I wish I could say something of comfort or importance – but everything seems so dismally thrown since 12/26. There is a word that has been popping up when people attempt to explain how they are feeling or rather what they aren’t able to feel. I have seen it on several other blogs I’ve been reading and used it myself in passing conversation the past few days. The word, it seems, is employable only in extraordinary circumstances. fathom. It is such a beautiful word, marvelous and wondrous in its sound. Like a mantra, fathom. Biting your lower lip, opening up your windpipe, licking the tips of your top front teeth and pulling your lips in again as the last bit warms like a fire in the belly. There are technical terms to signify these sounds; but to feel it yourself, as the word dances about in your body and consciousness, is much more intimate.
Fathom
Searching around in the outer limits of the internet it is somewhat disheartening to continually run up against a lack of solid etymological references. The Oxford English Dictionary is subscription based. There is the online etymology dictionary, but I find their entry disappointing. More intriguing is the description for the creative writing seminar: autobiographical impulses at the Art Institute of Chicago. There the implications of the origins and history of the word are noted when it is written:
…what we know we are able to embrace — we can close our arms around the object of our attention, our affection. The “fathomless” is that which we cannot hold — literally.
It isn’t a surprise to find such a rich description here. My love affair with the word began in an American Lit class where the headline of the syllabus provided the course number, time and other standard information — but was bedecked beneath by a title: Fathom’s Down. We were to sound into the depths of these books, taking measure, plunging into them and emerging baptised in their lessons and ideas. In that particular class our professor would often spend a portion of the lecture time reading — and when she took to Melville’s Billy in the Darbies (from Billy Budd my monomaniacal obsession) and read that line, “Fathoms down, fathoms down, how I’ll dream fast asleep.” I’d swear I’d heard not a sweeter, more serene sound. A siren, she.
Fathom.
So here I am. Rambling on. I wanted to say something in a world where so many have gone silent. It has sickened me to see some of the headlines. Not the numbers. Those have me stunned. It is the stories that tell of trapped fashion models, or try to relate to 9/11. It is the blatant racism that is ringing out in certain comment areas on other websites. It is a disregard for the situation. The numbers dwarf the personal angles in coverage. This is colossal. This far outweighs anything many of us have ever or will ever see.
Unfathomable
Tonight I will ring in the new year with friends. I will be merry. I will raise a glass at some point. I will wish for the best with the rest. I will think about many things. I will feel alternatively fortunate and guilty — likely one after the other. But I will never be able to fathom what has happened and will continue to happen over the next few weeks on the other side of the globe.
Be safe tonight.
(you can watch my brother make his floor if you wants)
The definition of “fathom” in that box there-isn’t that more a definition of “abstract” versus concrete? Something that is unfathomable is impossible to understand; something that is abstract may be difficult to understand but not impossible. Something unfathomable is deemed impossible to understand because of its seemingly infinite breadth or depth. The disaster is unfathomable because the human suffering it has caused cannot be quantified, its breadth and depth are infinite.
Being a Yezbick, there is the choice to cope using humor or intellectualizing. Humor is not appropriate here, so here we use big words.