words from the future 2/15/21

imaginal discs/Inner Bottom

I read for self-soothing and I read a lot. It’s not so rare for me to find a word I don’t know, but it IS rare for me to find one I didn’t know but deeply needed. Joyfully, it just keeps happening lately, and I’ll share sometimes because maybe you and these words have been looking for each other, too. Today we have: imaginal discs!

What happens when caterpillars cocoon? They turn themselves to goo. But not entirely to goo. When caterpillars hatch in the first place, they hatch with imaginal discs—tiny, organized groups of cells that will be the bits that survive the turning-to-goo-ing and then USE THE GOO!!! to grow themselves into whatever specific adult moth/butterfly body part they were always meant to be. And since I found out about this word and process about Dec 28, I bring it up in every conversation because it’s apt as hell for anything I want to talk about. This article is a good explainer. And if I haven’t told you about all this, that means we don’t talk enough, so let’s make a date.

imaginal disc and the leg it grows into. the outer part becomes the top! the inner, bottom!

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and some visionary lexicography:

These days I satisfy most of my etymological curiosity the same way I do my entomological curiosity, with the blessed internet. But there’s a delight available only in physically flipping through my 1934 dictionary: the guide words at the top of each page. The ones I find delightful are often ticklishly familiar but with a usage lost to history…which means that we can have them! And play with them, and use them as we resist our current supremacist + exploitative systems and create the future we want.

So here’s one:

…let’s have an imaginal discussionnnn! Reply to this email or leave a comment or tell your friends: what would it delight you for this to mean?

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PS: are you wondering what this all is? here’s the “about” <3

PPS: last call for people who want to read Bree Picower’s “Reading, Writing, And Racism” together! I’ll set up the study+practice group in the coming week. And one of our people KNOWS HER so maybe she’ll come sometime??