Absence and Antinomy, v3

[wasellajam]

Thanks for the feedback. Tense was an oversight: there's a draft out there where it's all consistently past tense, since it's supposed to be a particular sort of recollection, but I'm going with present for now.

The premise that no trace is left of the original inhabitants of the US seems off to me. I live in the Northeastern US where you can't drive 5 miles without running into half a dozen Native American words: roads, rivers, mountain ranges, towns and therefore schools and parks. The link below gives you the idea, the state I live in has its own link listed as do other states. We use these words everyday, which may be even more offensive to surviving descendants, I don't know. I think they're busy fighting bigger battles.

This is what prompted me to post this for critique in the first place. When I was writing this, I was thinking about my personal, if brief, experiences in those two places, which are basically as written (though I was more unnerved by my experiences in Australia, since they came much later in life). But then, when reviewing what I'd written post-NaPM, I realized that a place as famous as "Manhattan" wasn't exactly named that way by the Dutch. Not really sure what to do with this one on that front anymore, or if this piece could stand as referring to those places less literally.

You might be able to lightly reword it to point to the words being the only thing left, we say them but most don't even bother to look into their meanings. I think your point is worth exploring and grounded with the actual places, maybe a tweak can work.