Aug 30, 2023 2 min read abecedarium

Y

Y is for yakhnet sabanegh, yucca, yed prior, yed posterior, yellow-bellied sapsucker, yellow jacket, yerba mate, yorkie (yap! yap!), yarrow, yak, yarrara, yo-yo, yapacana

The letter Y is both a consonant and a vowel... it's forked nature is embodied in the character's shape itself, and of course, it does ask the question why?...

Yakhnet Sabanegh

Yakhnet Sabanegh is a spinach dish from Lebanon – spicy, lemony, nutty and served with buttery rice. A typical dish of the Levant, it manifests in different forms all along the Mediterranean coast... thanks in large measure to the wanderings of the Phoenicians - who in some ways, never really were!

Phoenicia was an ancient Semitic-speaking thalassocratic civilization that originated in the Levant region of the eastern Mediterranean, primarily modern Lebanon. At its height between 1100 and 200 BC, Phoenician civilization spread across the Mediterranean, from Cyprus to the Iberian Peninsula... a society of independent city states, the Phoenicians apparently did not have a term to denote the land of Phoenicia as a whole. Wikipedia

I've often wondered about the never-ending foment of this region – might it be rooted in this independent city-state history? Is a place without a sense of common ground a configuration for ongoing "othering"? Is there some geomantic juju at this Lat/Long that gives rise to an endless state of bickering and destruction?

"I am against my brother, my brother and I are against my cousin, my cousin and I are against the stranger" Bedouin apothegm.

I had posted previously about the Levant and shared Nina Paley's animated video – This Land is Mine – an operatic synopsis of centuries of ongoing conflict and destruction of this region – and to borrow from David Lynch's Twin Peaks "...it is happening again"

Bickering and brutality aside, one of the gifts of the Phoenicians who never were, was the alphabet. Before the Phoenicians, the written language required scribes – illustrators (reluctant and not) who could write and draw on commission, deploying complex figures and symbols to create narratives – which required other scribes to decipher.

The Phoenicians democratized things a bit with a limited character set of symbols which has served as a template for the evolution of a multiplicity of alphabets.

Why, oh Why?

or is it why-ai-ai?

why? song by Annie Lennox — Why? by Annie Lennox

...these are the dreams I'll dream instead.
...these are the contents of my head.

As always, thanks for reading and indulging!
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