Written In Stone

I had a dress made of dreams, all sewn together with delicate hands as if they were nothing more than glass- transparent and ready to shatter with a single misstep.

People mocked this dress, telling me it was impractical,  trying to jab in just the right places so as to crack the most important pieces.

Some parts grew old, and I needed to resize as I and the dreams grew bigger. People tried to tell me  to get rid of the oldest ones, the frayed ones that dangled from the edges, pieces that didn’t quite fit anymore, but I kept patching and nourishing each and every one until, one by one, I began to fulfill them.

though I don’t know for sure, I would venture to guess that we were in the month of december and, though I never keep track, I’d estimate that it was the 15th day of that month and, even though I didn’t mark the time, I’d figure it was just about 7:21 pm, and that we were 3/16ths of the way through our walk, which would make our earthly coordinates roughly 42.312711˚ N and 88.983814˚ W, and, although it didn’t shatter my world, I think we were somewhere between our 72,943rd and our 73,342nd heart beats for the day, that my whiskers were about 5 millimeters long, and the total volume of your tears, was just under 2 ½ milliliters, it isn’t seared into my memory or anything, but I remember, your cheek, as your body crashed into mine in embarrassment and anguish, was approximately 1.7 degrees fahrenheit warmer than usual and I, taken completely by surprise, had exactly 0 words left, in the throes of my mind, to console you

»swofehuper« by richard tipping (+)

She: This word evolved naturally from Old English from seo/heo which were just words to refer to feminine-female people evolving from Proto-Germanic words meaning ‘that/there’. He as a word evolved from the same ideas but Proto-Germanic words for ‘this/here’. Your idea of “patriarchal language” further falls apart when you compare this part of English to other Germanic languages, of which English is related, the words in German for he and she are “er” and “sie”, completely unrelated. So it is by clear happenstance, not some patriarchal conspiracy that the words “he” and “she” in English have similar form. 

Woman: Oh god this one always gets my goat when people go for this one. Man did not used to mean “male”, man used to mean “humanity/human being”, the old words in Old English for male adult person and female adult person were “werman” and “wifman” respectively, we can see this relation in words like werewolf and wife as being the remnants of the base “wer-” and the base “wif-”. Woman evolved phonologically from the word “wifman” by natural processes where the ‘f’ sound dropped and the ‘i’ became lax. Man dropped its “wer” stem for reasons mostly unknown but I can guarantee have nothing to do with “patriarchy” because phonological change has no basis in that.

Female: Male and Female actually come etymologically from two completely different words. Male comes from Old French “masle” which meant masculine, while Female came from Old French as well “femella” which meant young woman. This is another case, just like he and she, where the words coincidentally ended up looking similar without having any direct correlation in historical linguistic processes to make them as such.

Human: This word etymologically derives from Proto-Indo-European “ghomon” which means earthly being as opposed to heavenly being which would refer to gods. You have some small glimmer of hope here in that the word does eventually branch off into the word for “man” in some languages but this is still too small of a precedent to base any conspiratorial thinking like you are doing off of.

Person: This one offends me the most, simply because I love the fuck out of Etruscan language and your continued ignorance just irks me at this point. Person derives from “persona” from Latin which meant the same meaning, which ultimately derived from “phersu” Etruscan for ‘mask’ as Etruscans would often have theatre performers use masks to give identity to the performers. So never once did “person” have any meaning to do with “son”. So yes, this IS the “natural order” or language.