Lexicon 001 Oscillation

I have a stash of words. I suppose that conjures the image of me shoving words into overstuffed drawers like they’re random receipts I pull from my bags and pockets. Here. A stash of crumpled words.

    But in truth, I feel haunted by them. Sometimes when I’m going about my day, a word will appear as if it’s peeping over my shoulder, demanding my attention. Most of the time I ignore it and it fades away. But occasionally there is a word with enough presence that I need to sit down with it and ask, well, what do you want me to do to exorcise you?

   

Oscillation is one of those spectral words and right now it won’t go away. I can’t remember when I first came upon it. I have a hunch I picked it up from reading some middle grade fantasy where there was a grandfather clock with an oscillating pendulum. 

    Not the most enthralling word. Oscillation. For me it denotes repetition and regularity. It is the result of scientific calculation and fine tuning. Heavy clockwork connotations. The triumph of discipline and mind over matter.

    But late it begins to shift into a more supernatural form…of embodying all my indecision, fickleness, and state of moving all the time but not going anywhere. Oscillation between here and there. And never quite either.

Should it not be curious then that the root word of oscillation is related to ‘oscillum’ (“little face” or literally “little mouth”) that, wait for it, people used to hang in vineyards as a charm. The hanging ‘oscillum’, usually a mask of open-mouthed Bacchus, would be blown about by the wind. And that led to the word ‘oscillare’ being used to mean ’to swing back and forth’. 

    Or more accurately, as I would like to put forth, ‘to be wildly fickle and indecisive to the point of losing oneself to the natural elements.’

I would like there to be less oscillation if possible. But it is the fate of someone who oscillates to be here and then not here in a loop. But then I remember how the word *sounds* like the ebb and flow of waves, which isn’t so bad.