by Anna Leahy
astronomical cinder: For a meteor, there’s distance between heat and light, and each travels as
fast as it can.
----------Energy is transformed or transferred.
----------------------------------------------------------------- No one is a machine of perpetual motion.
----------There’s more to it—to us—and more required to move.
migration: ------------------------------------------------- The United States thinks of itself as -a -place
------------------------------------------------------------------of movement. It is a country of -more
------------------------------------------------------------------immigrants and descendants of immigrants
----------------------------------------------------------------- than any other. It has a history of exclusion
----------------------------------------------------------------- acts and executive orders. The word
----------------------------------------------------------------- “executive” means business; its verb
----------------------------------------------------------------- companion is a death sentence.
----------[ migrate : move :: immigrate : arrive ]
----------[ displacement : move (someone) out to make room for (someone else) ]
----------------------------------------------------------------- In this country, more than 1 in 10 people
----------------------------------------------------------------- never leave the state in which they were born.
----------------------------------------------------------------- One in 10 of us are interested in going
----------------------------------------------------------------- nowhere. These are not necessarily the same
----------------------------------------------------------------- people. This country has taken somewhere
----------------------------------------------------------------- from certain someones. It’s a who’s who.
----------Most people today want to travel more than
----------they do, but it is costly. I’m talking about
----------escape and allure. I’m talking about
----------transition. I’m talking about money; it is
----------currency. “Currency” comes from a word
----------meaning “to run.”
----------------------------------------------------------------- These statements are both geographical and
----------------------------------------------------------------- metaphorical. A geography is a description of
----------------------------------------------------------------- the world. A metaphor is something carried
----------------------------------------------------------------- between two places or across an expanse.
----------------------------------------------------------------- These statements are allegorical; they speak
----------------------------------------------------------------- openly about something that’s not named.
----------To be fair, though—
------------------------—acts of beauty or grace do not demand (someone else’s) suffering.
------------------------—no one walks in someone else’s shoes.
------------------------—find your footing | tread lightly | take the next step | leap from there.
----------------------------------------------------------------- The word “learn” comes from a word for the
----------------------------------------------------------------- sole of the foot, so that learning is a form of
----------------------------------------------------------------- migration.
glossary: A gloss is a map to be followed to the edge of the page.
-----------------------------------------------------------A timeline is another map, but there’s no there there.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------It’s a trick of substitution, then for there.
----------A gloss is shiny; it’s legendary and limited.
-------- -To gloss is to interpret and to cover up.
