Neglect

For six years I have been troubled by a dream of a large, elaborate house falling down, usually into a mosquito-infested bog. Sometimes I am on a footbridge over the bog, watching the shingles fall off. Sometimes I am inside the house, usually lost in a twisty hallway or trying to find myself in one of the broken or badly foxed mirrors in the ballroom, where the boards are popping out of the floor.

Coming to St. Petersburg is a bit like waking in that dream. Or, SP is one place where external reality matches up with a bit of my private world, as if that world had found expression here, finally -- which makes me wonder if my vocabulary at home is not limited in some profound way. As if maybe I do not yet have a sufficient vocabulary for disorder, chaos and neglect, even though I sense these things and can make pictures of them in my dreams.

It would be very American, I think, not to have this vocabulary. I wonder how many words there are in Russian for what I'm talking about.

Thinking this way, I became curious about the etymology of "neglect," and sure enough, its root (also shared with "lecture") means "to pick out, to select." It's not quite the same thing as making something public (publishing), but publishing involves selection and drawing attention to what is selected -- which seems the very opposite of neglect.