Spring, the Air Element, and the Silent Extinction of Words

Imbolc marks the first day of spring in Ireland and within the Celtic Wheel of the Year. The principal element of spring is Air, which relates to filaments of all kinds – not least our vocal cords, through which communication, music, song, poetry, and spoken word arise. These are all expressions of air.

In recent years, emojis, gifs, social media slang, and careless abbreviations have increasingly entered everyday language, thinning meaning and flattening expression. There seems to be a growing complacency around this shift, and a willingness to contribute to the loss of older language and the knowledge and depth it carries. I am not sure how this lands for others, but I find it genuinely concerning, and at times painful to observe.

On a more everyday level, I notice this change extending into salutations and conversation. When people write to me, they often do not say hello or address me by name, moving straight into a request. Frequently, this involves an expectation of therapeutic support via email rather than booking an appointment at the clinic, free teachings rather than enrolling in one of my courses, or recipes and tutorials without engaging with my monthly or seasonal subscriptions. More broadly, there is often an assumption that professional services can be accessed without any form of exchange.

Over time, this has required me to become more deliberate about boundaries. In recent years, I began receiving letters at my home address from people I had never met or had contact with before, and on occasion people also turned up at my gate. As a result, I made the decision to use a post office box as my return address. This was a practical step, taken for personal safety and peace of mind, and it also led me to put clearer structures in place. Formal channels and gentle gateways now help maintain the quiet space I need in order to work well, without feeling restrictive to me personally.

This opens into a wider conversation about modern society and hyper-culture, but it is part of the same underlying pattern when it comes to the erosion of language and its roots. I find myself mourning what feels like a diminishing care for words themselves. Fewer people truly listen, and fewer still make time for warmth in language or for organic, attentive exchange. In an era shaped by digital communication, globalisation, high-speed living, and hyper-consumption, it seems worth asking how we might better tend to our shared humanness.

What appears to be disappearing goes beyond the loss of individual words. It points towards a broader thinning of presence, attentiveness, basic courtesy, shared values, and the need for balance in exchange. But I digress.

To acknowledge what feels like a very real extinction of words, and in an attempt to reveal the poetry that still lives within our language, here is some food for thought. A reminder of why this matters, and why it is worth protecting:

"We need to teach the children the old words,

words like brabble and grubble,

twitter-light and clinkerbell;

words which dance and trip and slip

and drip like honey off the tongue

Teach them that a hazy halo of cloud

around the moon is called a moonbroch

and that swiftly moving clouds are named cairies;

how a vixen’s wedding is a sunny shower of rain,

and that a single sunbeam breaking through thick cloud

is known as a messenger

Teach them to know the seasons and scents

of queen of the meadow and bride of the sun,

how to tell Jupiter’s staff from fairy fingers

and which roses bloom with the strawberry moon

Teach them to spot pricklebacks in the tottlegrass,

how to recognise a smeuse or a bishop-barnaby,

when to watch the sky for flittermice and yaffles,

and to pay attention to the dumbeldore and mousearnickle

as she graces the lazy leahs of summer

Teach them a few of the old Sussex words for mud,

like gubber and slub and stodge and pug,

so they know that the precious soil beneath their toes

is anything but worthless dirt

Teach them to be users and keepers and makers

of the words which bring the land alive:

a storybook, where everything has its rightful place,

including us;

where the wilds are fearful and filled with magic

and people do noble things, and nothing is impossible

In this world of harsh new words —

words like planetary dysmorphia and solastalgia,

extinction debt and grief mitigation,

megadrought and megafire,

anthropogenic, pyrocene,

words which alarm and get stuck in our throats

describing a world which our hearts cannot grasp —

we need to teach the children the old words,

so that if they should feel lost,

the old words might colour for them

a warm and breathing, living map,

a light to guide them safely home."

Poem by Caroline Mellor

Let us be mindful of what we create through the words we choose and the words we carry.