I connect you to the words that connect you to yourself.

Recent Posts
I am summer’s TA
I am summer’s TA

Because it’s summer & summer plays by its own rules. Sometimes. When it damn well feels like it.

Read More →
Future perfect distance
Future perfect distance

Grades are submitted. The automated out-of-office message is on. My work computer and school bag are tucked away in a corner of a corner behind a corner where I can pretend they don’t exist for a couple of months.

Read More →
Eudaemonia
Mercedonius
writing, teaching, Elizabeth Gilbert, eudaemonia, inspiration
Eudaemonia
Mercedonius
writing, teaching, Elizabeth Gilbert, eudaemonia, inspiration

The business of me sees value in what others overlook and knows that nothing—no, nothing—happens as expected and everything—yes, everything—hatches exactly as it should.

Read More →
Mercedonius
writing, teaching, Elizabeth Gilbert, eudaemonia, inspiration

You already know the words.

You already know the words to everything you are ever going to write.

You have already repurposed the same 26 letters into tens of thousands of expressions of ideas.

You’ve already said what you know how to say, and now you want to say something new, something different, something you can feel but can’t quite put into words.

Welcome to my web, my capturing device, my frayed asterisk at the corner.

Capturing Device, the website and the blog, is for me what I hope it will also be for you—poetic license to rewrite myself (yourself, ourselves) on the world. As a poet, teacher, & changemaker, I capture the everyday, every day & give it back in startling & familiar ways.

You already know the words. Let’s put the ones you want to hard use.

Giving sagacious women poetic license to rewrite themselves on the world.

I’m Paula, a poet & professor who uses poetry and its adjacents (jk—everything is poetry-adjacent) to connect you to the words that connect you to yourself. You already know the words. Let’s put them to hard use.

Not complete but drawing your attention, marking out a space. It is violent, strategic, and imprisoning. It is beautiful, vulnerable, and strong.

But do I have to write a blog?

Some words feature their ugly with a sound and mouth feel that lingers after the word is gone (sludge, gusset, fetid, moist). Like acid colors and triangle patterns in nature, they warn you to stay away.

Others engage the sickly boniness of their aristocratic inbreeding (pulchritude, bucolic, effulgence) to simply scare you off & save them from doing work. And some are linguistic carrion flowers that lure you in with their liquid sibilance before springing their deadly denotations (acquiesce, hirsute, silverfish).

But a word like blog doesn’t threaten or disdain or tease. It doesn’t do anything but sit, like a tepid lump of beige (not even griege)—unformed, flabby, & tired.

Blog is the sole-surviving syllable of a shantytown portmanteau: weblog. Blog has survivor’s guilt. It’s a purposely ugly word, blog. There has to be something better.

So today, and probably tomorrow, I will explore other words to denote and connote this weblog of musings, missives, and meanderings. This confluence of ephemera, this commonplace, this capturing device.

Mercedonius Paula Diaz Mercedonius Paula Diaz

May Day (mayday)

A few years ago, I discovered that calling “mayday” is not a cry of distress unless you say it three times. In 2024, I am calling it out only twice. Does that mean I don’t need help? No, I can always use a bit of help. It just means that I don’t feel help-less. I might even feel help-ful.

Read More