I didn’t give verbs much consideration before. They were a part of speech, like any other. This all changed on a sunny autumnal day in the New York New Jersey area. I felt inspired to bring my writing students on an adventure around campus. I entreated them to “find words in the wild”. With pen and paper we traipsed around Montclair State University collecting language.
The most fascinating part of this exercise was what happened when I asked them to collect verbs. Have you ever looked at the world in this way? Observed the processes about you? The things doing things on their way from birth to decay? Or is there a constant flow of energy, that takes the shape of nouns from time to time? What are verbs? What is verbing?
I loved the experience of gathering verbs from the ground, from people, from buildings humming with life. So much is in motion, even in a quiet place. I am fascinated by the way we chop up the material world into smaller parts. The English language is a shoddy representative of what is really going on. That is especially true in The United States of America, where indigenous languages exist to better fit the place they are from. They have been silenced. They are in resurgence.
Indigenous People’s Day is tomorrow. I am grateful for that. In my verbal quest the other day, I remembered my beginning study of Twulshootseed language. I remembered how that language centers around verbs, processes. It’s so much more fun! English declares things dead. Which is so weird. Because everything is verbing.
I was researching Birkin Bags. They are these exclusive handbags that you can’t even buy if you walk into the Hermès Store, the luxury brand which sells them. No. You must get on some kind of waitlist, then fork over $20,000 to $200,000 dollars. What makes these bags special are rare leathers used in their manufacturing. But Birkins are on their way to the grave. They can’t even last that long. Not really. Everything’s decaying. That’s the lesson of fall.
I’ll never forget living in Bulgaria. The cars under communism were called LADAs. When I lived in that country in 2009-2010, these little old cars were ubiquitous. I remember seeing one in a field. My host told me that the LADAs were made of an organic material that sheep love to munch. The sheep were eating the cars. I watched them.
I loved that. There is no permanence. Permanence is a lie. It is a state we like to believe in. It is an essential fantasy that aids in the selling of products. Hermès declares that, unlike other bags, the Birkin will never lose its value. It’s one of those most rare of objects: it gains value as it ages.
Says who? Who decides that the ten-year-old painter is a prodigy? That the apartment worth $1500 a month in May is worth $3500 in September? We do our damndest to put prices and time constraints on process. An apartment is just air doing apartment things. Is just earth doing apartment things. God bless affordable housing. God bless cheap rent. This world of prices is out of control, and we all know it.
I walked down the street the evening after my verb class. There is nothing prettier than my neighborhood at dusk in early October. I saw the lights coming through the windows of an ornate historic apartment building, and I saw the blueing sky, and the mid-century government housing with its windows aglow, and the tree tops shimmering their final green leaves, and I saw this whole scene with new eyes. For I saw verbs before I saw things.
The world vibrated, hummed, shifted, expressed itself in activity. What a pleasant surprise. To catch a glimpse of subtle changes. To focus not so much on the what but the how. I spend more time doing nothing these days. Staring into space. It is work to retain autonomy over my attention. Attention itself has been chopped up and commodified. That most precious of processes, that most sacred of verbs, to be, how can I reclaim you? How can I hold you close?
If you are reading this, please take some time today to stare at the world, just as it is. Nothing to claim, nothing to do, just watch time going on. I’ve feel I’ve stumbled on a pot of gold. To be able to bear witness to the secret flows of time and space, but for an instant, that is a pleasure being extracted from us people every single day.
Pay attention to the verbs. What is happening around you right now? Put attention there. It’s a luscious experience. Happy fall.