Feb 10th and 11th

*************~Some explications, but the work must keep its mysteries intact~*****

I will not fully explain the meaning behind my inclusion of the word "mimosa" in the composition shown above, but primarily/mostly it has to do with the etymological root-meaning of the word, and secondarily as a reference to the plant known as mimosa, a plant whose leaflets fold up closed when they're touched. There is no reference to the drink known as "mimosa" intended, but one may add that if one wishes.

In the newer version, I replaced the place-name/wine-name "Chardonnay" with the Romanian word "vin" meaning "wine", which has the identical form ("vin") in French, both words independently inherited from Latin "vinum" (="wine"). I removed "Chardonnay", a French name for a specific wine, because it sounded too fancy for my intention: it was therefore not usable for this work. I had mentioned "Chardonnay" because I was drinking bottles of Chardonnay wine in February 2022. Fun fact: Chardonnay wine is named after a village called Chardonnay in France, and the village was named so because a lot of thistle grew there: "chardon" is the French word for "thistle", deriving from a Latin word "cardo"/"cardonis"="thistle".

I was not drinking expensive Chardonnay in February 2022: it was in fact some inexpensive bottles of Chardonnay from Napa valley in California that we had bought for a party/event (not at my house) for our guests, and there were several left over (I'd rather not say the name of the inexpensive California wine under discussion here; of course, there are many expensive and sought-after wines that come out of California, but these ones were not one of those). For years I didn't want to drink them, because I prefer to drink finer wine; but eventually, I couldn't resist. They weren't good, but not that bad. I mentioned Chardonnay on that page as an example of how alcoholic beverages are one of the staples that most people use to get through the ups and downs of life.

And I had specifically chosen to mention Chardonnay because that's what I was drinking at the time, and because I knew the etymology of the term, and I like how something seemingly fancy (the term "Chardonnay") comes from something as down-to-earth and ordinary as thistle plants (the seeds of thistle plants are preferred by finches, and other birds eat thistle seeds as well). So my inclusion of the name "Chardonnay" is also meant to evoke the thistle plants, and other spiny weeds, as well as the finches who eat the thistle seeds: the French word for "finch" is "chardonneret", and that word is a reference to how they're often eating thistle seeds (chardon=thistle, as noted above; hence, the word "chardonneret" is formed from "chardon").

The English word "chard" (as in "Swiss chard") derives from French "chardon", which as noted above, is from Latin "cardonis"="thistle". Already in Roman times, "cardo/cardonis" referred not just to the common thistle plants of Europe but also to the spiny cardoon/wild artichoke, and from there to the common artichoke, both of which are in the same family as the thistle; and somehow over time (in post-Roman times) the meaning range/semantic range of the carduus/cardo/cardonis words expanded to include the chard plants as well, which are often used in salads and are similar to lettuce. So via "chard", there's a connection between "Chardonnay" and "salată" (seen in the composition above), which is the Romanian word for "salad", and that word salată is also often used as the word for "lettuce" in Romanian, even though the proper word for "lettuce" in Romanian is "laptuca", from Latin "lactuca"="lettuce". The Latin word "lactuca" is also the source of the English word "lettuce", via French.

In this composition I show drops of water/rainwater dropping from a cloud, and I also mention water: though instead of the English word, I use the French word for water ("eau", deriving from Latin "aqua") and the Romanian word for water ("apă", deriving from Latin "aqua"), and I invoke water to stand also for various beverages, including juices and alcoholic beverages, which are mostly water;---if someone would have preferred that I had used the German word for water, "Wasser", or the Italian, or the Russian, or what not: I will remind such people that I chose to include the French and Romanian words for water and a Greek word for water (see the "hydro" in "hydrogen"), because of my history with Romanian and French and Greek: I'm part Romanian, part Greek, part German, part Russian-Ukrainian, plus the DNA tests show that I also have some French and Italian further back; but even though I have more German ancestry than French, I began learning a lot of French in late 1998, and my Mom learned a lot of French before I was born; and other early memories are of finding books on the French language among the numerous books we had in the apartment where we lived back then. Nor do I think that French is over-used: but just in case it is, I'm also using Romanian and English in this composition; nor do I think that I'm striking the wrong note by using the French word "eau", because for me and for many people the word "eau" evokes memories of all those perfume bottles that Mom had lying about, and those were early childhood instances of seeing the word "eau": and that's one of the main things that I want to tap into: those early memories and associations.

I also mention tobacco (in the French and Romanian form "tabac", and I also use a second Romanian term for tobacco: "tutun"), olive oil and garlic, salată (=salad), nitrogen, hydrogen, mercure (=Mercury/mercury), and you can see those as well as more in the image above.