Categories: uncategorized
Tags: words
Date: 01 December 2006 15:21:18
I thought I had made up a cool new word. I was walking through Russell Square in the rain - its a beautiful drizzly first of December in London, not quite cold enough to need to wear a coat, but cool enough that you don't feel too hot if you do, lovely subdued light, mottled pail sky, water everywhere, the trees have finally shed most of their leaves in the last week or so, the limes that are so common as street trees in south-east London and the planes in Bloomsbury are holding on to their last few yellow raggedy leaves flopping about in the wind - and I was thinking about a question someone asked on the Ship of Fools a while back, Why is South Africa more liberal? (which was originally about legalisation of same-sex partnerships)
The obvious reply to the question is another question: "why do people expect different African societies to be like each other?"
And so my thoughts drifted. OK I hadn't got to Russell Square yet, I was still on the 68 bus at this time, and wishing I'd waited a minute more to get on the 188 behind because it goes straight to the north side of the square (saving me a road crossing and about two minutes to get to work) And I was composing a little story in my head about it, using bits of African history to illustrate the idea of a stateless society or a functioning anarchy, comparing the Igbo with the Yoruba, or the Kikuyu with the Baganda, or the Nuer with the Dinka and Shilluk.
And I made up the word "ethnopoesis" for "Deliberatly writing a people into being". It could be used for the literary side of ethnogenesis, the rhetorical and mythical aspect of the definition of a new ethnic group. Its not often I invent a new word while walking from the bus-stop to work. A pun as well. That's Deeply Cool. I was pleased with myself.
Ands then I arrived at college and searched for the word on Google. And there are twenty-one hits. Aaaaaaaaaaaaargh! I am beaten to it! (and I got slightly crosser about it at my Rant of the Month site)
I confess. "pail sky" was a genuine mistake, but I have now noticed it and I could change it if I wanted to. But I don't. Because its full of water and some of it is the same kind of dull silvery grey as the dirty zinc bucket I have at home.re,