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Authors: Phil Cousineau
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averages, or the odds at a roulette table. “I
can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies,” Newton said, “but not the madness of people.” Calculus is also a medical term for a stone in the bladder. Curious companions include cancel , Old Latin for “fenced in,” represented by the # symbol, which is what we have to do with some of our calculations . And yet, not everything is calculable . Bertolt Brecht reminded us: “I want to go with the one I love. / I do not want to calculate the cost. / I do not want to think about whether it’s good. / I do not want to know whether he loves me. / I want to go with the one I love.”
CALM
Sheer tranquility amid the storms of life. This diminutive beauty comes down to us from the Provençal French chaume , to describe the time when flocks of sheep rested. Now that you’ve calmed down, think of how chaume evolved from the Latin caume , for the heat of the Mediterranean noonday sun, an utterly sensible time to rest, and the earlier Greek kauma , heat, and kaiein , to burn. Thus, we find compacted into a crisp, cool syllable the old folk wisdom that is wise to calm down when life heats up. If we don’t learn how to calm down, we will end up “burning down the days,” as novelist James Salter titled his memoirs. Companion words include the ironically stressful-sounding ataraxy , the psychiatric term for calm , according to the American Psychiatric Association. Stranger still, the APA resorts to defining calm not by what is, but what it isn’t: the “absence
of anxiety or confusion,” adding that tranquilizers are called ataractic drugs, which makes me nervous just typing it. Fortunately, companion images abound: halcyon , as in the “halcyon days,” so named after the kingfisher bird that nested on seas, calming them at the period of the winter solstice. Later, halcyon coolly evolved into a popular synonym for idyllic, youthful, soothing, evergreen calm . One of the most becalming lines of poetry I’ve ever encountered was by the 11th-century Arabic poet Abu al-Alaa’ al-Ma’arrii: “The world’s best moment is a calm hour passed in listening to a friend who can talk well.”
CAMERA
A curve in classical Greece, an arch in ancient Rome, a shadow-catcher instrument invented in 19th-century Paris, a dream-maker in Hollywood. Our sense of camera originates with chamber , in Old Latin; later it becomes a scientific term for any wooden box with a lens. As the box grew larger, with ever-stronger lenses, it came to be called camera obscura , a dark room, an innovation that aided such early painters as Vermeer and Caravaggio and later ones like Andy Warhol and David Hockney. By the early 19th century the box and the term shrank to become simply camera , the basic tool of a photographer, who can proudly and literally call herself a “light-writer.” Thus, a camera is a little room you hold in your hand by which you write with light. To keep going with the metaphor, here is an intriguing sidelight.
When the first colonial cameras arrived in 19th-century South Africa they were advertised side by side with the first affordable rifles. The verb to shoot developed for both simultaneously. Little wonder that indigenous people around the world were suspicious of all those newfangled cameras aimed at them. “Shooting” was in the air, and the cameras caught it. In his autobiography, Ansel Adams gratefully remembered the summer of 1916: “One morning shortly after our arrival in Yosemite, my parents presented me with my first camera , a Kodak Box Brownie.” His sense of awe lasted a lifetime. In The Camera , he wrote, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.” In the late 1980s, I enjoyed a few Proustian privileged moments watching Henri Cartier-Bresson wandering with his Leica around the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, looking, looking, looking through his camera before he ever snapped the shutter. Years later, when I read his
can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies,” Newton said, “but not the madness of people.” Calculus is also a medical term for a stone in the bladder. Curious companions include cancel , Old Latin for “fenced in,” represented by the # symbol, which is what we have to do with some of our calculations . And yet, not everything is calculable . Bertolt Brecht reminded us: “I want to go with the one I love. / I do not want to calculate the cost. / I do not want to think about whether it’s good. / I do not want to know whether he loves me. / I want to go with the one I love.”
CALM
Sheer tranquility amid the storms of life. This diminutive beauty comes down to us from the Provençal French chaume , to describe the time when flocks of sheep rested. Now that you’ve calmed down, think of how chaume evolved from the Latin caume , for the heat of the Mediterranean noonday sun, an utterly sensible time to rest, and the earlier Greek kauma , heat, and kaiein , to burn. Thus, we find compacted into a crisp, cool syllable the old folk wisdom that is wise to calm down when life heats up. If we don’t learn how to calm down, we will end up “burning down the days,” as novelist James Salter titled his memoirs. Companion words include the ironically stressful-sounding ataraxy , the psychiatric term for calm , according to the American Psychiatric Association. Stranger still, the APA resorts to defining calm not by what is, but what it isn’t: the “absence
of anxiety or confusion,” adding that tranquilizers are called ataractic drugs, which makes me nervous just typing it. Fortunately, companion images abound: halcyon , as in the “halcyon days,” so named after the kingfisher bird that nested on seas, calming them at the period of the winter solstice. Later, halcyon coolly evolved into a popular synonym for idyllic, youthful, soothing, evergreen calm . One of the most becalming lines of poetry I’ve ever encountered was by the 11th-century Arabic poet Abu al-Alaa’ al-Ma’arrii: “The world’s best moment is a calm hour passed in listening to a friend who can talk well.”
CAMERA
A curve in classical Greece, an arch in ancient Rome, a shadow-catcher instrument invented in 19th-century Paris, a dream-maker in Hollywood. Our sense of camera originates with chamber , in Old Latin; later it becomes a scientific term for any wooden box with a lens. As the box grew larger, with ever-stronger lenses, it came to be called camera obscura , a dark room, an innovation that aided such early painters as Vermeer and Caravaggio and later ones like Andy Warhol and David Hockney. By the early 19th century the box and the term shrank to become simply camera , the basic tool of a photographer, who can proudly and literally call herself a “light-writer.” Thus, a camera is a little room you hold in your hand by which you write with light. To keep going with the metaphor, here is an intriguing sidelight.
When the first colonial cameras arrived in 19th-century South Africa they were advertised side by side with the first affordable rifles. The verb to shoot developed for both simultaneously. Little wonder that indigenous people around the world were suspicious of all those newfangled cameras aimed at them. “Shooting” was in the air, and the cameras caught it. In his autobiography, Ansel Adams gratefully remembered the summer of 1916: “One morning shortly after our arrival in Yosemite, my parents presented me with my first camera , a Kodak Box Brownie.” His sense of awe lasted a lifetime. In The Camera , he wrote, “Sometimes I do get to places just when God’s ready to have somebody click the shutter.” In the late 1980s, I enjoyed a few Proustian privileged moments watching Henri Cartier-Bresson wandering with his Leica around the Luxembourg Gardens in Paris, looking, looking, looking through his camera before he ever snapped the shutter. Years later, when I read his
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