PART 1
EXPLORATION: 25.06.2022
PRACTICE: Reading as distillation
FOCUS: A further reading distillation of the various 'distillations' that we had already generated over the previous episodes of practice-based explorations as source text grouped as follows: (1) Dorsal Practices: Lying and Rotation: (2) Dorsal Practices: Transition and Movement; (3) Dorsal Practices: Perhaps; (4) Dorsal Practices: Walking Backwards.
- Take time to tune into the transcript, marking phrases and words that strike you or that resonate. When the time feels right read aloud some of the words and phrases that have been highlighted - these could be single words, phrases or a cluster of sentences. Or alternatively, identify words and phrases live and read them aloud.
SCORE
PART 1: LYING DOWN AND ROTATION
Dorsal Reading 1: Moving between noticing attraction and distillation
Come back to ‘noticing attraction’ whenever it feels desirable.
Source: MARKED DISTILLATION OF LYING DOWN AND ROTATION
Duration: 5 minutes
Etymology 1: Gravity/Support (KB) and Lean (EC)
Allow for overlapping, listening and pause
When one finishes, they can listen and/or decide when to call for PART 2
PART 2: TRANSITION AND MOVEMENT
Dorsal Reading 2: Between noticing attraction and distillation
Come back to ‘noticing attraction’ whenever it feels desirable.
Source: MARKED DISTILLATION OF TRANSITION AND MOVEMENT
Duration: 10 minutes
Etymology 2: Oblique (KB) and Reverse (EC)
Allow for overlapping, listening and pause
When one finishes, they can listen and/or decide when to call for PART 3
PART 2: PERHAPS
Dorsal Reading 3: Between noticing attraction and distillation
The initial ‘noticing attraction’ has more energy and overlapping, maybe faster.
Come back to ‘noticing attraction’ whenever it feels desirable.
Source: MARKED DISTILLATION OF PERHAPS and Transcript prompts
Duration: 10 mins
Etymology 3: Uprightness (KB) and Straightforward (EC)
Allow for overlapping, listening and pause
When one finishes, they can listen and/or decide when to call for PART 4
PART 4: WALKING BACKWARDS
Dorsal Reading 4: Between noticing attraction and distillation
Source: MARKED DISTILLATION OF WALKING BACKWARDS I + II
Duration: 10 mins
Etymology 4: Proprioception (KB) and Sentient (EC)
Allow for overlapping, listening and pause
When both finish, end.- Reading Distillation (20 minutes) and (2) 30 minutes
[excluding etymologies]
Part 1 LYING DOWN + ROTATION
Ground. Sensation. Stillness. Formation. Arrive. Fall away. Drifting. Experience. Vibrant. Pressure. Navigate. Awareness. Sinking. the mouth the skin the eyes. dropping releasing surrendering. Dorsal. Forming. A dorsal voice. Tuning. Turning. Bending twisting letting go. Twisting leading letting another thing lead. Sort of resist or won’t soften or won’t allow. The floor is my horizontal plane my point, my plane of reference. It’s a sensation and an image there is a sense of the hairs on the back of the neck, it’s like an image forms in my mind, from a sensation. Embryonic trace of forming. Tuning into the back softens the front softens the front allows the front to drop back, expectation drops, time drops, the body drops into another sense of time. Thinking about the back through like a kind of undoing. An undoing of uprightness and it was all of this activating these kind of relaxing and letting go and releasing and loosening and stopping holding and. And do I really know what it is to be upright. Am I even aware of this sense of frontality that my experience is shaped by, this movement to the ground, this awareness of the forward leaning and future leaning sense of frontality and a coming to the ground. There just being just enough pressure or just enough resistance to want to try and bring it into formation. The stimulation to try and bring a thought into formation or a word into formation would just fall away into a kind of silence or into the nana, the un again. There’s this thing settling dropping sinking you almost goes so low you start to float. It feels like by heavy heavy heavy, a lightness comes into the body. Maybe there is this sense of the soft eyes you were describing earlier that could activate this dorsal listening, letting the thoughts just come rather feeling this pressure to speak. I think this pressure to speak, whatever the pressure actually, is something to do with a preoccupation with what is coming next, to the future, so kind of an orientation to what is going to come, what is going to come, and I think that there is something about tense. Actually in both senses – like being tense and the temporal sense of tense.A different kind of gaze, a really different gaze almost like the liquid of the eye drops back into its orbit, into the actual socket somehow. We are dropping back into something maybe something that is not yet formed yet. Dropping into the back feels as if there is something much closer to experience.And I was thinking in exploring this relationship between doing and being, and it feels as if the back is more a mode of being, and the front a zone of doing. But again, there is a risk here that these are binaries that are being perpetuated. Conversation has that dynamic of a push and a pull and a force that you were working with. How complex it is and all these things of a kind of conversation, not so much a back and a forth, trying to send the voice into a curve in order to try and reach me. To try and be aware through the back of the body this experience we are having at the moment - what does it open up really? Collecting of one’s thoughts - doing a hand gesture where my left hand is angled back towards me and my right hand is sort of moving around in a circle, kind of gathering. But actually, it maybe should be the other way around? Something about feeling able to rest in the situation, or be able to reside in the situation. To lean back. Taking time actually, there is something about taking time. Like the frontal mode perhaps always feels a bit urgent or a bit hurried or maybe even a bit uncertain.
