Collective Nouns and Other Thoughts

I’ve been obsessing a bit with collective nouns. In reading James Lipton’s “Exaltation of Larks,” I discovered that the creation of them is unique to the English language. It’s not clear exactly why, other than the geography of England, with traders and invaders over the centuries came new ideas and ways to express them. Whatever the reason, the playfulness and whimsey of assigning a descriptive collective term to a plural noun is a fun gambit when a conversational turn is required at a party and always a welcome distraction when one’s mind is plagued with worries. Nothing is safe from a collective noun.

Yesterday, I was out on the lake for what we start calling in September “our perhaps last paddle of the season.” Often it is for some of us. It is far more difficult to take advantage of beautiful warm days in the fall since they are far less predictable and our schedules are far more packed. It was an overcast day, and the water took on a mercurial quality, it was all rippling and movement without being punishing to paddle through. I didn’t take any pictures because it was cold enough that I didn’t want to sit and risk a wet bottom, but I was thinking about how Japanese woodblock artists capture waves.

The last time I was out paddling, when the sun was shining, I was struck by the shapes of the light on the water.

Lately I find myself seeing in terms of positive and negative, which I guess is a sign that I am seeing like a printer. It’s weird to look at the movement of water and see it as a printing block - taking something liquid and lively and rendering it, for a moment, as static.

We paddled almost all the way across our long narrow lake. We’ve never done that before, usually we stay close to shore and spy on the lake denizens as we pass. But the weird calm of the lake, with its FLAP of sailboats mostly becalmed in place, and the occasional speedboat creating a wake to navigate (a SLAP of speedboats not in evidence - unusual for a Sunday afternoon) drew us away from the shore. As we paddled and talked, and one of our party took a quick dip, I thought about how much we need our people - the ones who tease about someone’s intolerance of cold water and comment on the quality of the light and commiserate over some challenging life moment. There isn’t a collective noun for paddle boarders. Yet. But I have clever friends and I’m sure someone will think of one.

x Robin