Hi everyone. I'm Josh, and this is The Emerald, Currants and Trends Through a Mythic Lens,

the podcast where we explore an ever-changing world and our lives in it through the lens of myth,

story, and imagination.

The Emerald.

All that's happening on this green jewel in space. Wonder of wonders, words have started arriving for my 13-month-old son.

Words, there's mama and appa, that's me.

There's Agua for water.

There's doggy, of course. And berry and belly button.

All the important things. I say that words have started arriving because, well, where do they come from?

They're not his. He doesn't own them. He doesn't make the words, and neither do we.

We just pass them on.

And our parents pass them on to us.

And so these harmonic configurations of moving air, for that's what a word is, right?

This dynamically shaped air forms a rosary that stretches back across eons to the very first word.

And what was that?

Words are somatic for my baby boy. They're visceral. They're a big deal.

You can watch the air around his head just before a word arrives and you can see something

tingling there like golden bees in the ether. If you look carefully, you can see a rise upwards

from the feet. The ripple of the muscles of the belly, a softening and opening of the bones of the skull. If you

listen closely within yourself, you can feel that too. You can feel a word as it passes your heart.

Try it. The bones soften, the air rises, the belly drops, the eye sockets draw back. I see words

in my son's feet. I see them in his spine.

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