[lean/gravity etymologies 1]
Part 2 TRANSITION + MOVEMENT
Transition. Efficiency. Curiosity continuum. Vulnerable. Dreamy. Discipline and curiosity. Forgetting. A kind of dreamy state. Halfway. The ocean breath. Metaphoric imagery. Slip into. Dark. Back front. A vertical line. Gravity. Unsettle. Unsettle this sense of the binary between the front and the back. What gets lost or what falls away in our capacity if we are not careful in a way, out of habit, or ease, or sometimes inefficiency. Allowing the front and the back to cooperate more maybe the qualities of thinking that are connected with the front and the back to cooperate more, so rather than it being this either/or possibility to see something more of a cooperation. The body has to roll, has to immediately be asymmetrical, something has to move, something has to move first and the same with coming on the way down something has to drop first. There’s always a sort of curiosity about what will start the movement. So I was thinking what gets lost or what falls away in our capacity if we are not careful in a way, out of habit, or ease, or sometimes inefficiency. Playing with gravity and being willing to yield into gravity, whereas the torso and the chest were somehow to do with vulnerability, in that sense of openness of the body, taking the attention to the back opens the front of the body in a way that feels quite vulnerable, or exposed. Maybe vulnerable is a condition of habit actually, that it feels as if it wants to protect the front, so this opening up feels vulnerable. I can just collapse, I let go of everything and I fall to the ground. Allowing the front and the back to cooperate more, and maybe the qualities of thinking that are connected with the front and the back to cooperate more so rather than it being this either/or possibility to see something more as cooperation. How do these various modes of experience and of thinking experience cooperate with the whole experience of thinking? This movement from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition. It is very messy and murky… it just won’t crystallize. This dorsal quality or a dorsal tilt. Future leaning, it feels falling forwards. Murky back thinking. And that floating and hanging are states of ambivalence. There is lots of darkness. And I think I often resist those kinds of … though it intrigues me. I can just collapse, I let go of everything and I fall to the ground. There is a dark spaciousness walking in twilight with a sense of light and dark, there gets less contrast, there are more shadows, you catch things in the corner of the eyes, the corner of the eye kind of shadowy spaces between physical things and imaginary things, unsettling as well sometimes. What’s unknown and dark has a lot to do with fear, and there is an excitement in fear. Qualities of uncertainty - a more anxious visual anxious forward future leaning and that behindness has different qualities of uncertainty. That zone is somehow concealed or hidden or not accessible or unknown in a way. It seems this space that feels less known somehow has the capacity to support or hold a certain kind of experience. It seems counterintuitive that, that somehow this leaning back into the unknown of the behind space enables a kind of relaxation or a resting in experience which we talked about before as a leaning into the unknown future which is different. The sense of the blur - looking through the kind of gap of the eye, slight slant of the eye.How sight is often trying to direct, pinpoint, to name things whereas this half, blurred vision or eyes scanning, or almost eye sight touching the surfaces of things, more a sense of scanning, a different kind of possibility with the eyes, more linked to an experience of the eye, light touch, eyes seeing but not jumping. There are qualities of thinking that have much more of a sense of this backness, and qualities of talking, but I know there is this tendency of leaning forward, of forward leaning, this urgency almost, like a, maybe even a bit graspy, grasping for something. This letting aspect of the back seems important. You were saying about desire -, this pleasure, a pleasure in moving backwards, a pleasure in being and moving, a very elemental pleasure … the pleasure of cooperation of the body and the ground and the environment. In the frontal mode I sort of skate over the surface of the environment to get somewhere. This pleasure of participating - to make the movement happen.
