The Waiting of Aster amellus

by Marisca Pichette

previous next

RavenIllumination

The Waiting of Aster amellus

by Marisca Pichette

previous

Raven




next

Illumination

previous next

RavenIllumination

previous

Raven




next

Illumination

    

There’s an art to studying the worlds that developed and faded to create ours. There is 
even a word. Of course, it is not a real word. Its creation depends upon the legitimacy 
of its meaning. The poet Chen Chen suggested its existence in 2020, when magic was not 
only needed but already there, flowing in LED waves from one eye to another. 	To truly embody the art of knowingly un-knowing, re-knowing—there is a note of 
poeticism. A note of whimsy. Through these notes we begin to form a music of sorts. 
	Is there a way to accomplish this without poetry? I would argue that there is very 
little that can be satisfactorily accomplished without poetry.
	The word is formed of two ideas: etymology and poetics. Combine these 
techniques and you have found what you seek: poetymology. Part past, part present. Part 
whimsy, part luck. Herein lies the artist’s key to all other arts.

*
Asterisk is Swedish for star. Look at the Greek and find asteriskos: a small star. 
Above these lines hovers a small star. A star that really looks nothing like a star.
{Or maybe it does, a little. This star is the starting point—for start comes from the 
German for falling, and with one star we find that we are falling through space.} 

An asterisk is truly a combination of words: aster (star, as we know) and risk. By 
placing them side-by-side, we are taking a leap. We are risking ourselves, flung headlong 
into space.
*
A fall through space reveals more about ourselves than the world around us. For there is 
no world. Space is emptiness. 

{Empty comes from the Old English mōt. Moot. A meeting.} 
The place that is empty is only waiting to fill.

*

We are here now, in space. Together, alone.
Around us, stars. Risks. Each a potential to fall, to be pulled into gravity and spin until all 
we can hear is silence and our thoughts. 
Space exists to exact change. Space exists to confront us with ourselves.
Alone. All one. 
In space, everything is connected.

*
The Nectere were the original binders of the universe. They wound ropes from stardust 
and pulled the stars and planets into formation. 

{Cosmos derives from kosmos: order, the world.} 
The Nectere bound the cosmos together in a pattern that appealed to them. They tied 
gravity to itself using the sweat from behind their ears to grease the ropes. Ears have 
always been cosmically relevant. 

{Ear derives from auris. Auris, aura, breath—which itself connects back to scent,
 and scent to sense.} 
The Nectere ordered the cosmos using all their senses. With their eyes they tracked the 
placement of nebulae, with their noses exhaled the emptiness. 

{For ness derives from nasu, nose.} 
With their mouths they spoke to create the first echo. 

{To speak is to draw from the Latin spēs, hope, and Old English ēcan, increase.} 
In speaking into the dark, the Nectere increased the hope of all.

*
The Ekhe followed the Nectere once sound occupied the void. Many believe one cannot 
see what isn’t there, but the Ekhe knew this was not the case. 
{Void itself is connected of course to voi, see, so the Ekhe saw all that wasn’t there.}
 
Where the Nectere drew the universe into order, the Ekhe found places for all things that
 the Nectere had forgotten.
{In this way they followed through with the Nectere’s design—a universe being a 
combination, designated of course by a central controller.}

But the Ekhe—like the Nectere—were just one facet of the many who braided stars into
 galaxies, tying them off with clusters of moons.
The Ekhe turned to all that was dark.
They pulled blackness to life—black, a product of fire.
{The existence of stars required the presence of blackness. Without it, the braids fell 
apart and planets lost their moons to the Edges.} 

What was invisible carried its own significance to the Ekhe. They were concerned
 with the weight of all that the Nectere’s eyes refused to see. 
{Weight derives from movement. What is important is never still.} 

The Ekhe gave us dark matter—for as matter, it is by definition significant—and dark
 energy, and black holes which carried their own profundity. When the Ekhe were
 finished the universe had shape and weight, light and darkness.
{But shape derives from gesceap, meaning little more than “external.” And to be whole is
to have a hole, and a hole is hollow, and a hollow is empty.}

And emptiness is always waiting for someone to arrive.

*
The Ripa placed themselves on the edge of the universe, erupting from crevices passed 
over by Ekhe and Nectere alike. Born from the limit, itself a place of violence, the Ripa 
continued breaking even as they grew. Their focus was on the fringes of places, on 
shorelines and cliffs. 

{Shore comes from shear, from cutting and dividing.} 
The Ripa’s business was in finding places for all the things they did not like.
A place may be intended as a broad, open space—but the Ripa made only small, cramped 
places. They took their definition from lace, removing the p to arrive at a laqueus, noose. 
And from lace they elaborated into lacerate, so all their cut-places were also mangled 
spaces—space mangled into place into lace. 

{Yet if the l were removed, the result would be ace, which comes from as—
unity.
This would not be discovered until many years after the Ripa found a place for
themselves.}
The Ripa beat the ends of worlds until there were no craters left but those nestled deep in 
the pores of their own skin. These they turned to, at the shore of their age. 
They beat themselves until all that was left was a ringing sound, filling the final resting 
place of their own making.

*
	After the Ripa rang themselves into dissonance, the Restan came. Their objective
 was to travel the new cosmos. Their goal was to locate some place to rest at the end of it
 all. But as we know, travelling comes first. 
{Rest is defined by distance: ræstan, league, mile.}

In travelling, the Restan encountered the binds that the Nectere had made. These they 
used to measure the distance they covered.
	
In measuring, the Restan brought peace to the cosmos—if for the moment. They 
measured planets and thus provided them with food (for a mes, from measure, is a 
portion). They measured galaxies and brought ceasefires—as the second half of measure 
is to be sure, free from all care.
When the Restan came, they were welcome.
When they left, they were missed.
The Restan traversed the entire universe in this way,
until they came at last to the abyss.
{The abyss is not nothing. It is in fact abussos, bottomless. 
In this way it is everything.}

{It holds more than either the Nectere or the Ekhe could ever bind or see. 
But as it is the bottom, it is Boden, earth. 
And as it is less, it is lēssa. 
Last.}

*
Aster amellus is the most common application of star to something growing.
{Growth itself derives from green.} 

Aster amellus is purple and green, where purple recalls in its etymology the mollusks that 
once clothed emperors.
The Aster amellus is thus an emperor of a flower. 
Its first name we know: aster, star. 
Its second, amellus, means wonder.

Take a leap toward a star, and the result is self-evident.

Wonder.  To find it, take a connected word: yonder.
Wonder is over there.
Wonder is at the intersection of wont—what we are accustomed to
—and der, a splitting, a peeling back.
Revealing what lies beneath the skin.
Alternate meaning: wonder translated back into Latin not as amellus but as miror. 
Mirror. Looking at. 

Combine what is accustomed and the act of splitting and you get mira—abundance
—and irror: marked with many dots. 

Many stars.

A look in the mirror reveals the cosmos that lies beyond. 
The stars that fill the emptiness,

waiting to be joined.