THE FIELDThe Field

English / Latin · remanere

remain

To stay with. What becomes visible only after the first naming.

Etymology

Latin remanere: to stay behind, to be left. English remaining kept both leftover and duration. This looking uses the second: attention that does not leave when the first name arrives.1

Semantic range

Mau with a field of ocean signals. Nainoa with a teacher. Letters around one person. Weil’s waiting. The same pipe, looked at again.2

What the gloss loses

Remain as leftover, as if attention were a residue. Here it is the act.

Misuse

Taking a living voyaging literacy as a personal brand. Remaining is not a telegram from the sea.

What becomes visible when attention remains with one relation long enough?

Notes

  1. Charlton T. Lewis and Charles Short, A Latin Dictionary (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1879), s.v. remaneo.
  2. Simone Weil, “Reflections on the Right Use of School Studies with a View to the Love of God,” in Waiting for God, trans. Emma Craufurd (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1951).