{"id":483,"date":"2014-09-19T17:12:03","date_gmt":"2014-09-19T21:12:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/macphoenix.com\/?p=483"},"modified":"2022-12-11T19:59:10","modified_gmt":"2022-12-12T00:59:10","slug":"the-pond-is-not-the-koi-the-pond-is-not-the-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/2014\/09\/the-pond-is-not-the-koi-the-pond-is-not-the-water\/","title":{"rendered":"The pond is not the koi; the pond is not the water"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-jetpack-markdown\"><p>So there&#8217;s this word, <em>Occident<\/em>, which means <em>from the West<\/em> as in the Americas or Europe. Contrast this with <em>Orient<\/em>, which means <em>from the East<\/em>. I had a vague understanding that <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wiktionary.org\/wiki\/orient\">one would easily orient oneself by the eastern, rising sun<\/a>, so that&#8217;s where the capitalized word came from, but I was never sure why the west was <em>Occident<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p>Well, the crazy soup that is the English language actually has a lot of logic to it. In this case, <em>Occident<\/em> and <em>accident<\/em> sounding so much alike is not a coincidence. Both come from the Latin <em>cadere<\/em> meaning <em>to fall<\/em>. An accident, surely, is related to falling. So are cadence, cascade, and cadaver. And where does the sun fall? To the west. Thus Occident.<\/p>\n<p>I dunno. Sometimes I glimpse the simplicity and elegance in all the chaos. It&#8217;s the closest I get to the divine. I also get a chuckle that finding the origin of an obscure word can send me into a <a href=\"http:\/\/zen-buddhism.net\/zen-concepts\/mushin.html?headerbar=2\">Zen state<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_import_markdown_pro_load_document_selector":0,"_import_markdown_pro_submit_text_textarea":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-483","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metablogs"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8nj3d-7N","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=483"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":967,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/483\/revisions\/967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=483"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=483"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/macphoenix.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=483"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}