on the evolution of care

In its oldest roots, the word care means to call out, to yell. Even, to scream.

Where does a call spring from? Is it your belly? Your throat? Your feet pushing into the ground? The ancient use of the word also means to scream, a word that is even harsher than calling out or yelling. What happens to your body when you scream?

To call out, to yell: these are words of interruption. These are words that arch out across a moment of regular-ness or a moment of overwhelm and cut right through it. We call out, we yell, we scream and the vibration of sound moves across the babble of voices or the tightness of silence, cuts right through. For the old ones speaking these words-that-eventually-became-English, to care is to stop whatever is going on, forcefully, with what we always have available to us: the sound of our voice.

Histories of words are a form of poetry, not a moment of definition and fact. Academic articles in linguistic journals are still talking about theories, about best guesses. Poetry evokes rather than defines. Listen to how the stories I am going to tell land in your body. What wakes up in response?

Words are stories and as stories, they are alive. Each word carries with it all of the struggle and glory of the people who spoke and changed that word, across generations and across time. All stories, when treated in the right way, carry their own lineages, personalities and intentions. The way we respect a story is to listen with an open heart and mind for the story’s life to reveal…