sinful eyes are closed

when you meet new people and suddenly there are new lenses in your pocket that can change your view. now i see bikes. see how they look, and even what they are named. like the schwinn comfort bike named ‘cimarron’. or giant’s ‘iguana’ bike.

there’s the hybrid. i’m looking through your lens, seeing all the bikes, how they are built, modified, their paint, but it is still me looking, so that is why the names stand out. and why do those words in particular stand out- well there are better models than a comfort bike to name ‘cimarron’, but it is really just that word itself- and the fact that that stands out goes back to yet another lens that i picked up.

reading Interface Culture by Steven Johnson he discusses the work of Don Foster and the notion of ’seepage’ in our vocabularies:

p.156

“Anyone who writes for a living will recognize this phenomenon immediately. Words cycle through our daily vocabulary at different rhythms. Certain words stick with us for life, and remain immediately accessible to us at any moment: the names of loved ones, the building-block grammar of our native tongue, the primary colors and cardinal numbers, and so on. Other words wax and wane, in sync with forces larger than the individual speaking them: the fashionable vagaries of slang, the geek-speak of technological innovation, the “ethnic” idiom derived from broader demographic trends. (Think of the influence of black English on the mainstream American dialect over the past twenty years.) Most words, however, lie somewhere in between: drifting in and out of our regular vocabulary, like a band of itinerants cursed with a hankering to settle down. The words profound strays into your head and sits there for weeks, whenever a situation arises that demands a tone of seriousness or intensity or ironic overstatement- the word profound rolls out like clockwork. But soon enough another contender implants itself (major, let’s say, or crucial), and profound retreats to the darkened wings of occasional use.”