Opalescent.
The word came to me from the dawn sky, a poem in itself.
Opalescent.
Just saying it is fun. That trochee followed by a spondee, as if a question posed and disposed of. Those four vowels – that massive o, flicker of an a, then the two e’s, sounding not quite identical. The mystery of the adjective’s origins – at the commencement of the nineteenth century – why did English need such a word? – what was wrong with opal-like, opaline, opalish, already extant? I glimpse a young poet with dreams of original music, suffering love pangs, nibbling his quill.
Did any writer of note deploy opalescent? Wouldn’t you know it – John Ruskin, something of an over-writer, but the guy, above all, who taught his English compatriots to look at architecture and art and reflect what “beautiful” meant. “Titian hardly ever paints sunshine,” he wrote, “but a certain opalescent twilight which has as much of human emotion as of imitative truth in it.” Well-said! Maybe I should consider a fresh plunge into Ruskin’s mucilaginous prose.
Did I know about the magic associated with the opal, how an opal wrapped in a bay leaf bestowed on its bearer invisibility? My fascination tends not to fasten on folklore or myths – my skeptical semi-scientific cockiness typically dismisses divine interventions as hocus-pocus – yet there lingers about certain words a mystical aura. About that sweet word itself – opalescent – isn’t there something other-worldly – for it describes not a color, but an ambiguity of color, a murky luminosity, milky opacity, translucent but not transparent?
I carry on this way – and I am carrying on – to make a point. Listen closely and a single word widens into a world. For a word is a creature – with ancestry, experience, attributes, uses, history, any of which tease an intellect ever farther from what it thinks it knows. Attend closely to any phenomenon and soon enough you will find yourself dazzled by the amplitude of your ignorance, feeling for bearings.
Most folks dislike feeling lost. We hanker to know what we think, where we stand, the skinny, what’s up. We sign up for creeds, dogmas, tenets, party loyalties, orthodoxies so we can deputize our doubts to superior authority. The Nameless One, many insist, knows what he’s doing – so shut up with your nitpicking! The Nameless One, who exudes confidence if not competence, believes this himself. Any who question his infallibility should be… hanged!
A blessing and curse of our moment is the infinitude of information about anything. Digging up all these connections to “opalescent” would have taken me half a day fifty years ago; now that research, if you can call it that, occupies minutes. We sense how little we know – about anything – and that ignorance intimidates. AI confirms our demotion in the knowledge game. Algorithms obsolete the notion of polymath. Who can be knowledgeable when AI knows incalculably more?
What’s the use of humans, then, if machines can do everything better?
What makes humans useful, I’d argue, is our ignorance. We know we do not know – more than a little – and that inadequacy leads us to wonder, question, doubt, make art, strive to make sense. It leads us to ask questions about true or false, just or unjust, right or wrong and to invent improvements to our lot.
Machines are know-it-alls – and what they don’t know they can find out. They can calculate but not invent. Because they do not die, they do not fear death. A machine may define but never marvel at an opalescent dawn; will never exclaim “Wow!” or “I love you!”, which are the only good reasons to be.