It feels like I have a desire to project something, projecting, whereas backwards there is a lot of acceptance, listening, allowing things in. A connection with the environment. This forwards and the next, next, next, I can feel it, it is a kind of desire, projecting onto something that isn’t there yet. Allowing - allowing certain movements to happen, not resisting, or maybe not even thinking it, I had to do it quite quick to begin with: How do I do this? How do I drop into? This movement from the front to the back as a kind of conscious transition. It is very messy and murky… it just won’t crystallize. Soft back and soft belly. This This dorsal quality or a dorsal tilt. Future leaning, it feels falling forwards. Murky back thinking. And that floating and hanging are states of ambivalence. There is lots of darkness. And I think I often resist those kinds of … though it intrigues me. I’m thinking breath and softness that creates a sense of spaciousness if the body lets that happened. Something about the dropping back, not necessarily back, but letting go, dropping something that let’s something else move up and out, interesting how the force of gravity allows the expanse of the body. These vertical and horizontal forces and gravity is … so the breath somehow with these forces .. is resonant in the body. And even thinking that brings me into a sense of the skin at back of my neck. A strong physical sensation, its behind. The frontal and my eyes, softness, closing of the eyes, or half scanning and this blurred vision. This blur, blurred hearing, and with my ears on the side of the head. This term blur, the blurring, the dissolving of those differentiated categories but as soon as you come to language that experience becomes squeezed into certain kinds of binary relationships. To try and take attention to the sides of language, to the grey areas of language. Not the up and the down, but to really activate this side space that is neither up nor down, nor front nor back, but is really looking at a range. Falling. Behindness. Backness. Different kind of register. Forgetting. Allowing. Gravity. Being willing. Pelvis, the limbs. Counterintuitive. Vulnerability. Clockwise, anti-clockwise. in that sense of openness of the body, taking the attention to the back opens the front of the body in a way that feels quite vulnerable, or exposed. The body has to roll, has to immediately be asymmetrical, something has to move, something has to move first and the same with coming on the way down something has to drop first. There’s always a sort of curiosity about what will start the movement. Something about the relation of the back as a plane and the back as the spine, and the difference in having attention or awareness in terms of it as a surface or a skeletal structure.
[oblique/reverse etymology 2]
Part 3 PERHAPS
Perhaps. Notation. Happenstance. Evolve. Hurriedness. Travel. Nostalgia. Familiarise. Momentum. Diversion. Transformative possibility. Pattern of being. Micro frequencies. Bracketed. Less and less. Easeful. Tiny vibrations. Pressures of a certain way. A hurried mode. Hurried frontal way. Rhythms and pulses. Fluid and loose. Sentience. A being that is alive. Delight, delight is such a strange word, delighting. A real sense of like being alive, like being alive, that’s free of all those habits of life that accumulate over time and very, in these practices especially very alive in the sensations of exploration and sort of unhindered by habits of identity. I quite enjoy how we can fall back into a kind of talking through, a thinking through the process, talking about thinking through the process. It’s sort of fascinating in a way you’re trying to sort of follow what’s happening and speak it as it happens and speak about what’s happening. There are moments where the thinking and the speaking and the reflecting and the circling around are folding back, in and out. There are moments where it just feels as if there is a glimpse of that perhaps, of this kind of pure being , joyful actually. Dwelling, lingering. It is windy today, and so the notion of ‘sway’ was quite present because the trees were really moving. There was this point where I was swaying and I think of this with reading as well, just swaying with it. This sense of having something in mind, quite lightly. So having the notion of dorsal practices lightly in mind, held in the background but not looked at too directly. I think that there is something about this with reading as well, for it to sit there but it is not studied as such, so it informs but in an indirect way. Dropping into the present, - it doesn’t need to resist, doesn’t need to have a sense of retrograde, or pulling back, but more perhaps allowing in of the dorsal, let it seep in quite gently. Perhaps there are these other modes, to allow it come in gently, because then it really does have this possibility to evolve, or change, yes change things. Wayfinding, finding the way. Having to go around the back of things, or meander a little while in order to find a way in, or find a way back. These different systems of locating, navigating, orientating. Or a sense of orienting backwards, towards the back. This sense of facing to the back, or face-to-face, or back-to-back. Way finding, to find the way. And finding a way, finding a way, rather than looking for the way. There are two different kinds of listening, through the ear, skin or nervous system or just the sensitivity to that everything is vibrating. This idea of sensing vibrations of bodies, objects, or anything really. Talking about the micro, made me think of micro-frequencies, like we are kind of sensing machines, you can pick up static, air circulating, tiny vibrations of many different things. This idea of lingering in it and being with the movement of the world in a different way felt very vibrant. A sense of being