detritus and other weird words

they proliferate because they must be relevant to us in some way

do you ever notice when a very weird word or phrase enters the local lexicon? not only are you saying a specific weird word, you start hearing it from other people, and sometimes the same word from groups of people who are seemingly not connected.

it’s always a weird word, too. otherwise you wouldn’t notice it.

sometimes it's a whole phrase. there was a brief moment last summer when my friends were all saying "in my mind’s eye." it came out of nowhere and it left just as quietly.

at the moment, that word for me is “detritus.” I only noticed its new frequent appearances in my conversations while I was sharing a few rolls of sushi with a friend in los angeles, when she said something about “clearing psychic detritus.” I felt a little ping notification go off in my brain. I remember weeks earlier in seattle, in the flow of speaking, reaching for a word and pulling out “detritus” from somewhere deep in my brain. someone else must have put it there - because I distinctly remember hearing a different friend using this weird word, too.

I was telling tessa - detritus is such a good word, and it’s funny because I’ve noticed it popping up randomly, recently. when I left for home, they sent me this meme of bottom feeders clinking wine glasses:

perhaps this meme is the origin of detritus. a meme spurring changes in our broader shared as well as our in-group vocabulary happens somewhat frequently - see “deeply unserious” or “midit” or “brain worms.” the introduction of these words can be pinpointed to a specific post, moment or video. and from there, they were then adopted, and used. this adoption is accelerated by meme culture. not all weird words or phrases become absorbed, or memes, even if they’re sticky or useful.

when I notice a new weird word like detritus, it signals to me that we are all connected even in ways we can’t see. there’s sort of a mind web going on here. meme makers are just tapped into an earlier node of the mind web. so, I think rarely is a meme the true origin. whoever made the meme is just sensitive to what could trend with the collective, and encourages the uptake.

it’s interesting I think to look at the concepts that these weird words gesture at. the weird word of the moment proliferates because the concept behind it must be relevant. perhaps it fits the time we find ourselves in. there’s a reason it appears in our every day speech, and there’s a reason we find ourselves reaching for it.

detritus - meaning, waste or debris. more specifically, gravel, sand and silt produced by erosion. and in another instance, organic matter produced by the decomposition of organisms. loose material resulting from disintegration, destruction or wearing away. it’s a term that comes from geology. a hard, earthy science.

the meaning of the word has itself disintegrated with usage, and with time. detritus allows for a figurative, transferred sense of being worn away. you can use detritus to mean miscellaneous remnants. odds and ends. if we look at the etymology, it was originally used in 1795 to describe “a process of erosion,” which itself is a sense now considered obsolete.

as a poet I get hung up on the sound of words themselves. there’s something pleasing and jagged about the ring of detritus, suggesting little particles and organic leftovers. it sounds sciencey, like it belongs in a fold-out diagram that your biology teacher has laminated and blue sticky-tacked to the wall next to the chalkboard. detritus fits right in with the definitions of words used to describe layers of soil and charts mapping out the formations of different types of rock.

there are many other words that mean similar things and occupy the same figurative sense. flotsam, for instance, which is ship wreckage found floating in the ocean. I could have used “flotsam,” a few weeks ago, when I was describing a climate anxiety dream I had where I saw every piece of single use plastic I had ever used trailing behind me in a long, single-file line, floating midair. but I didn’t use flotsam. I used detritus.

probably because the conceptual wearing away and waste we are collectively feeling is more earthen (I don’t only mean climate anxiety, either). flotsam is the natural consequence of a violent bout, a storm, man versus nature. a bad outcome. flotsam happens out at sea. it floats. flotsam conjures something different than natural debris - it can be used to mean discards, things that have been rejected.

detritus on the other hand doesn’t feel so personal. its occurrence is not really an act of god, it’s merely inevitable.

perhaps right now we’re in the age of detritus- impersonal disintegration. a wearing away. a diminishing. little pieces of organic garbage. ah hell.

you know what i’m about to say.

it’s been a long week…

— C