hiatus

A gap or interruption in space, time, or continuity; a break: “We are likely to be disconcerted by… hiatuses of thought” (Edmund Wilson). — Dictionary.com

It’s a nice word. Hiatus.

“Hiatus” comes from “hiare,” a Latin verb meaning “to gape” or “to yawn,” and first appeared in English in the middle of the 16th century. Originally, the word referred to a gap or opening in something, such as a cave opening in a cliff. Occasionally, it has been used to describe holes in clothing, as when Laurence Sterne wrote in Tristram Shandy of “the hiatus in Phutatorius’s breeches.” These days, “hiatus” is usually used in a temporal sense to refer to a pause or interruption (as in a song), or a period during which an activity is temporarily suspended (such as a hiatus from teaching). — Tilted Forum Project

Since June 30, I have spent most of my time yawning. At work. At home. And in all those in between times where you really need something to follow the at, but you don’t have a word. You see the village elders decided that there’s work, play and home. And little besides that. Then one of the elders went of to meditate. But that involved a lot of focussed drifting. Since I have simply been adrift, I am going to call these last 2-3 months, at drift.

Though it hasn’t been a complete waste of time. For whatever reason people have found their way to this blog and sent me emails or left messages encouraging me to write. Thank you strangers, or should I call you Internet rangers.

Corny.

Now that’s another interesting word. Root: Pure american pop slang. Objective: derision, and ultimately the destruction, of everything that isn’t packaged according to the exacting standards of the perfect consumer, who stays hidden away in every large company’s secret underground island headquarters.

Well, I’m back.

Originally published on ] t h i n k [ (tootb.blogspot.com); recovered from the Wayback Machine.