(First published in Facebook)

multigranularity
(to Cynthia)

a bowl of multigrain cheerios
made me think of my friend
Cynthia Schwartzberg Edlow
because a couple years back
she asked us all the question
what were our 5 favorite words?
i only remember one of mine
and that was “molybdenum”
but the noticer part of my brain
is sharper than the rememberer
and what i noticed in this bowl
of cheerios was the difference
in multigranularity between the
multigrain cheerios and other
multigrain products like bread;
the grains are mixed in the bread
but each cheerio is singular and
so the multigranularity derives
from a mix of individuals and not
from any homogenization but
the reason I thought of cynthia
and her question was when i
looked, the cheerios in the bowl
differed from regular cheerios
insofar as appearance goes: they
had an unmonotoneity to them.

And like Euclid running naked
up and down the streets of
Athens shouting “Eureka!”
(that means “I have it!”)
a fun-fact Eureka moment
happened to word-obsessed me:
the word “monotonous” is less
monotonous as the word
“unmonotonous” and
“unmonotonousness” is
more monotonous yet making
it my new favorite word.

There are three stanzas here.
The first is a big block of cheese.
The second stanza breathes.
This one’s shortnsweet. ❤