When and where are words born? In the innumerable shifts of meaning that characterize our everyday use of language? In sparks of creativity that combine disparate morphemes into greater wholes? Perhaps in namings or dubbings, which pair new thoughts with old sounds?
Poly is the Greek word for ‘many’. Citta is the Sanskrit word for ‘心’, or the ‘heart/mind’. Brought together, they become polycitta, symbolizing at once the multiple heritages within which I situate myself, as well as the Buddhist notion of anatman, or ‘no-self’, which is another way of saying that we/I have many selves, many hearts, many minds.
What follows this post is a series of thoughts from the particular myriad of perspectives that I call ‘me’. Some are old, essays written in the past that I believe worth sharing, but that might otherwise never see the light of publication. Some are new, or will be, pieces I have always wanted to write, if not for the lack of a medium that felt meaningfully ‘mine’.
Of course, ‘new’ and ‘old’ are relative, as are ‘me’ and ‘mine’. Just as new words are made from old words, new meanings are wrought from old ones. Little here will be said that will not already have been said elsewhere. And little will mark ‘I’ as author of these words apart from their having been filtered through this mind. Polycitta is but a conduit for the many voices that have influenced this one.
Yet, what once was said may not always have been heard. Some words are suppressed, lost to time, sealed away in ivory towers. These are the words that bear repeating. It is said that though the Buddha gave the same teachings in the beginning, middle, and later periods of his earthly existence, the meanings differed each time. By articulating again the thoughts of others, I hope to breath in them new life.
In this manner, words are born and reborn.
