Entanglements

31st January 2022: haggard, n.1 A farmyard or similar enclosure where ricks of hay, corn, etc., are stored; a rickyard.

1st February 2022: bak kwa, n. In Chinese cookery: meat, esp. pork, that has been cured with spices, sugar, salt, and soy sauce and dried, popular in Singapore and Malaysia and traditionally eaten during Chinese New Year.

2nd February 2022: crafternoon, n. An afternoon spent making objects by hand, esp. practical or decorative items for use in the home; a social gathering or event of this type.

3rd February 2022: haterade, n. A notional drink that engenders or embodies feelings of hatred, negativity, or resentment; chiefly as part of an extended metaphor, esp. in to drink (also sip, etc.) the haterade.

4th February 2022: orthogonally, adv. In an orthogonal manner; at right angles.

5th February 2022: shakebuckler, n. A person given to fighting or quarrelling; a troublemaker.

6th February 2022: antiquating, n. The action of causing something to seem older than it actually is; the creation of an appearance of age or antiquity.

The boundaries of the haggard were old and flaking planks of irregularly cut wood, in places bleached by a hundred thousand sunrises and elsewere darkened in bak kwa coloured whorls where the moisture will never leave. This was the painting. The result of a crafternoon’s work of haterade abstinence. Her thumb gestured orthogonally from the brush as she plotted the next angle of perspective. A recovering shakebuckler, addicted to the dopamine hits of sharp posts in a virtual world, now antiquating these imagined planks of wood on a once bare canvas, now so marked, now so hers.