Word Catcher (2010)
Viva Edition, Berkeley

Phil Cousineau
(born 11-26-1952)

Phi Cousineau, Word Catcher: An Odyssey into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words,
Viva Editions, Berkeley, California (2010)

pp. 20-21— ASTONISH: To strike with thunderous surprise; in a word, to be thunderstruck. When the Norse god Thor was provoked he hurled thunderbolts made of gold that stunned all who had invoked his wrath. Likewise, to be astonished in English is to be a-stunned, a vivid word picture we've inherited from the Vikings, as well as the Old French estoner, to stun, and the Latin extonare, to thunder. Thus, to astonish someone is to stun them with the thunder of your wit or ingenuity.
Two stunning remarks I caught over the years help clarify our meaning. First, I recall how my father roared with laughter when he read in Mark Twain's Pudd'nhead Wilson, "Do the right thing. It will gratify some people and astonish the rest," a line that he quoted for the rest of his life. Years later, living in France, I read in Rilke's Letters on Cézanne how the painter announced his entrée into the art world: "With an apple I will astonish Paris." The Mexican novelist Mario Bellatin confessed, "I want to read my own production and astonish myself, as if I were a reader coming to my own text for the first time." It's amazing to note that Van Gogh found Gauguin's self-discipline "astonishing." Words, words, words," as Hamlet said. "Explanation separates us from astonishment," said Eug�ne Ionesco, "which is the only gateway to the incomprehensible." To hear the real thunder underneath the word, let's remember Sergei Diaghilev's challenging words to Jean Cocteau, as a way to demand better direction for a new ballet he was designing for him: "Astonish me!"

pp. 26-27— AWARE: The great sigh of things. To be aware of aware (pronounced ah-WAH-ray) is to be able to name the previously ineffable sigh of impermanence, the whisper of life flitting by,
of time itself, the realization of evanescence. Aware is the shortened version of the crucial Japanese phrase mono-no-aware, which suggested sensitivity or sadness during the Heian period, but with
a hint of actually relishing the melancholy of it all. Originally, it was an interjection of surprise, as
in the English "Oh!" The reference calls up bittersweet poetic feelings around sunset, long train journeys, looking out at the driving rain, birdsong, the falling of autumn leaves. A held-breath word, it points like a finger to the moon to suggest an unutterable moment, too deep for words to reach. If it can be captured at all, it is by haiku poetry, the brushstroke of calligraphy, the burbling water of the tea ceremony, the slow pull of the bow from the oe. The great 16th-century wandering poet Matsuo Basho caught the sense of aware in his haiku: "By the roadside grew / A rose of Sharon. / My horse / Has just eaten it." A recent Western equivalent would be the soughing lyric of English poet Henry Shukman, who writes, "This is a day that decides by itself to be beautiful."

pp. 1-2— ABRACADABRA: An incantation, a charm, a magician's mantra, a healing formula to rid a person of disease or illness. A word so old hair is growing on it. Abracadabra is said to consist of the first letters of the Hebrew words Ab (Father), Ben (Son), and Ruach ACadsch (Holy Spirit), and when combined was believed to cure afflictions ranging from ague to toothaches. Traditionally, American Heritage Dictionary says,
the word abracadabra was worn as an amulet, furtively "arranged in
an inverted pyramid" on a piece of paper that was suspended by a linen thread around the neck. As one letter disappeared in each line, so too
was the malady of the patient supposed to disappear. Beyond its cult symbolism the word gained popularity when it was adopted in magic shows, circuses, and theater acts of the mystical persuasion. In the indispensable Devil's Dictionary Ambrose Bierce defined it: "By Abracadabra we signify an infinite number of things. 'Tis the answer to What? And How? And Why? And Whence? And Whither?— a word whereby. The Truth (with the comfort it brings) is open to all who grope in night. Crying for Wisdom's holy light." Speaking of which, Ezra Pound, who wrote that a book should be like a ball of light in your hand, also said, "Mass ought to be in Latin, unless your could do it in Greek or Chinese. In fact, any abracadabra that no bloody member of the public or half-educated ape of a clargimint could think be understood." Companion words include the hypnotic abracadabrant, marvelous or stunning.

