Meta-Conversations: Moderation

            “Talk to me about why I went looking for one word for moderation and I ended up with two,” I say.

            “Talk to me about why it surprises you that synonyms exist,” Haraa quips back from where she’s at work. I think something to do with Qevellen’s management—it has that look, of studying documents and deciding what she thinks of them. Signing them, eventually, since she has an open ink pot and a pen at hand.

            “I’m serious!”

            “I am too. Talk me through it.”

            I can almost hear Shame in that, but it’s a combination of Kor and Kef. Maybe literally. It makes me wonder how Kor taught Kef to take on his role. ‘What would you do in this case? Why? Talk me through it.’ I smile. “Kojukulijz is a modern-sounding word to me, relatively. And formed from discipline, koj, and ukulijz, which surprised me. I expected ukuvr, the word for desire: the disciplining of desire. But it was ukulijz, the word for cutting away unnecessary things. The discipline to excise the unnecessary and harmful. Moderation, in that context, is less about what you let yourself do and more about what you realize you shouldn’t.”

            “Mmm.”

            “But tokek, I don’t understand at all,” I say. “It doesn’t seem related to anything etymologically. It sounds old. And it attaches in my head to the idea of food. Why?”

            Haraa leans back in her chair to smile at my crookedly. “Because it used to be used in relation to not overspicing a dish.”

            I stare at her for a few moments. Then manage, “What?”

            “You wanted it to be something more complicated?” she asks, amused. “Expected something deep and abstract? Not everything is, datyani. You should know that.”

            I do, but it still strikes me as funny. “So when do you use one versus the other?”

            “Tokek is more casual. You can say it about anything: you have moderation in your actions, your relationships, your eating, whatever. But it feels more daily, routine, normal. Kojukulijz is more formal, and more about a person as a whole.” She rolls her pen between her fingers, thinking. “I would use tokek tactically: someone is moderate about their tea consumption. But if someone is moderate about everything, then I’d use kojukulijz. It’s a stronger word. Less about habits and more about character.”

            “Like Kor?” I ask.

            She snorts. “Kor is not moderate about anything. Kor is the opposite of moderation. Disciplined, yes. But not moderate.”

            “He’s good at cutting away the nonessential?” I offer.

            “He’s the instrument Thirukedi uses to cut away the nonessential. Thirukedi is moderate. But there is nothing moderate about a knife.”

            I think about some of the questions and emails I’ve gotten in the past few weeks. “Many people want your opinions about knives.”

            “Do they?”

            “They want insight on understanding other people,” I say.

            “Do they,” she says, and this time it’s not a question.

            “I hope they do,” I say.

            “And if Shame visited you,” she says, “would he agree?”

            “I don’t know,” I admit. And finish, “But I love people, Haraa.”

            “So does Shame,” she says. “But loving people does not always mean agreeing with them.”

            I wince. “Give me a word?”

            “Padujzal,” she says. Discomfort.

            “A better one.”

            “Jeqeshan.”

            That one takes me a minute. “Waterfall? Is that… literally… ‘running water, but downward’?”

            She grins.

            “Good one,” I say. “But why is down spelled with a ‘k’ if waterfall uses a ‘q’?”

            “To keep linguists like you and me entertained. Naturally.”