Anything emananating that does not yet have a proper name is perceived at first as eccentric.
That line is from my notes on David Whyte‘s Three Sundays series back in May 2024.
The word “eccentric” caught my attention, and so I started thinking of synonyms: weird, strange, “off.”
Off is an interesting word. I think of it mostly as a preposition. But the adjectival sense is intriguing. In fact, what is a little “off” is usually at least a little intriguing.
(Here’s the medley of meanings from Webster for this sense of “off”; I’m not sure my precise sense is among them: not corresponding to fact: incorrect: e.g., off in his reckoning; poor, subnormal; not entirely sane: eccentric; remote, slight: e.g., an off chance.)
If we go with my idea (that what’s “off” can be intriguing), then it would be fun to have an off switch: something you press to bring a bit of skew to something, so that you can view it anew.