among, being one of those vibrating things. There is another kind of located-ness through vibration being present, more linked to listening. And that actually there are other kinds of listening or ways of understanding how one is orientating. How it can become less and less. The North and the South hemisphere of the planet, and then as you were talking about the right and the left, I was thinking about, what it brought to mind, was a sense of the hemispheres of the brain. Wayfinding, finding the way. Having to go around the back of things or meander a little in order to find a way in, or find a way back. These different systems of locating, navigating, orienting. Or a sense of orienting backwards, towards the back. This sense of facing to the back, or face-to-face, or back-to-back. Way finding, to find the way. And finding a way, finding a way, rather than looking for the way. This idea of North-facing, and the idea of the uprightness of the North, the up-ness of the North. But I was thinking maybe it is like the experience of being in the woods, the Northerly side of trees is often mossy, because it is the most shaded area. So the North side is always the most shaded or the most murky. So I was thinking about this murkiness, this shaded, this shadow. The shadow side - it is like the reverse side or the back side of things. I was thinking, does the dorsal have more of a Northerly dimension, this mossy, shadowy, shady side? North, South, East, West. The idea of how we navigate differently now, or how many of us have lost the ability to use a map or a compass. These ideas of navigating by the sun, the moon, the stars and wind. When you were talking about the swaying trees in the wind, in that there is a technique there for understanding where you are in relationship to how the wind is blowing in certain places. And today the path called me. It was not like I had discovered something I had never seen before, I know it is there, I have seen it. But there was never the sufficient curiosity to follow that path in a way. And today there was. There was this dropping under, this sense of dropping under the usual experience of the space - a sense of orientation and disorientation. And the thing that you were talking about … not having a straight path. Maybe this also connects to the wayfinding, that the path is not drawn like a straight line, it meanders and it takes tangents. Straightforward-ness’ - what does this mean? What does it mean to be straightforward? And, why is that a value? It seems such a strange value – so one dimensional in a way, to just be straightforward. What is this straightforward-ness? And, how is a dorsal way of practising not straightforward? to activate these diagonal relationships, and the criss-crossings and the meanderings. The turn is in a way – it is not straightforward. Maybe that is why the turn is so fascinating. It is constantly pulling you off the straight, the upright – pulling you a little this way and a little that way. It is like the swaying, swaying this way and that way, even as you are progressing forwards. Sway and to be swayed. Being swayed and easily swayed. There is so much of the habit of my body resisting that sense of swaying. I was looking up at the trees – and how the strength of the tree was also coming from its capacity to be easily swayed. I think it even strengthens the roots in trees, right, the sway, the sway in the wind. There is something about not staking trees for too long, because the sway really encourages root growth and stability. So there is this sense of a diagonal orientation somehow creating space where there appears to be none – this cut of the diagonal and this triangulation occurs through that, it make things longer, it give space. And the sense of the diagonal as a desire line. All of these diagonal paths which cut across the path or cut the corner, so it has got this weird quality of extending space but also the desire line of cutting the corner. Refusing to be one or the other but being both. This diagonal relationship - that is why we have to turn then, to keep turning and to keep moving the spine to turn, to activate these diagonal relationships, and the criss-crossings and the meanderings. The turn is in a way – it is not straightforward. Maybe that is why the turn is so fascinating. It is constantly pulling you off the straight, the upright – pulling you a little this way and a little that way. It is like the swaying, swaying this way and that way, even as you are progressing forwards. Fluid, subtle, light, murky, dorsal. Swimming and being in the water does create immediately a different relationship to gravity and a different relationship to seeing and hearing – and I suppose touching. You are really working the diagonal in order to go forward. And then something about desire. When I was talking about the desire lines, I don’t know, thinking about the sense of desire, at times it can have this wilful dimension to it. That idea of grasping towards something which we have mentioned earlier, but I was thinking about another kind of desire which is much more receptive, a receptive desire. I am not sure where I am going with this. Maybe it is not so much a desire, but a pleasure or a joy which is not a grasping kind. Using touch as a way of sensitising the body before then releasing, and I think that these are practices that are used in somatic practice – touching, or tapping, or activating the body through active touch. And then shaking, really activating the body before coming to the ground. There was a tingling and vibration of the body which then spread into groundedness. Taking this touching and tapping and shaking of the body into the woods and into an outside space, and as I was doing that, there was this strong sense of sway or of movement. I am like an arrow cutting through the experience of life.
