Triplicate

a vocab word that encompasses a trio of looks back at prior Musings.

I’m reminding you and GLOSSing on three previous vocab word essays today, which are combined under the one vocab word, Triplicate, meaning a set of matching three (or three exact copies).

My tattoo artist who designed this more than 20 years ago called those swirly ends ‘tricycles’: pronounced with a short i, not a long. It’s a Celtic traditional symbol for the life cycle. Fun to see the clarity difference between these from 2002 and that dagger hilt from this past February.

Triplicate

Today’s vocab word basically means A Group Of Three Matching Things, and though my idea is more about works of art that are in threes, I realized right after finishing this annotation-y essay-esque thing is that that word I’m thinking of is triptych. Triplicate is more like Xerox or carbon copies, the triplicate type of the latter needing a particularly hard pressure from a pen or typewriter.¹

Other related threesome vocab words? Check the caption under the above pic of my left arm. It’s about another related term, called tricycle (no, not the kids’ vehicle). Actually, all the captions to all the pics featured in this glossy messay² are sorta paragraphs that should be part of the writing proper. So. There ya go. More annotations to the annotations. Comments on the commentaries. On that note, I’ve chosen not one, not two (five is right out³) but three older essays of mine that I feel form a sort of triad (oo, there’s another) that are related in topic and mood, and also may be a bit too far to scroll for a new reader of the Zuko’s Musings experience.

Allow me to explain why I’ve collected these three vocab word essays together into one: On the one hand, those GLOSSes I did for the chapters of my memoir really helped with the polishing of that project, and have been inspiring and fruitful for the rest of my writing, especially the personal essays. Secondarily, I’ve had a bunch of new subscribers and followers trickling in lately still and ongoing, so I feel like y’all might appreciate finding these essays of mine all together instead of having to randomly scroll through 3-4 of em a week since 2022 to find the good stuff. Not that all my essays aren’t good, but. Yanno. Some are better than others. Ahem.

The landing as you go down the hallway to our hotel room in London, on our honeymoon. More a liminal space than an example of kenopsia, technically, as those chairs and ottomans were completely unused, probably never had been used, and yet the trippy angles of the decor made for an almost non-Euclidean geometry leading us to bed (which I also relate to liminality). It especially felt that way after a couple drinks at the hotel bar.

Kenopsia

• Definition: the eerie, forlorn feeling of an empty place that used to be busy.

In the original essay, I discussed the weird emptiness found in several of my familiar spaces during the pandemic lockdown times especially, but also the immediate aftermath. Some of those places actually haven’t really repopulated, even today. And some of those places aren’t even in my world anymore at all, like that bustling academic hallway I’ve talked about in more than one place. It’s possible to mourn a place almost as much as a person, in some ways, especially when that place is such an old friend, or used to be. Though that job was treating me very badly and I quit for all the right reasons, I still do feel some twinges sometimes, like when I drive by that campus or whatever. It’s possible to hold both feelings at once: both glad I’m not there anymore, and still missing it in some ways.

I also wrote about the concept, not only of 3rd Places, which is a minor obsession of mine, but the idea of the liminal space. A liminal space is one that’s oddly constructed, never having been occupied and probably never will be. Hotels have lots of these, all the time. My husband does a lot of travel and he has a vast library of pictures of the weirdest little corners of the (non-Euclidean) universe. I think it would make a great coffee table book.

There was a haunted house that lived right in the middle streetside of the trailer park where I grew up—it was towering and Victorianly ornate, in stark contrast with the standardized tin cans where we lived. Nobody lived in that house as long as I was there, and its doors were always bolted and its windows boarded up. Dust and spiderwebs and a palpable stillness surrounded and filled it. Many years later, they painted it over in pale green (instead of the dark brown and cream it was when it was haunted). It was also renovated, I hear, and populated? Maybe?… it’s mysterious. Hard to know. I hear it’s for sale now–the whole outer haunted structure now containing 7 apartment units. Hm. Does this make it a liminal space or a kenopsian one? I’d say it was more liminal, as I don’t believe in its ever being bustling and vital. (From Kenopsia)

This is the creepy little staircase that leads up to the upper balcony seating at my church, St. John’s Cathedral in Denver. Reminds me of an older one I saw in the Tower of London. Way too small and steep for me. I couldn’t fit up it, and I wouldn’t have been able to come down it. Even not counting claustrophobia.

