Stuff – just happens to be, my favorite word.

 

As a noun, the Oxford Dictionary of English[1] defines ‘stuff’ as:

 

1) ‘Matter, material, articles, or activities of a specified or indeterminate kind that are being referred to, indicated, or implied.

  • a person’s belongings, equipment, or baggage:
  • (informal) worthless or foolish idea’s, speech, or writing: rubbish
  • (informal) drink or drugs.
  • (one’s stuff) things in which one is knowledgeable and experienced; one’s area of expertise

 

2) The basic constituents or characteristics of something or someone. Healey was made of sterner stuff/ such a trip was the stuff of his dreams.

 

3) Woolen fabric, especially as distinct from silk, cotton and linen.

 

4) (in sport) spin given to a ball to make it vary its course.

– a players ability to produce spin or control the speed or delivery of a ball.

 

As a verb, ‘stuff’ is defined as:

  • Fill (a receptacle or space) tightly with something
  • force or cram (something) tightly into a receptacle or space
  • (be stuffed up) informal have one’s nose blocked up with catarrh as a result of a cold
  • informal fill (oneself) with large amounts of food.

 

The Oxford Dictionary of English, further informs us on the verbal iterations of the word ‘stuff’:

 

get stuffed: informal, said in anger to tell someone to go away or as an expression of contempt.

not give a stuff: informal, not care at all.

stuff it: informal, said to express indifference.

that’s the stuff: informal, said in approval of what has just been done or said.

Stuff, is our world. It’s the contents, the objects, thoughts and things that fill the spaces in-between. What’s my stuff, isn’t always your stuff – yet, stuff, is always something that remains present, gets shifted into various places – morphing forms, for an array of uses.

Tangled, contorted and precariously placed – materials, matter – stuff – forebodes, shadows and blocks. It is the material presence of our world that dominates. Stuffs, fills, forces, extrudes and bulges. ‘This is their world not ours’[2] – proposes cultural critic, Joshua Simon. ‘That’s the stuff!’ we originally proclaimed.

Commodities.

Material.

Objects………….

…..Stuff

……the hard stuff. Soft stuff. Small stuff.

It is us that will continue to live around and with – it. Stuff. Destined to be forever burdened with the ruins of what remains from our raging thirst.

[1] The Oxford Dictionary of English. Oxford University Press, 2005.

[2] See chapter: Their world, not ours in: Joshua Simon. Neomaterialism. Berlin: Sternberg Press, 2013. pp 24 -36.