Mis Palabras Grandes

I’ve been thinking. I want to put some of my thoughts down. Let me say how I feel, let me say how I feel before it gets burdened down by my inculcated tendency to use big words. Doi! I can’t stop. Have to be on the look-out. You see, I’ve been accused of using too big of words-- words like monsters so fast that they come out of the cave of my mouth and eat up all the little words while they have their backs turned (The little words share the same cave).

Let’s be honest. We don’t need gigantic, presumptuous words in the English Language if we have all the smaller ones that make them up anyway. Like instead of saying, “I was flummoxed,” why don’t we just say “I just didn’t get it—it was so retarded, like ‘what the heck…’” . Why do I default to saying: “That’s so archaic,” when I could say “That’s so last…(insert time period, month, year, etc.).” The other thing about big words is that they are inconsiderate of other’s space and time. Like bad guests, or the guy I sat by today on the bus. Who has time to text (or, gosh, for that matter, even speak) a word like ambivalent? People are offended by these words, and rightly so. The other day, I used “harbinger” in a conversation, and my friend looked at me as though I had just yanked her braids. Confronting a new word is like being forced to be talk to someone you haven’t been introduced to. Like what… you’re supposed to stop the conversation and ask a name, or what the word means? Both instances…so rude. I’m so excited that we’re cnslidting everything. I didn’t get it before, but I mean, like now that I have a life and a phone, I see that ‘breviations are the future. Look out, SOS, because, like, what’s more universal than the language of LOL?

Jk.

Ha ha.

Fellow English Majors and lovers of truth, beauty and goodness: don’t banish me to outer darkness to trudge beside the Twilight series— not just yet, anyways.

All joking and satire aside, I sometimes feel troubled by the way I can’t transmit everything that I feel or want to express into words. I should be an expert on this, by now, right? I mean-- having come so far in the study of my own language and its literature, you would think I'd have it down pat. But there’s something elusive about words and thoughts and the way they come together (or sometimes die trying). Believe me, there have been volumes written on this, so I won’t go into the theory of it now. Maybe you know what I’m talking about. The common saying is “Cat got your tongue?” You’ve felt it? (Personally, I’m not exactly sure how much of the trouble has to do with my tongue. But if you like cats, tongues, or have a quirky sense of humour like me, you should check this out.)

I used to view words like they were proud, seafaring vessels which bore our thoughts and ideas over oceans and onto to foreign shores—- ambassadors, if you will, between individuals, groups, nations. Sometimes the ships would transport just down a shoreline, from harbor to harbor, to disperse value and work out meaning within the system of one mind. But sometimes, the ship-words aren’t strong enough to carry the thought, and, topheavy, sink. Or the ship-word is too large to carry the thought, and it gets blown off course to meander in a sea of ambiguity and confusion until they too become lost and forgotten.
Or… like I have this great idea… but how can I narrow it down without using words? Or--and this might be the worst of the afflictions-- when I have a whole flock of ideas surging through my brain, wild-fire like, but I can’t make the words come fast enough to capture the impressions, can’t find the right ones to embrace them, and the thoughts escape like doves of light toward the sky, never to be recaptured. The ones I do manage to catch lose some of their luster, they whimper like caged nightingales. And I sigh, wistfully wishing there was some better way to speak what I think and feel. To say what I mean and to mean what I say. That would be something.

Writing is hard. Communication is hard. Maybe that’s why we have tried all the other ways we know to do it. Art, photography, film. Everyone knows music exists precisely because what it expresses can’t be contained by words.

But I will still try. I have read writing that soars above the daily grind, and is able-- in one swift, fluid motion-- to communicate not only content, but beauty—the type of beauty that threads like silver through the very warp and weft of the textual fabric. I have heard the people speak with power-- because they have something to say and not just the urge to say something. Language is a gift, one which, I believe, we are still opening.

Words A-part.

So, I was thinking... about this word. Don't judge me.
It's really cool.

Um... here goes.

You've got the word "a-part"

Now, if you put "a-part" together like this-- apart-- it means separate.

However, if you separate it, like this -- a part-- it becomes inclusive.

Just like the word cleave, which carries two opposite meanings within itself.
When we use it in some contexts, it means "to bind." Like in the Bible, when God commands Adam to cleave unto his wife. There is a unity, a wholeness. But "cleavage" ... like in geology, or other things :)... means a separation. A cleaver divides.

Other words like cleave, which have two opposing meanings in the one word, are called contranyms. Wikipedia world has a list of them here.

Check it out. Could change your life.

In the Beginning was the Word....

Word.

So... This is my first blog and my first blog post. I'm treading into uncharted territory here. How do you handle such a vast expanse? There are so many places I could go, and not go. Where are the limits? Obviously there are none. Anything goes that can be contained by the text. Should I give myself rules for what I will write or how I will write it? I don't know.

Pardon all the questions. I should address them in private to myself, and not to my audience. But why not address them here? Is this blog for me, or for other people? Is it first for me and then for you as readers? How honest dare I be? This isn't just an online journal. How much of my soul can the words carry? Is it my soul I want to impart? That seems dangerous. But what's life without risk?

Some people will limit their blogs to certain topics. That seems practical, but kind of reductive. I want to think of this blog as a blank slate, dream catcher for my mind. A room of one's own, but with room for unexpected. How do we know?

I guess that comes later. Too much Joni Mitchell, probably. Makes me go all meta.

The making of a blog has been in the works for a long time. But today was really springy and it feels like an auspicious time to start something new. (I've always thought they should start the new year when the weather can help to bolster people's spirits and resolutions. ) Something great is coming. I can feel it-- don't make fun of me now. (And I have no idea who will read this-- stop Em.)

So here's a new resolution: not blog... write. Right. I don't know what's going to happen, so I guess I just follow my feet.

Theodore Roethke wrote once that "we learn by going where we need to go."

I kinda like that.

Most religions endow language(Christianity) or the utensil of writing(Islam)with the primal creative power. Man speaks Language. Language Speaks Man.

So with those words, I do now dedicate this blog to the use of for me for the purposes of whatever I feel like writing/thinking/speaking about. May we have a happy existence together (my blog and I). What else can I say?

The Beginning.