Oh, wow! How fun.
The tricky thing is that words have different connections with different experiences for each of us. So Fernweh might not speak to someone else the way it does to you.
I hope many people play along, though and explain why the word makes them think.
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Thanks, Kendel–or would it be “far-sickness”? I’m not sure.
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“Weh” is actually the “woe” or “pain” in English. As a suffix in German it is sadness or pain over the absense or lack of something.
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Oh, that helps! Thank you! For some reason, I never made that connection! Oy, weh.
I looked up a list of beautiful English words-- “idyllic,” “serendipity,” are also good ones.
I remember the word for weather that is nice to look at, but not experience, in Icelandic is “window -weather,” “Gluggavedur.” I don’t know any Icelandic, but had only read that sometime ago–but the cognate “vedur” sounds like weather, so I’m guessing that makes sense. You can just imagine experiencing that in Iceland.
Tolkien formed a literary club he called the “Coal-Biters,” (Kolbitar), I read recently – it “means someone who sits so close to the fire in the winter that they could bite the coal from the stove.”. I like the humorous picture!
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I also like proverbs–there are some pretty good English ones. In Africa, there’s a lot about taking things easy in the Hausa culture, where I lived. “Hankuri maganin zaman duniya,” means “patience is the medicine for the world’s ills.” “Gudu ba gyara” means “running doesn’t fix anything”. Knowing the way I work, that fits with my slow pace! When I graduated in 12th grade, I was homeschooled through the University of Nebraska because there was no school locally. I took so much time that I had typically 6 weeks for my summer vacation. My parents gently gave me the proverb, “Sannu, sannu, ba ta hana zuwa, in ji kunkuru”–“slowly, slowly, doesn’t hurt the coming, I heard the turtle say.”
Others are “Ba mai yi sai Allah,” --“No one does anything without God, or God does everything.” (I think that’s a close translation). You usually see this on bumper stickers on cars.
Also, “tubin musuru”–“the apology of the wild cat who is caught in the act” (such as of attacking chickens.)
Does anyone else like pithy proverbs?
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Huh. I was probably a Nebraskan then. (I twern’t always, and some would probably say I’m still not since I don’t much care – as in not at all – about Husker football. ; - )
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Does this one count?
Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.
– John Adams
And I’m pretty sure he supported the separation of church and state!
(I have a mini-database of some favorites. ; - )…
The trouble with socialism is socialism; the trouble with capitalism is capitalists.*
– William F. Buckley Jr.
*(greedy, unjust, ungenerous and cheating capitalists)
He is no fool who gives what he cannot keep to gain what he cannot lose.
– Jim Elliot
“As long as you are proud you cannot know God. A proud man is always looking down on thing and people: and, of course, as long as you are looking down you cannot see something that is above you.”
― C.S. Lewis
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I agree that Jesus is with us in our need. It’s not that we have that need gone (grief, etc), but He is with us.I am not contradicting you, but to extend the analogy, do you think that Lewis, for example, would have said (as in The Last Battle) that we have a “fernweh” for perfection, or God, or Aslan’s Country (Heaven)? Though we can also argue that that’s our need for the abstract reference to things, not necessarily a God given longing. Anyway–meandering, and I will get back to my work! Thanks
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Our thirst is quenched but not satisfied, still longing for more?
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Anyone else a fan of Maria Popova’s weekly news letter, The Marginellian? For all those contemplating the origin of the cosmos or some subset of that her first recommendation is intriguing at least to me. I like the idea of A Universe in Verse as a literary location for such ideas.
We were never promised any of it — this world of cottonwoods and clouds — when the Big Bang set the possible in motion. And yet here we are, atoms with consciousness, each of us a living improbability forged of chaos and dead stars. Children of chance, we have made ourselves into what we are — creatures who can see a universe of beauty in the feather of a bird and can turn a blind eye to each other’s suffering, creatures capable of the Benedictus
and the bomb. Creatures who hope.A generation after Maya Angelou held up a cosmic mirror to humanity with “A Brave and Startling Truth,” Pattiann Rogers — who writes with uncommon virtuosity about the intersection of the cosmic and the human, and whose poems have therefore been a frequentpresence in The Universe in Verse — offers a poignant cosmogony of our self-creation in the stunning final poem of her book Flickering(public library).
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- Egads!!! That is
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- Did someone say “consciousness”???
- Your Brain: Perception Deception | Full Documentary | NOVA | PBS
- A full and a partial transcript: Perception Deception.pdf - Google Drive
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Oh, I like this! Thanks.
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Immediately started watching but had to stop for breakfast. Will finish it as soon as we return from our walk.
Randy, this comes to mind frequently in my life:
“Was man nicht im Kopf hat, muß man in den Beinen haben.”
(What you don’t have in your head, you have to have in your legs. (Because you forgot it and have to go back to get it.))
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We love the water from a fresh mountain stream not only by the satisfied ‘ahh’ after drinking our fill, but also by the unquenched longing to be satisfied while still climbing to the source.
By someone unpopular, paraphrased.
I’ve always had a fondness for “gloaming”.
= - = + = - = † = - = + = - =
I’m not sure about the world’s ills, but since a very good friend died while I was with him last year I’ve had to learn a lot of patience in getting things done. I never recognized until he was gone just how much he was an encourager and energizer for me, stopping by to see what project I was working on and often pitching in, calling to see if I would help him with some endeavor, even finding small landscaping type jobs he knew I would enjoy doing. I think I get maybe a bit more than half as much done as I used to, and I have to tell myself that I’m not a slave to my projects, that the world isn’t going to end if I can’t finish a portion of work right now!
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One of my college professors had that on his office door.
Oh wow.
Knox is sitting here staring at me doing a little shuffling of his front paws and it occurs to me that sometimes that’s cute (beauty) and sometimes an irritant – but from his point of view, is he hoping for me to do something?
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