Word of the Day: kelemenopy

What's "the word I'm thinking of"? Today it's....

kelemenopy (noun)

A straight-line sequence through the middle of everything, leading nowhere

"In ancient sailors' fearful imaginations, ships that sailed in a straight line toward the watery horizon would fall off the edge of the world, in a voyage of kelemenopy."

A straight line to nowhere. Things seem to be going swimmingly sometimes, and then they get suddenly interrupted. Derailed. Cut off. Somebody dies, a job ends unexpectedly, people vanish, your favorite TV show gets cancelled before all the threads unspool. The ship hits an iceberg.

Like the time my old Mustang broke down in the middle of the Brooklyn Bridge. Like the time I got "laid off" from my magazine editing job. Like the novel I abandoned because I couldn't figure out how to end it: kelemenopy. But sometimes you have to reach nowhere ("now here") in order to figure out how to start over again.