I learned two new words yesterday.
1 [from noctilucence, after such pairs as English translucence : translucent] : bioluminescent
2 [noct- + lucent] : visible or glowing at night see noctilucent cloud
Something that glows or shines at night! This is one of those words that I feel like I should have known my whole life! I wish it was the first word I ever uttered!
When I read it, I gasped "AH!" aloud, as if someone had just placed a sumptuous, melty piece of chocolate in my mouth. The sound the word makes felt as though someone had run their fingers over my nerve endings like the strings of an ethereal harp. Percussive at first, then suddenly ephemeral.
It became an elaborate, sparkling, filigreed intrusive thought all day, one I turned over and over in my mind like a prized piece of sea glass.
I felt myself grow a little bigger and brighter just knowing this word, savoring and digesting it, as if it could become a part of my overall energy field. An aura I could drape myself in.
au·to·te·lic ˌȯ-tō-ˈte-lik -ˈtē- (adj)
1 having a purpose in and not apart from itself
Greek autotelḗs "having an end in itself, having one's own authority, final, unconditional" (from auto- auto- + -telēs, adjective derivative of télos "fulfillment, completion, end")
A "final fulfillment"! Another word I wish I knew all my life, because it applies to so many of my activities and passions.
Writing, for me, is wholly autotelic. The idea of writing as any kind of means to an end: reviewing, explaining, for work/commerce, to be read (shudder!) gives me the sweats. But, when I'm writing, just writing, in a flow state, I am totally at peace.
It applies to my enjoyment of watercolors, too, because I'm not painting anything to ultimately be "seen". I'm painting things that I love, like sushi, for example, over and over again, because I am meditating on it. A mental masturbation of memory.
I am feeling the texture of a piece of tuna nigiri between my teeth as I carefully blend all those shades of pink and red, letting them run into each other to remember the way the fatty part and the meaty part subtly differentiate themselves.
I'm mixing the perfect shades of ochre to convey the slippery, tidepool taste of uni, keeping the line between it and the nori as clean and defined as possible, so I can feel the fall-leaf crispiness of the nori as it fleetingly enrobes the vaguely oystery, brackish roe before crumbling away and dissolving. A memory, both separate and unified.
Makeup is also very autotelic for me, because I love building wild colors and multi-chrome shimmers to reshape my eyes into something lifted and elongated and totally mythic. Creature-like.
A night-moth painting it's wings, pretending to be poisonous to repel predators. A dangerous jungle cat whose predatory, sidelong gaze can petrify it's prey, pinning it in place, hypnotized, for it's own coolly detached, momentary inspection before lithely leaping away into the darkness.
Nail polish is like this for me, too. It's why I love holographic and magnetic polishes especially; seeing them build into other dimensions on the ends of my fingers. Colors and textures I can get lost in, endlessly dreaming.
It's why I prefer shiny, brightly colored jewelry of little to no value; fumed and dichroic glass baubles hitched to thick stainless steel chains, or set in indestructible tungsten carbide rings that cannot be removed without severing a digit.
Because I want to look down and lose myself in the sparkle and swirl of a tiny planet, a gleaming nebula, or a little, otherworldly ocean where I can imagine terrifying, undiscovered creatures in it's depths.
I am dreaming of the unexplored realms in my pendant. In my eyes. At the tips of my fingers.
