{"id":3184,"date":"2015-06-28T16:59:13","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T06:59:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3184"},"modified":"2015-06-29T07:58:39","modified_gmt":"2015-06-28T21:58:39","slug":"land-language","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/?p=3184","title":{"rendered":"LAND LANGUAGE"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"landmarks\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have been reading the new Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks<\/em>. An intense language experience. Something that I first realised many years ago, when I was first beginning to write as an adult, is that specific vocabularies, the real words for things, the precise and pointedly correct words for things and about things, add power and weight and beauty. Margaret Attwood’s Life on Earth<\/em> was the book that showed me this. It’s probably more than thirty years since I read it, but think I remember the heroine worked in a museum. There were all sorts of sciency words. They were wonderful.<\/p>\n

Landmarks<\/em> is a book about observing, really looking and seeing. About finding the words and metaphors and similes that are right, tight, apt and precise for the humanly-observed, -walked, -worked, -sailed, -climbed, -loved world. Words for waves and rocks and cliffs and paths and mountainsides and stones and rain and hail and winds\u2026 A quob<\/em> is a shaking bog in Herefordshire. Kynance<\/em> is Cornish for gorge. And a gloup<\/em> or glupe<\/em> is an opening in the roof of a sea cave through which the pressure of incoming waves may force air to rush upwards, or water to jet and spout. That’s in the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland.<\/p>\n

I have often felt that I should should should learn the names of plants and birds that inhabit this place where I live and that I love so much. And at the same time I’ve resisted, because (1) I am lazy and it\u2019s too much trouble and (2) I have thought that loving can be looking; it doesn\u2019t need to be naming. But thinking about it, I realise that naming is loving and knowing. For instance, there’s a plant called Veronica perfoliata <\/em>(I just looked this up!) but its common name is Digger’s Speedwell. Diggers are miners; so that plant was named by them during the goldrush. And I guess it was named before that, by the Dja Dja Wurrung people who were here first. What, I wonder?<\/p>\n

\"bugalugs_325\"<\/a>\u00a0I was weeding in the garden earlier. I know oxalis and cleavers and dandelion, but that’s about it. What were the two\u00a0 plants I was so ruthlessly removing? I felt with my hand and wrist and arm and back the difference between them. You grasp the grass (grass? which grass?), making sure you get all the blades in your fist, and pull. Sometimes you have to tug a bit, or rock the clump of grass, to get the roots to give. Then it comes up out of the ground in a hearty, satisfying way. You have to shake off the soil \u2013 again, heartily. When you\u2019ve pulled a few, your tub is nice and full. It\u2019s a fun thing to weed. The other one is not a robust experience at all. It\u2019s more of a fine-motor thing. You have to pick the main stem, and pull gently or else the fine sticky filaments that are its roots just cling to the soil and most of it stays there. You can weed out the grass quickly, but this one needs patience for its fineness.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I will give them my own common names – Easy-Out Grass<\/em> and Little Stickies<\/em>, perhaps.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have been reading the new Robert Macfarlane, Landmarks. An intense language experience. Something that I first realised many years ago, when I was first beginning to write as an adult, is that specific vocabularies, the real words for things, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3184","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3184"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3195,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3184\/revisions\/3195"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/veritysparks.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}