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—adj. Fragrant, specifically, in a manner characteristic of the air—neither stale nor fresh, but yeasty, prolific, not inert—secured in an otherwise empty or unoccupied enclosure. [Provenance unknown, though possibly of onomatopoeic origin. Use first attested among drivers of bread vans in suburban areas of the Pacific Northwest in the United States of America, ca. 1953.]

—v. [Colloquial term used within snapshots and black spaces. Used by Howard Juxshiek to describe the crossing over the "brink" in 1943 after the alleged Philadelphia Experiment.] 1. To arrange frantically while dialing the numbers encountered in dreams. 2. To behold the persistence of an image. 3. To cross over and experience differences in times, the dilation of irritation and desire compounded into a faithless sheet. Ex. You used to be like you are right now, but different, your voice more soothing, but with the dim suggestion, your eyes in the altitudes of grey, I see you as an earlier version of yourself a prisoner, in autumn, at midday, with the air turned on, and my mouth slightly agape at the mercy of the sky.

mirror

—adj. Collecting and concentrating, moving in disjunctive but concentrating motion, becoming more than the sum of destructive parts. [First appears, and then is not—the opposite of a laser. If a laser is something that ricochets until it is coherent and then emerges, the mirror quality describes something that takes coherency into itself and renders the pieces particular. We can reconstruct, from our current position in the universe—you, me, and the observable—what was in the seed, but we can't gather up what is mirror and piece it into wholeness. The positions are known, but it is not the same.] Ex. A mirror cannon. —n. The encounter of an extremely minimal space or discovery of an object visually lost (but heard), the loss of details over time, the outbreak of an imagined number of edits, i.e. uncovering a newspaper photograph behind yellowing wallpaper, dying of old age, the creaking of furniture on a cold evening. Ex. Only in the meantime, the mirror of St. Peter caused a hesitation, a sensation of unfathomable clarity, only to fade again into the backdrop of summer, the memories of his mother torn from his hand and dissolved with the transition of layer of fog to another. —v., intrans. 1. To derange or pervert geometry, geometrical figures or, in certain architectonic applications, Euclidean solids. 2. To invent by means of applying gradual but substantial pressure from either side, forcing gouged, etched or engraved impressions past and subsequently through facing horizontal planes. Ex. Braque's ochre as it mirrors. [Early 13th Century, "gesture or motion of the hand," from the Old French smeiros, from Proto-Indo-European (s)mei-, "to smile, be astonished" (cf. Sanskrit smerah, "smiling," Greek meidan, "to smile," for which, in some uses, the modern term is aphetic.) Meaning "a mark or device having some special importance" is recorded from late 13th Century; that of "a miracle" is from ca. 1300. The adjective meaning "perfect" (like a freshly minted silver dollar) is from 1902; hence mirror image.]

nothing

—adj. Scattered to the ends of the earth; describing that which has been undone or dissembled. Ex. The nothing signifiers haunt the gardens whilst the wheels of meaning reach a dead end, nowhere to go, a place in discourse, spectral sowing time to sleep, you, me, the slippage of us. Ex. I examine the underside, reach a conclusion, nothing, spectral questions themselves unreadable, simultaneous playing and sleeping and purging, in returns to metaphor. Ex. The metaphor is the result of her nothing confession, her nothing thought, illogical, the economy of spectral sleep you I me, the repression of nothing, violating, deciding appropriation, the haunting, the terror, the philosophy of terror, and in, again, nothing. —n. Unfulfilled expectation. [Appears after speculative language, before proper naming began.] As in, When we got there, there was nothing. —n, pl. 1. 1. Interstices or intervals, especially when extremely close-set, as between hairs or epidermal layers; a bundle of infinitesimal capillaries. 2.Colloq. Any unforeseen advantage which, when seized, is unfailingly converted into a favorable or happy outcome, i.e., "a lucky break." Ex. Nothing doing. [I remember all too well the first time I ever heard this word uttered. I was surrounded by children, none more than 5 years in age. They were, ostensibly, painting watercolors under the influence of a grayish-brown afternoon light haloing, smoke-like, the rounded corners and bright plastic furnishing a kindergarten classroom. In reality, or so my initial perceptions convinced me, the children were engaged in an odd sonic competition. That is, at first, I thought that these toddlers were deep in some game, each imitating and in turn the asphyxiating noises made by one of their unfortunate colleagues who had, in trying to eat his cup of applesauce as quickly as possibly, before any thieving tongues could deny him his satisfaction, vomited up the entirety of his lunch. The children placed an inordinate amount of stress on the final syllable, especially the harsh "g", while the initial "no" was treated almost as an aspirate, emerging from the back of the throat like a silent cough, or a cough able to circumvent but not dislodge some obstacle. Their articulation of the short "i" in "thing" was both serrated and piercing, and seemed to peak whenever any child found that his or her brush had begun to clump with drying pigment and needed to be moistened again. It is with my noting of this correlation that I understood precisely how this concatenation of sounds accompanied the dipping of bristles in cloudy water, a quick but demonstrative swirl, the taming of these synthetic cowlicks against the rough cotton of smocks that were merely Oxford shirts they had been tricked into donning backwards.The children were singing a sort of hymn to the evenness of the strokes they wanted so badly to apply.And, to my surprise, their gulping and clucking—harsh from one acoustic vantage, merely desperate from another, more elevated listening—harmonized quite charmingly with the sound of soap and water coursing from the faucet, plashing against the sides of the stainless steel sink, and burbling down the drain.]

