What is the thing?
As in every thing, I begin as a writer,
I look into the heart and history of words,
to learn more about their original heat —
what was their sparking ignition?
I contemplate my use
of many words
as deeper meditations on patterning.
Where did the word come from, what did it mean, how long has it been circulating?
Perhaps foolishly, I think that knowing the etymological heart of a word gives me a better truth.
It is the doorway,
the Aleph,
to — and of — a word.
Point might be —
“what’s the parlance now and who cares about the past?”
Care to, and of, history?
Some do,
some don’t.
There is a journey that spirals back
and that might be one’s personal quest for meaning.
What do you believe in,
what do you care about?
As designers, strategists,
design thinkers and
applicable brand and design tacticians
there has to be some consideration of meaning —
which aligns not only with discovery but intention.
A spiral, your journey — and
the working way back
to the center of the idea.
“What did you mean by that?” —
the bully’s opening retort does reach back several thousand years to mean[ing], intention, and is housed in the Latin seed principle,
PIE: men,
the Latin mentis of “mind.”
It is also memory
and too, the root of mania.
So, in my thinking, what is it about — the quest for the heart of a word — represents an excursion, a deepening of word knowledge, and the
change of the notations of linguistic “use” over time.
It is a journey.
So that journey can be in
mind and book and
searching for the right principles of meaning.
So too, it can be a walking one.
You get out there, to find something.
Some thing.
So, back to — The Thing.
When I studied that word, I found something deeper —
the AlThing.
In this context, Alping, the Thing of Thingvellir, Iceland, is a geologically-seamed meeting site, an assembly hall, cleaved in a chasm, in the wild wilderness of a expansively, extraordinarily great park, Thingvellir.
The point is that in reaching back to the Thing, the heart of the word, and the notion of “thingness,” turns out that I’m not the only one studying the thing —
as a concept of forum, a meeting place —
I’m studying the range of the history of ideas and sharing:
evocations of leadership.
It’s actually a long-running word, for this kind of place, all throughout Northern Europe and Scandinavia.
The Thing project?
That study can be found here.
The Democratic Hall of the Viks,
the foundational
Viking order
of meeting sites.
I still wonder about the history of the word thing,
and too, I wonder about the
wander of journey —
to the past,
and, from there,
to the present.
When you go back, you will find your Self now,
and then — in the future.
Ideas that are back there, are here — and t[here,]
off in the future.
Go back, come here.
Go there:
A patterning.
Go back, come forward.
Past the future.
As a designer, I contemplate my journey — 40 years of continuous making —
and I realize that I’m just beginning. I’m working on ideas now that I began in my 20s, and younger patternings.
When you go back,
you come forward.
Tim | Decatur Island Studios
And Thingvellir, Iceland
…..
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