[straightforward/uprightness etymologies 3]
Part 4 WALKING BACKWARDS
Delight. Cooperation. Anatomically. Gravity. Light tread. Holistic. Neural patterning. Super blurry. 180-degree axis. Unthinking and unthought. Particular way. Difference. Choreographic. Releasing the seeing. Deep dark well. Unthinking movements and the unthought. Immediacy of the turn. Releasing, releasing. Low orientation. Route finding. Releasing releasing the eyes. Releasing, releasing. Easiness in the eyes. Letting the eyes being released of orientation in a different way, this time by closing them. I walked forward and actually tried to pull my mind back to where I had just been or to the person I had just left. it is a real pull back. The delight, this delight of, the ease that that seemed to bring, it sort of brought a kind of release to the front of the body. How weird it is that we are kind of designed for walking forwards in a way and yet operating in this alternative way, this opposite way, this reversal brings such a lot of ease and relief. The re-, the re of reflection and the testing, the testing of things re-turn, as in go back to or do it again, and this returning as in to turn it over, to retest it, or do it again, and then to notice anew. And maybe some things re-emerge or feel familiar or not. The turning over and over, the testing as in with more circular or folding quality or perhaps settling back into something that is more familiar in order to test out how things are happening in this new situation. Re. Re-establishing neurological pathways that might have got lost or forgotten through inaction or through not being used. Moving backwards, because in some sense it is not a functional movement – it does is enables a real range of options, a capacity to move and getting a sense of really building confidence in balance, awareness of being in space through means other than through sight. This dwelling with what’s been or where ones been, not even where you’ve been but not rushing towards something in the future, but just sort of letting in this sense of seeing even. This idea of regarding, just having a regarding quality to what was being observed. This sense of spaciousness, this expansiveness, almost how the visual expansiveness also comes into the body, into the lungs, into the chest, into the shoulders, giving a sense of opening the arms, but maybe it’s more opening the chest. There’s also a softening because it’s allowed to fall into the back, the front fall into the body rather than hold the body up. The spine has to turn and this ease of the neck to turn rather it be an awkward thing, how it can just become part of how I need to move backwards. Curious about the back of the neck, almost this, like the air as you move backwards, that the air touches the neck, these little hairs. I become very aware of the hairs on the back of the neck. This sense that the neck opens because its moving towards the back, so there’s a sense of it pushing the air, or rather of moving into the air. Also creating a lightness in the body and maybe there is this other way of navigating as you say through the feet trying to find ground or balance or being more comfortable with not quite knowing where you are going and having to figure that out which enables the top of the body and the neck and the head to actually feel quite light and feel well supported by the pelvis and the legs. Coming back to these tiny tiny micro movements in different parts of the spine in relationship to the sense of spaciousness. A more radial sense of space, my ears are scanning around me and I am listening to the shifting sounds. I am bringing attention to the immersive nature of, the immersive quality of being in the space, sounds close and far, and different volumes, frequencies – picking up or listening in a different way as well. So temperature and air are combining with different senses of listening, listening through touch and through the skin as well as through the ears, to sound and noise. Almost like a choreographic score, this walking backwards and retracing your steps forwards and the different combinations of turns and half turns as a way of, not as an intentional way of disorientating. How we orientate in relationship to a sense of direction. A walk forwards but with an intention of walking backwards, so there’s a kind of double focus. This noticing of the change between walking forwards and walking backwards and then doing it again and doing it again. Testing in a way, or exploring, testing again. What do I notice? What am I aware of? Is this my experience? Is this my experience? Something almost anatomically or physiologically there about how the body moves when it moves backwards which is not only to do with unfamiliarity but just simply to do with the organisation of the body in a particular way in relation to gravity and support and balance. So before things become fully automatic there’s this kind of interesting wrestling area, it’s not quite familiar. The awkwardness actually of certain movements. Yes what does that awkwardness do? The evolution of movement, having this push towards uprightness, and faciality and frontality, that moving to the back in all kinds of ways, whether physiologically or psychologically, brings such a lot of release and joy, how can that not be programmed into our being in some kind of way. Describing this abandon, this sense of abandon, the joy of abandon, felt really vivid. How can it not part of the fabric of being human and having a human body? Brief interludes in a life which otherwise feels very frontally oriented. These pockets of abandon, and the joy and the ease, and the relief feel momentary and there is a sorrow with that. The fatigue of frontality, the tiredness of it and this fluid, pleasurable, joyful, easy experience just experienced in these very slight pockets of exercising and of testing something out. And the sorrow that this is how it seems to be – encountered in a brief