by L. A. Ballesteros Gentile
There’s so much in it—the word sometimes: nostalgia and yearning and tenderness and regret… And so simple, too, so obvious: two four-letter words past the stage of hyphenation that portmanteaus often travel in fright.
Some[1]: from the Middle English som itself from the Old English sum itself from the Proto-Germanic[2] sumac itself a suffixed form of the Proto-Indo-European[3] sem, meaning ‘one; as one, together with.’
Time[4]: from the Old English tima, from the Proto-Germanic timon, from the Proto-Indo-European di-mon[5],the suffixed form of da-, meaning, ‘to divide.’[6]
And there’s the beauty right there: that beautiful, beatific contradiction: one, as one, together with—divided. And here’s the beauty of that extra letter, that unassuming ‘s’: again, and again, and again… Together but divided as one in pieces with— on and on, (and on and on…)
Sometimes. Oh so human.
[1] Usable as determiner, pronoun, adverb, and adjective.
[2] Not yet past the stage of hyphenation.
[3] Itself in the stage of hyper-hyphenation (itself in the stage of hyphenation).
[4] The word not the concept.
[5] It would seem (not corroborated) that the Proto-Indo-Europeans retroactively condensed the phrase “Time is a bitch” into just one word. Kudos to them.
[6] So etymology is really just long division with words. (Sorry to all those who found refuge from math in language. The truth is: you can never run away from math.)
© L. A. Ballesteros Gentile
L. A. Ballesteros Gentile (@danteanantonio) is a musician, writer, and actor. You can find their work in Progenitor Art and Literary Journal, Pipeline Artists, Blue Marble Review, and New Note Poetry.
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