Languid Words

Languor, Eudaimonia, Desuetude, and Flâneur

Languor

The spring sunshine is making me too lazy to write. I’m going to let the words of others speak for me instead. A line from a jazz song by Blossom Dearie is stuck in my head:

“They say it's spring
This feeling light as a feather”

I think I’ll take a nap in the sun.

Eudaimonia

“But happiness cannot be pursued. It must ensue.”

-Viktor Frankl

For more on Aristotle’s idea of eudaimonia and his view of what makes a good human life, listen to this conversation on EconTalk with host Russ Roberts and professor Leon Kass. Not much has changed about human nature in 2,400 years. We’re still chasing happiness. And often failing to grasp it.

Desuetude

“Enter this deserted house

But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.

Ain't no ceiling, only blue.
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.”

-Shel Silverstein

My favorite local desuetude destination: Joyland Amusement Park. This relic of my childhood in Wichita, Kansas closed many years ago. The wooden roller coaster rotted out. Some stole the Wurlitzer-playing animatronic clown. Weeds overgrew the Whacky Shack dark ride.

Joyland became something much more than an abandoned park: fertile ground for imagination. It’s the kind of setting that makes you want to write a spooky story, a poem, a novel. Or draw a comic. You can tour what remains of Joyland in this eerie film by Michael Petty.

Flâneur

“I have met with but one or two persons in the course of my life who understood the art of Walking, that is, of taking walks, — who had a genius, so to speak, for sauntering: which word is beautifully derived “from idle people who roved about the country, in the Middle Ages, and asked charity, under pretense of going à la Sainte Terre,” to the Holy Land…They who never go to the Holy Land in their walks, as they pretend, are indeed mere idlers and vagabonds; but they who do go there are saunterers in the good sense, such as I mean.”

-Henry David Thoreau

Where will your holy, idle wandering lead you this week?

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As you may have heard from me shouting on the rooftops of social media, my new book POETRY COMICS came out this week! Thanks to my editor Ariel Richardson, my art director Jennifer Tolo Pierce, and the rest of the team at Chronicle Kids Books for making this book a masterpiece.

POETRY COMICS is 96 pages of visual poems exploring the seasons and the self. It’s perfect for readers ages 6 through 106—poetry and graphic novel fans alike!

How can you support an author whose work you love?

1. Purchase their books from your favorite independent bookstore or Bookshop.org. My local indie, Watermark Books and Cafe, has signed copies of my new book. I take personalization requests if there’s a note or small drawing you’d like me to include on the title page. (Shout out to Kopi, who I assume is a cat?)

   

2. Leave a review on Amazon, Goodreads, etc.

3. Share what you love about the book on social media.

4. Request it at your local public library. If they don’t have a copy, you can often recommend it for the collection.

5. Write a story, a comic, or a poem inspired by your favorite author’s work. Try to capture everything you love about it—but do it with your own personal twist. Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, and it’s also great way to learn a craft. And be sure to tag the author—often they’ll respond, and if they don’t, it’s a good sign they’re hard at work on another great book.