exercise. I mean it doesn’t need to be a brief exercise, why could it not be more, why not live life more dorsally? There is this temporal elasticity, but very present at the same time. It brought that to mind, this disturbance of linear time in a way. To do with releasing, release of, permission to lose control I suppose. I think there is something to do with control, expectation, responsibility, the sense of ourselves or how we think to present ourselves in the world, to ourselves and to others. And that is allowed to shift, it is a psychological and emotional shift as well, a twist, and a turn and a drop. Like the turn is a kind of recognition of I am leaving, and then you go. But this is, perhaps a suspension of leaving. And at the same time, maybe it the suspension of leaving something behind at the same time as this viewing unfolding or unravelling along the edges. And things appearing, from behind, suddenly there were these pink petals that had come from a Rhododendron or Azelea – so this patch of pink and how that gets revealed as you walk through it, so you walk through it, and discover yourself in it, rather than seeing it before and walking into it. this being in the midst, it puts you there, amongst, present, amongst the other things in that situation or environment. Or maybe even time being released and it opening into this atemporal timelessness in the act of walking backwards. Strong experientially, from this small shift of orientation. How it has such a transformative effect in the sense of how time and space and body and surroundings are experienced, very radical in a way. It reminds me of this phrase ‘take a line for a walk’. Often working with attention of the back, to then take the back for a walk. The hand in the back, maybe imagine a hand in the back and the attention given to the back and then to walk forwards with that – to be taking the back for a walk, feels like there is this support that moves with a similar, to when you are actually walking backwards. This way of regarding, or noticing, that those these things come from behind, it can be surprising that there is suddenly a tree or a person in sight. When in turning around and walking backwards the eyes do not have that role to play, so it is releasing them from a particular role of orientation or searching or protection or route-finding. And this sense of the eyes being able to inhabit a different kind or mode of being in a way, where they are released from their usual function. Just allowing the eyes to be, and moving from an upright position to a horizontal position. Just that letting in of the sky and the clouds and yes, moving the orientation of the eyes from looking backwards or being oriented backwards, but still in an upright position, to a horizontal position. Walking backwards - looking down at the floor and it made me feel really dizzy like I really was going to fall. Watching the closeness of the movement of the floor moving away from me - it felt like the world was rushing away from me and that maybe sense of falling backwards. I noticed my eyeline was higher more out into the world. There was this quality expansion - I felt it in my lungs and in my chest, something about the shoulders were able to drop back more in walking backwards and there was just this sense of more expansiveness in breathing as well.
[sentient/ proprioceptive etymologies 4]
ETYMOLOGY 1
GRAVITY – weight, dignity, seriousness, solemnity. From the Old French gravité, seriousness, thoughtfulness. And directly from the Latin, gravitatem, gravitas – weight, heaviness, pressure. Pressure. So the scientific sense is this downwards acceleration – of terrestrial bodies due to gravitation of the earth. This word gravity as a noun existed before it found its scientific sense. Or before it was used scientifically to mean a downwards force. Whilst gravity and gravitation have been more or less confounded; the most careful writers use gravitation for the attracting force, and gravity for the terrestrial phenomenon of weight or downward acceleration which has for its two components the gravitation and the centrifugal force. A distinction between gravity and gravitation. Gravitation as an attracting force.
SUPPORT - To hold up. Prop up. Put up with or tolerate. To tolerate. To support. From the old French supporter, to bear, endure, sustain. Support and sustain. From the Latin supportare to convey, carry, bring up, bring forward. So, this comes from an assimilated form of sub, so sup to sub - Up from under. To carry up from under - sub meaning under, beneath, behind, from under, at the foot of. Sub as in spatially close to, up to and towards but in time meaning within or during. Figuratively, subject to or in the power of. Related words. hyphen. Open. Succumb. Supple. Supine. Supine. A kind of surge. Suspend. Sustain. Uproar.
LEAN - To lean. Action or state of leaning. Deviation from a vertical position. To recline, lie down, rest or incline. To cause to rest. So also this inclining the body against something for support. To trust for support, to lean on something. But then there is this sense, leaning has this sense of inclination. So to lean or incline also tilts into the sense of inclination – to mentally favour. Incline – a mental tendency. Leaning as a mental tendency – literally meaning to slant or slope. To bend or bow towards, to turn, divert, from lean – back from lean. In re-cline. Also in proclivity – causing to bend, to turn to the side, to slope, to slant. Inclination. A condition of being disposed to – this inclination of leaning, a tendency to slant or slope or deviate from the vertical. To bend. Yes, to bend, to bend or bow. To bring into a curved state, to make crooked or curve. To turn away from the straight line. So there is something interesting about on the one hand even sounding as if there is a submissiveness about it, a capacity to be bent, or be bowed, but also something of resistance, this deviation from the vertical.
