Work Text:
There are certain things that I will never understand fully.
From either my language, my upbringing, or something else I take for granted.
Some are little.
Some are big.
Sometimes the ‘little’ things become huge things.
Like the time I saw that post- the emotion someone experienced when they found out that, in English, the name for the ‘vulnerable’ spot that’s ‘arguably the best spot to be kissed’.
Temple.
A word that means both an anatomical part and a place of worship.
It’s most likely just a coincidence.
A simple matter of convergent evolution in language.
But the human in me finds it interesting, not the word nerd.
I was once called a term that stuck with me. It was a simple, silly matter- being in a college class and knowing what a now-extinct word meant based on its lingering existence in modern words.
I had the fastest answer- three seconds at the most once I finished reading the list of words. Inspect. Spectacle. Spectator. On and on. ‘Spect’ meaning ‘to look’ or ‘to see’.
My professor said that she had never had someone respond so quickly with the right answer.
I was embarrassed at first- I was called ‘teacher’s pet’ a lot as a kid, and sometimes the memory stirs. (I had also immediately said ‘Dungeon Master’ in the same class when asked what ‘DM’ stood for instead of ‘Direct Message.’ Whoops.)
But a classmate who I had struck up an acquaintance with said quietly that I was ‘a word wizard.’ I had to stifle a laugh.
I read a lot as a kid and learned to not reach for a dictionary pretty quickly. I could figure out from the words that surrounded the unfamiliar word more or less what it meant. I recognized roots and suffixes far before I was taught what they were. I have a whole personal dictionary kicking around in my brain. Unfortunately one without a pronunciation guide so I’d probably pronounce it wrong if pressed.
Word wizard. It stuck with me.
I have always read, so I always had stories within me (as you can tell- I’m on this site after all).
And instead of the term I had always called myself- word nerd, rather fondly- I was a wizard.
Someone who enchants, not someone who studies.
I once wrote a fragment of a poem I thought I could transform into something publishable down the line. The part I most strongly remember is likening myself to a spider in terms of writing and speaking- spinning a web not out of malice, but of survival. It was based on a separate instance of me being told that I ‘speak as if I am out of time.’ And that’s true- I can vacillate widely from English professor to teenage girl.
So. Word wizard and unmoored from time. High praise. Combined, this makes for a) conversations with me that are inherently interesting, b) me dissecting words that people use unthinkingly in their personal lexicons, and c) me looking far too into words that people take for granted.
Temple is one of them after I saw this post.
It makes me wonder if it was more than convergent evolution. If someone was kissed on that then-unnamed part of them and thought of where they went to pray to their gods. If they felt holy and named the spot accordingly.
Kissing had to be ‘invented’ after all. It’s something humans do that’s not a survival instinct. And we kiss more than mouths. Knuckles. Cheeks. Foreheads. Noses. Eyelids. Temples.
Kissing is a sign of love. Passionate or friendly or familial, it doesn’t matter- it’s all love, equally weighted.
Pressing your lips to another’s skin to show love is a lovely concept- ‘I love you, and this is a way to show you and the world that I do.’
The temple is an underused spot. It’s thin skin, so it’s thick with feeling. The kisser is saying ‘I love you, and here is where you can feel it more than normal.’ The kissee is saying ‘I love you, so I will show you this vulnerable part of me and trust you not to hurt me.’
Because that’s a part of what love is- giving someone your heart and trusting them not to break it. Trust is intertwined with love so tightly that love often can’t exist without it, and when it does it’s not quite the same. How fragile and unsteady love can be when you can’t trust the other person, in abuse for example. Love should be kind and easy and freely-given without restrictions or conditions. Not ‘I’ll love you if…’ but ‘I love you.’
Love is more than trust, though. It’s belief in the other person. Love ratchets all parties higher. And belief is another word that can be applied to higher powers. It’s all connected- love is holy.