Happy Shifting, 2011

We have been given a new decade. Another chance to frame the world as it is, acknowledging that is slinks very swiftly into was, and then.

Everything moves so quickly.

We usually try to start with a word. Sometimes several. This year, we kept an older one (wayfinding), considered one we love both as object and action (shrine), and tried to find something, if nothing else, that could hold that intimate, shareable, but almost inarticulable place in a sentence (the way one might hold a scene, a memory, a moment).

We ended up hung up on a prefix: RE. From the Latin, meaning to go back, again; and again...

How this tiny pair of letters shifts the meaning of everything it touches – sometimes quietly, sometimes with bravado, but always with a kind of great care... it seems more than appropri- ate to make a shortlist of re-words, and follow suit by taking care to see the huge shifts made by the very small.

Restore. Held Close, too.

Return. A Second, A third, or Several times over

Replace. What might have once been lost gets found and found

Repair. Or made better.  Letting the seams show.

Review. Seen differently this time, with different motives

Return. (again) : over, around, and back

Recall. To go back in memory , shift timeplaces

Relinquish. To let go, set free

Revive. Brought back to life, as if from sleep , the difference of only a few...

Reconsider.

And then a not so obvious one: Repository.

Yes. Repository... refers to an archive. A storehouse. A trove of information or treasures. Also, it can be a trusted person, a confidante, a keeper. In a way, a kind of shrine. A tangible place (or thing) to safe-keep the intangible. We store things inside of other things, but more implicitly, we are ourselves repositories—our own mutable archives; our commonplace books, our silva rerum, our narratives and our most cherished attempts.
We have so much to keep safe, and keep close, and consider....

Love,

WP