ETYMOLOGY 2
OBLIQUE - Oblique - slanting sloping sideways. Crooked, not straight, or direct. Originally of the muscles of the eyes. So, the blearing of the eyes and the obliqueness of the eye. From the Old French oblique and the Latin obliquus -slanting, sidelong, indirect. So possibly from the part *ob, meaning against and the root of *licinus bent upwards. So, against, bent upwards. From the pie root meaning to bend, be movable. So see the source of limb. So licinus bent upward seems as if there is a source of limb.. So limb - part of the body distinct from the head or trunk. The Old English plural is often limo or limen. To go out on a limb. In a figurative sense to ‘enter a risky situation’. So limb, seems there is also a connection with limp. To hang down limply. Something that twists, goes round or binds. Limbal. Limbo. Limbate. The border or the hem or the fringe or the edge. So this *ob against – word-forming element towards against, before, near, across, and down. From the pie root *epi, also *opi near or against. So, the sense of sloping, slanting, slant. To strike obliquely against something. To slip sideways. To fall on one’s side. To give a sloping direction to. The noun, an oblique directional plane. Slant meaning a way of regarding something from 1905. Ahh the slant. A certain slant. Slantways. Aslant. Aslant or in a sloping direction. Not perm[p]endicular or at right angles. And sloping, similar, to be in a slanting position. Go in an oblique direction. Inclination meaning an incline. A slant of ground. Declivity. A downward slope. From the French déclivité. A slope declivity. Sloping downwards. From *de meaning down and *clivus a slope from the pie *klei-wo suffix form of the root *klei to lean. This is interesting. Lean also the connection to low, to cause to bend. Inclination. To cause to bend down, turn aside and then low, not high, below the usual level. Lying on the ground or in a deep place. Low. Low down. Humble. Lying flat or low. So, the connection to the abject. Low more often used with respect to nature, condition, or rank. Low. Near the ground, not high. Lower to descend to sink - to grow less or lower. Transitive meaning let down, cause to descend.
REVERSE - From the Latin, reversus, turn back, turn about, come back or return. The noun is the opposite or the contrary of something. But also, in the transitive sense, to change or alter. To reverse, turn around, roll or turn, turn about, turn back. Revert. So revert is to come to oneself again. So this is different from reverse. Reverse is the opposite. Reverse means opposite – to turn back. But here this sense of coming back, to come to oneself again. To re-turn or change back. So it comes from this re- as back. Re- meaning back, this is interesting. So back as re- : a coming back. From back-ness, a coming back. So, back as re- … re- the prefix meaning back, back from, back to the original place. Also again, anew, once more – conveying the notion of undoing or of backward. From the Latin, an inseparable prefix meaning back, again, anew. To turn. A turning back. So both a sense of opposition and also restoration to a former state. Back as again, repetition of an action. So some connection here … where the precise sense of re- is forgotten, lost in secondary senses, or weakened beyond recognition. Receive. Recommend. Recover. Remain. Recourse – a process, way or course. There are places where this re- , this back-ness, loses its identity as a prefix. Restive. Rest. Rally as a bringing together. This re- as back, or back as re- :meaning a returning back, back to the original, to come to oneself again or to revert. So it comes from re- meaning back and vertere – meaning to turn, from the PIE root *wer- to turn or bend. This is interesting – one of the meanings is to raise, to lift or hold suspended. This is interesting – there seems to be some connection between heaviness and lifting. To lift or raise up. And then this sense of *wer meaning to bend, turn, to turn around or roll, to wheel. To convert, to transform, translate or be changed. And then also there is this third meaning of *wer - to perceive or to watch out for. To take heed of, be-ware. To observe with fear, to keep a guard. And also to cover, to enclose, to wrap. To wrap, to shut, to close. Wrap - the winding of something around something else – to cover something or conceal. To fold something up or back upon itself. So this two-fold mentioned, this two-folding, folding of something back upon itself. Wrapping. To wind something. It is interesting – I think of rewind, in the sense of going backwards. As in re- again and -wind. Like backwards a rewinding, from wind. Wind or wind – by turning or twisting, to turn, twist, plait, curl or swing. Related to wend, which in its causative form is to wander. Re-wind. To go back again. Rewind and reverse as a backward-ness, or as a coming back. Returning back. To cause to move back or to go back. Away from a forward direction. Towards the rear, but also back to the original starting place. Aback. Back and aback. So aback is towards the rear. The adjective aback – towards the rear. Contraction of backward, behind or at the back. Now surviving mainly as taken aback.
ETYMOLOGY 3
UPRIGHTNESS
Uprightness - rectiture – "straightness, quality of being straight or erect." Straightness, uprightness – from the Latin rectus "straight" (from PIE root *reg- "move in a straight line," "to direct in a straight line". Rightness. Upright. Erect – to face upward. Up and right. Right meaning morally correct, proper, fitting, straight not bent. Direct or erect. Literally straight. A vertical front as a noun – in the sense of a vertical front, the sense of something standing erect. And then there is the French, estante, estante, upright, from the present particle of estere – to be upright or to stand, to stand or make firm from the PIE root *sta. We have had this PIE root before – to stand, to set down, to make or be firm. With derivatives meaning place or thing that is standing. Also resistance, rest, restive, restitution, static, station. Stay. Then there was also this reside which connected to something that came up before – to remain at a place, to sit down or to settle. To sit down to settle – to rest, remain behind, linger, be left. From re- meaning back again, and sedere "to sit" (from PIE root *sed- meaning "to sit"). PIE root meaning to sit. Resting place. Seat, chair, face of a geometric solid. Heavy as well, this heaviness. Heaviness as an adjective – having much weight or importance, oppressive, slow or dull. This is interesting – from the PIE root *kap meaning to grasp. How does it connect to grasping? Proto-Indo-European root meaning "to grasp." Heave; heavy; heft. Able to hold much. Ah, so holding. Holding and heaviness. To grasp, to hold, to be large enough for, to comprehend. To have, to hold, maybe this grasping and holding. Heaviness and holding, holding.
