#12: Field Notes
On nominative determinism and other spells
-Vyacheslav Legkobit. Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1975
hello there,
didn’t yesterday feel like a Friday?
It’s funny how easily we all agreed to that. How a midweek holiday can warp time, make a Wednesday dance like a Saturday, a Thursday disguise as the weekend. We shape-shift in tandem, slipping into the mood of a day as if it’s an objective force, not a collective performance we’ve opted into.
Every day of the week has quite a distinct character. Much like each place a personality, each hour a posture. Some part of us bends to it.
of course, this is just another experiential exercise in the many ways we live inside other people’s frameworks. The names of things, the meanings attached to them, and how those meanings get passed down and hardened into reality... (we get it!)
But i’m going somewhere with this, I swear!
Enter: nominative determinism! why wouldn’t the same logic apply to your name shaping your life path?
i so love this concept & it makes a lot of sense to me…
what does your name mean? where has it led you?
I. An article
Against Self-Capture
Situational v. Categorical Thinking
by Sophie Strand
Sophie Strand is a godsend. (thank you Lucy for sharing this piece!)
If you don’t know who she is, I can’t really tell you. Which feels fitting, since this piece speaks directly to the harm of trying to label ourselves in order to feel knowable or safe. She writes about the difference between oral and literate cultures. One where identity is lived, fluid, relational, and one where it’s pinned, fixed, and flattened.
By making things more rigid, it’s easier to break them.
What if heuristics, labels, names, days, are more spell than sentence?
II. A Poem
[preface / light poetry suggestion]
I think of reading poetry as a kind of mythological acupuncture. the line that’s meant for you will land in just the right point, hit your chi exactly where it’s needed. You don’t have to sift for meaning. just notice what arises, if anything.
Does a word catch or frustrate you? Does a line swell something in your chest?
let the needle do its work. hold it all lightly.
A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts
“You become a self that fills the four corners of night.”
III. A layup
keeping it ezpz with a little Lynch to wrap!
Speaking to the integration of horizontal & vertical:
“Know that by knowing which all things are known.”
have you given more thought to your name?
has it changed shape in your mouth, even a little?
can you tell me if so?
my name is,
🎐 Lida 🎐
