING if I can possibly help it, shall make me emerge.

---

'We want a definition. If love is only love when it is resistless, I don't love you. But if it is a relative emotion, I do.
Personally, I think everything everywhere is bunkum.

FREDK. GOODYEAR

Of course there is an adequate response from Mlle Mansfield that I may or may not quote on the Mollberg site close to yours later but first for the poisonous to the touch at the club and as I think I go right in your not objecting to diffuse the delight in Soviet bus stops that immediately bring me back to Viking Land where old SF fhans grounded a community of sorts to collect communal rottingness (my invention;) I shall give credit where credit is due by linking back to you.
MERCI!

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I did indeed think of you when I wrote this one - you are very welcome!

[steepholm.livejournal.com]

Doesn't DWJ have something (perhaps in The Merlin Conspiracy? or is it The House of Many Ways? Actually, I think the latter) about how everything seems flat after the departure of elves?

[shewhomust.livejournal.com]

I owe The House of Many Ways a more considered reading. But I can see how everything would feel flat after the departure of elves - all that glamour...