STRAIGHTFORWARD
Straightforward as an adjective, directly forward or right ahead. Of two adjectives – straight and forward. It is interesting – these nearby references - ingenious, honourably straightforward. There is this word : tergiversation. Tergiversation – a noun meaning turning dishonestly from a straightforward action or statement; shifting, shuffling, or equivocation. Shifting, evasive, declining, refusing. From tergiversari "turn one's back on, or to evade," from tergum "the back", mmm, tergum, the back, and versare "to spin, turn," frequentative of vertere "to turn". This is the same component that is in conversation, so conversation, versare, to turn together. So, to turn or bend one’s back. Turning from a straightforward direction, shifting or declining. Tergiversate? Back formation – to be evasive, to turn one’s back, to turn one’s back. Evasive, evasive – to get away or to escape, evasion, a way out. To escape. It is now making we want to look at back. To go back to this straightforward – it is interesting that there is nothing in it that suggests a sense of value as such, it is quite minimal in its etymology. Straight - "direct, undeviating; not crooked, not bent or curved," ah, here we go, of a person, "direct, honest;" properly "stretched,". Ah yes, straight from Old English streht, past participle of streccan "to stretch". Properly stretched. True direct and honest, unambiguous, unconvoluting or uncomprising. As an adverb from the thirteenth century – as in "a straight line, without swerving or deviating." Sometimes meant as serious. To go straight, to become respectable. The straight arrow. To stretch. To reach or extend. Perhaps a variant of stark. Stark. Stiff. Strong. Rigid. Obstinate. Stark - stiff, strong, rigid, obstinate; stern, severe, hard; harsh, rough, violent. This straightness as stiffness or starkness – the same root as stern. Stern as in severe, strict, grave, or hard. To be stiff or obstinate.
ETYMOLOGY 4
PROPRIOCEPTIVE
Proprioceptive. Proprioceptor comes up as a noun. A sensory structure which receives stimuli arising within the tissues. From Latin proprius: own. See proper and reception. The act or fact of getting or receiving something. Also, in the manner of a receptor. Also coming from recepere to hold or contain. Proprioceptor. Proprio. Proprioceptor. This noun. From the Latin proprius. That’s interesting - own. See proper. This relationship to proper and properness. The idea of proper-reception - interesting. Adapted to, purpose, act, or fit. Also “own” from the French propre, particular to one’s own, or particular to itself, from the individual, one’s own as individual. So, I suppose there is something about this kind of private or personal or particular reception. A reception that is belonging or pertaining to oneself, that’s individual, intrinsic. Pertaining to a person or thing in particular, special, distinctive, characteristic. So proper, actually I’ve not known this aspect of properness which is less to do with correctness or rules and acceptability but is something that’s to do with fit for purpose and in particular one’s, of the individual, a reception of one’s own. And linked to that, to per. Indian-European root meaning forwards. Infront of. Before.
SENTIENT
Sentient. Sentient. Sentient. Adjective. Capable of feeling. Having the power of or characterized by the exercise of sense-perception. From the Latin sentientem – feeling. Feeling – present participle of sentire "to feel". Sentience – as a noun, the faculty of sense; sentient character or state, feeling, consciousness – ah yes, sentience, conscious. Susceptibility to sensation. Susceptibility to sensation. Under sentience, sentience (noun) it has got animal (adjective). Interesting? Oh yes here, pertaining to the animal spirit of man, pertaining to the merely sentient as distinguished from the intellectual or rational or spiritual qualities of a human being. So, this link with the animal, pertaining to sensation, pertaining to or derived from the senses. It is interesting this link to the animal. Animal kingdom rather than vegetable or mineral – having life, living, animate. Sense – to perceive an object by the senses, consciously, inwardly of. Sense – to perceive or understand a fact or situation, not by … hmm, a sense of to perceive or understand a fact or situation not by direct perception is from 1872. Oh, this idea of sensing, coming a little bit away from the immediacy of working with the senses, perceiving things. I suppose sometimes we might slip between that.