Growlery

• Definition: a safe space to be grumpy (to growl) in.

In this essay, I talked about what makes a growlery that, and whether a place can be a sanctuary if one isn’t allowed to leave it. Also, how growleries are related to 3rd Places, where one can be oneself (maybe the only place one can). Or at least that is one of the criteria of a 3rd Place. We can remind ourselves of what those are here. But there is something positive, even comforting, about having a special place to safely grump in. Didn’t we all learn this from Oscar the Grouch, as children? Which reminds me:

The second vocab word in this essay was latibulate, which connects to this idea of a growlery being a safe space. It’s a term for the act of hiding in a corner to escape reality. Which we all were required to do during lockdown, but which many of still do as a coping mechanism in the aftermath, it seems. Are we growling as we latibulate? Is the latibulation corner a growlery? Even if we’re forced into it by fate or mandate?

Can a place be a ‘refuge or sanctuary’ when you’re not allowed to leave it? In other words, I wondered how growleries might have manifested in the lockdown part of the pandemic, or did they not? Was there a use for them then, or do we have more need of them now? Which of course makes one wonder if a growlery is as essential a space for a human, as, say, a private space, or a 3rd Place? When trapped in one place, what happens is that the 1st place (home), 2nd place (work), and 3rd Place (magical pub or other public gathering) get mushed all into one. Was there any room for growleries during this time? Or did all of our space turn into one? Then again, I notice that the words ‘refuge’ and ‘sanctuary’ seem to be important to the meaning of ‘growlery’ and I can’t imagine that, locked down, our spaces could have been called either of those things. A prison is not a refuge, though a cloister can be a sanctuary, I suppose. (From Growlery)

My younger stepgoblin, a couple years ago, at his beloved grandpa’s place on our annual summer visit. He longs for it each year and it’s always a lovely relaxing time, no matter what else is happening. We don’t know how many more times we’ll be able to go back up there, so each time, we treat it with an almost pre-nostalgia, a Hiraeth before it’s even over. Pic taken by me, and used with his permission.

Hiraeth

• Definition: a spiritual longing for a home that maybe never was. Nostalgia for the impossible?

It’s about grief for places past that either weren’t that, or that cannot be again, in any way. In this original essay, I discuss some of those places that do this to me, including the Birdhouse, my husband and his now-teenaged sons, and DV8 Distillery. Funny, that last one: when I wrote the Hiraeth essay, we were still doing Blue Dime Cabaret shows regularly at DV8 as our regular venue, and a wonderful queer family center of sorts, in all senses of the word ‘queer.’ Only a few months later, though, DV8 shuttered suddenly and without warning, leaving us without a home performance venue and Boulder without its only gay bar. As you can imagine, now I feel an even more acute sense of Hiraeth for my hometown and cradle of my childhood, now that DV8 is closed. My parents do still live there, so it’s not like I don’t have any ties left to Boulder, but. It’s still a home that’s gone forever.

‘Our grief for th[ose places]’ also strikes me with emotion. I definitely feel something akin to grief for The Birdhouse, but it was absolutely the right time to leave it, to move on. And what do I think I’d do now? Attempt to get on its waiting list and try and get in and pay for it again? That would be ridiculous, not to mention a drain on precious resources that are needed for other things, right now. It’s not the same life; I’m not the same person, that needed and benefited from that place. So maybe I should be feeling something warmer than grief, more like gratitude, about The Birdhouse. There’s no going back, and that’s actually great. Because look where I am now. (From Hiraeth)

I’m sure you can see already how these vocab words connect, not least of which is the fact that I do discuss some of the same sentiments, memories, and emotions in each. Like: The Birdhouse and its role as a past sanctuary is a fixed point of all these words (as, it can be argued, is Boulder at large too). What are your pins in these feelings that stand out?

I also do feel like these concepts could be yet another book of essays, yanno? How would that work? A three-parter, with more research? A more unhinged scattershot collection of expanded essays that are lengthened with personal stuff more than researchy stuff? Both? Any chapter heading ideas?

1. Remember carbon paper?

2. Find the definition of ‘messay’ in my piece about Gruntled.

3. Name the movie. (This is from one of those monologues I need to memorize at some point…)