—n. You're crying at night. It never happens. Sleep never happens, or it doesn't happen how you'd think. Or it does happen, but you cannot think it, because the quiddities have been swapped. As in, A sleep the collection. —pron. (impersonal) and —adj. 1. Indicating a person or thing which, though cherished, can be neither acquired nor possessed. 2. Indicating a person or thing far-removed from any other person or thing present. 3. Indicating a person or thing situated outside the sphere of control to be exercised by any other person or thing present. 4. Indicating an eidolon or a facsimile of any person or thing, respectively, present, which, while capable of being grasped, when subjected to such embraces (whatever the authenticity of said embraces' intent) becomes hollow, blank and friable, shriveling almost as if it has been consumed from within by some sudden and ulterior yet quickly exhausted conflagration. Ex. Life itself is a bubble and a skepticism, and a sleep within sleep. —v. 1. To notice the unnoticed phenomena of dreams. 2. To mistake for reality. 3. To conjure. 4. To pay attention to the "I" while mistaking the "me" for "she" while replacing "he" for "you." Ex. The passageway was less than 4 feet wide so that I had to squeeze the bulk of my body through the mocking walls, the hieroglyphs blasting the sins of my soul, and I, considering the quiet of the morning, the placid expression on his face, told myself, "She must sleep now, if only for a minute, it is sleeping that makes this safer and cleaner, it is sleeping that will prove me right in the end, the reconsideration of facts cross-stitched into your forehead, more obligation that I could possible imagine.

—adj. 1. In autopsic array. [Appears first in grim, complete ideation—to imagine something laid bare in its formerly overlapping essence, so something strained and incomplete.] As in, These spectral glasses separate personas like they were colors of the rainbow. 2. Reverberating, excessive, and in need of deciphering, i.e. an expression, the core of intellectual discourse, ghost talk, metaphor, the seams of language. Ex. He approaches the spectral zone and insists on Derrida's insistence; the murmurs remind him of tea time, and as the bell rings, one of his worlds is permitted to stand in for the other. —n. A strong, viscous, opaque cement, often gaily colored or streaked with iridescence until set, employed most commonly for the mending of broken toys, trinkets, baubles, souvenirs, decorative objects, and costume jewelry. [The origins of the term itself are a source of some dispute, if not confusion: for several years, the National Casein Co. has tried, without success, to claim an exclusive trademark on the term, asseverating in both court documents and extensive advertising campaigns (until a cease and desist order was handed down by the U.S. 10th District Court in 2002) that "spectral" was first coined in 1927 by Theodore M. Sullivan, a prominent company engineer, in reference to the banded appearance assumed by the adhesive upon its drying. That this brilliance soon fades, the National Casein Co. claims, should be of no consequence in weighing the merits of their case.]

—prep. In payment for, in exchange for, by way of, for every. [First appears in the 15th century, in a field, surrounded but not covered by rocks. It shines in the dark, but is dull in daylight, like a deep sea fish with something powerful but poisonous in its blood. The character "y" used to sound like "th", but we pulled the mask off sometime ago and found the dento-lingual fricative cowering behind the teeth in England, shivered to the bone, and around the same time, pinched more squarely between middle-front tongue and tooth-tip in places like Andalucia. The "e" looks like an "e", but sounds like you were hit in the stomach with a child's fist.] Ex. A dollar the dozen. Ex. We felt sorry; we gave sickness in fat bags, a blight the barrel. Ex. Humans are getting further, a flowering of paradigms the technology.