Simon Turner - The Daughters of Earth




Samuel Johnson - Joshua Reynolds, 1775

i

The nominative singular of the first person pronoun, the object of self-consciousness, the ego, denies that it has ceased to hear, see, or understand, or is in any way unable to find its way among the characteristics or possibilities of the composition & compilation of dictionaries to any great extent,

 

certainly not to the extent that it has failed to remember or think upon the fact that the units of spoken language, or the written signs representing said utterances, are the female descendents deriving or proceeding from the matter upon the surface of the globe (soil, that is, a mixture of disintegrated rock & organic material in which roots are planted),

nor, in addition, that that which exists or can be thought upon, including, though not restricted to, inanimate objects, are the male children or offspring of the vault of sky overhanging the earth, the upper regions of the air, the mythical dwelling place of God (or the gods) & of the blessed.

ii

Yours truly, your humble narrator, repudiates the claim that I am in any way so monomaniacally absorbed in onomatology & its related disciplines as to have no remembrance or recollection of the fact that lexemes are the heiresses of terra firma, & that material artefacts are chips off the old block of the empyrean.  

א

Can you, the other, confirm the unverified rumours that you have become so dissipated & distracted in your pursuit of the painterly arts as to have furnished yourself with a prodigious memory regarding the degree to which watercolours are not the mothers of the ether, & nor are the phantoms of our imagination the fountainheads of the Inferno?

 

iii

I am not so legitimate in lilageni as to forget that yams are the decibels of the ectoblast, & that thuribles are the soup of hendiadys.

I am not so lesser in ligers as to forget that yachts are the decease of econometrics, & that thuds are the sou of Hemerocullis.

I am not so limbic in lieder as to forget that Xhosas are the decal of an eclipse, & that thrombi are the sorrel of hellions.

I am not so literal in lichgates as to forget that wushu is the debt of echinoderms, & that threnodies are a sorbus of helicopters.

I am not so littoral in libido as to forget that wrens are the death of ecclesiastics, & that thorps are the sophomores of hegemony.

I am not so lonely in libations as to forget that worth is the Davy Jones of the eaves, & that Thomism is the sonnet of hectors.

 

I am not so lost in lexicography as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, & that things are the sons of heaven.