pp. 18-19— ARGONAUT: A bold and daring sailor. A smooth-sailing word that combines the ancient Greek argos, swift; the beauty of a fine ship, naus; and the sailor courage of a nautes. They merge in Argo, the galley on which the Argonauts set sail, which in turn was named after Argus, its ingenious builder. Webster's succintly defines an Argonaut as "any of a band of heroes who sailed with Jason in quest of the Golden Fleece." I vividly recall my father's Heritage Club edition [1960] of the book by Apollonius of Rhodes, Argonautica, which we read aloud as a family over one long Michigan winter. The legend recounts how Jason persuaded forty-nine sailors to accompany him on a perilous mission from Iolco to remote Colchis, in what is now Georgia, as the far end of the Black Sea. Their mythic task was to capture the golden fleece, which hung on a sacred oak guarded by a fire-snorting dragon. Curiously, in 1849, many of those who left home and hearth for the California gold mines were called "Argonauts", in honor of Jason's adventure, as well as "'49ers", an uncanny echo of the 49 sailors who traveled with him in search of the resplendent wool. The Argonauts adventure lives on in Argo Navis, a constellation in the southern sky; Captain Nemo's ship, the Nautilus, in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea; the spiral-shelled nautilus, which the ancients believed sailed underwater; and nausea, seasickness, from naus, ship. Another haunting echo of the word is found in one of the most touching scenes in all of literature (Homer's Odyssey, Book XVII:290-327), when the hero Odysseus returns home to Ithaca after his 20-year long adventure and is recognized by his faithful dog Argos— who wags his tail, then dies quietly.
[Note: Dante compares himself to an Argonaut in his journey flight to the celestial heaven—
"O you who are within your little bark, / eager to listen, following behind / my ship that, singing, crosses to deep seas, / turn back to see your shores again: do not / attempt to sail the seas I sail:
you may, / by losing sight of me, be left astray. / The waves I take were never sailed before" and "Those men of glory, those who crossed to Colchis, / when they saw Jason turn into a ploughman were less amazed than you will be amazed." (Paradiso 2:1-7, 16-18); "brings more forgetfulness to me than twenty-five / centuries have brought to the endeavor / that startled Neptune with the Argo's shadow!" (Paradiso 33:94-96)]

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Web Links to Phil Cousineau:

• Wikipedia: Phil Cousineau
   (Career, Current work, Famous quotes, Books, Filmography, Web Links)
• Phil Cousineau: Personal Web Site
   (Bio, Books, Films/TV, Trips, Events, Blog, Consult/Contact)
• BOOKS: The Brighter Side Of Darkness: For Some, The Night Inspires
   (NPR Interview, 12-21-2013)
• Word Catcher: An Odyssey Into the World of Weird and Wonderful Words
   (Book Review of Word Catcher by Frederic & Mary Ann Brussat)
• An Interview with Phil Cousineau
   (Cousineau's own spiritual journey, his mentors Joseph Campbell and Huston Smith)
• Phil Cousineau on Twitter
   (March 21, 2017: "To write aphoristically is to build a bridge with as few stones
   as possible & be sure you can cross over without the understanding caving in.")
• Phil Cousineau: Mentorship— Passing the Torch
   (TED Talk, San Jose, CA, April 17, 2011, 22 minutes)
• The Write Stuff: Phil Cousineau on the Making of Something the World's Never Seen
   (By Evan Karp, SF Weekly: Culture, August 14, 2014— When people ask what do you do?
   "I simply tell them that I write. I learned that from the poet Robert Bly. Keep it in the verb.
    I write, film, teach, coach. The minute you go to the noun, �I am an author, I am a filmmaker—
    you go into inflation. Keeping in the verb keeps it real. Otherwise, the ego runs rampant.")
• Everything Is A Road with Phil Cousineau (New Dimensions Radio, Program #3556)
   ("the best stories come from small moments that have grabbed our attention.")
• Top 25 Quotes by Phil Cousineau
   (AZ Quotes: "Inspiration comes and goes, creativity is the result of practice.")
• Phil Cousineau Quotes
   (Goodreads: 22 quotes from Phil Cousineau & his books)
• Sacred Earth Journeys
   (Phil Cousineau, Books, Films, Appearances)