I love words! Words are marvelous! It is astonishing to think that twenty-six letters and some little punctuation symbols can say so much. The Oxford English Dictionary estimates that there are around 170,000 words in current use, with an additional 47,000 obsolete words. In fact, there’s a book and a movie about the creation of this dictionary titled The Professor and The Madman. Fascinating viewing and reading.
I remember learning to read in first grade. Suddenly, those scratchings that I saw Mom and Dad reading made sense. Suddenly a whole new world exploded before my eyes. I could read my own stories and I could read as long as I wanted instead of waiting for bedtime stories. It’s entirely possible that I spend more time reading than anything else that keeps me entertained. And if I did nothing other than eat, sleep and read, I could not read everything that I’d like to read in this lifetime.
Words make sense to me (unlike numbers that I wrote about in my last blog posting!) I recently read about a man who struggled to read. He could read each word but a sentence was incomprehensible to him. A teacher asked him if he could visualize the words in his mind. That had never occurred to him. The teacher read him a sentence and then helped him visualize what was going on. Suddenly the sentence – made sense! When I’m reading, there’s always a movie playing in my head, giving me a visual look at the story. Words and pictures inside my skull: awesome.
Another movie to check out titled Words and Pictures starring Clive Owen and Juliette Binoche.
Sadly, there’s another side to words. As a child I was taught: sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me. I know that was meant to help me cope with nasty people and their nasty words. But it lets those nasty people get away with uttering their nasty words. Fact: hateful words hurt. Why not teach that fact to children. There’s far too much hate in the world. Excusing any of it as childish or just human nature is wrong. WRONG.
Words are about communicating and if you have a problem, you communicate it calmly and ask, politely, for help. That’s how problems get solved. Problems do not get solved with hate speech. Problems get solved by calm, rational discussions along with cooperation, and compromise. Do you want to be a creator of solutions or a creator of problems? Do you want to make things better or worse?
But let’s get back to the joy of words. Here’s a word memory that I cherish. I remember this fifth grade teacher and her name: Mrs. Coyne, because she had flaming red hair and she taught us about the Japanese art of Haiku. The haiku is a Japanese poetic form that consists of three lines, with five syllables in the first line, seven in the second, and five in the third.
We got to write our own haiku. Any chance to be creative got my mind going. I don’t have those long ago haiku but I’ve been writing them ever since. Here’s a few.
The swirling sound of….. The wash of the wind in the….. Trees makes my heart sing.
Quiet purr of cat…..Gentle coo of pigeon hum…….Bumble bee murmur.
Lightning flashes silk……The sky is cold gray velvet…….. Clouds like corduroy.
What if cats lived for……..dancing? What if coyotes…….and whales sang duets?
I’ve no formal training in writing poetry but I’ve occasionally given it a go. After a visit to Mesa Verde in Colorado I wrote:
Far Point
I walked slowly
in the twilight at Far Point,
savoring the mauve and purple air,
gazing at the sunset.
Cream and gold clouds scaled the sky.
A single star quickened over
shadows of distant rock towers.
There will never be another sunset,
another evening sky like this one.
I want to capture it –
hold it forever in my mind.
Dreaming of skyscapes,
surrounded by empty stone homes
and Anasazi ghosts,
I slept in a quiet, solitary nest
and knew a brief moment
of certain peace.
Need something to keep your mind occupied? I like making an alphabetical list of words with the same number of syllables. Easy: single syllable. Much harder: four syllables. I’ve had to look up some words as my mental dictionary was lacking. Had to look up K to get kaleidsoscope. Had to look up Z to get zirconia.
Another movie about words: The King’s Speech. Check it out!
I could write about words all day. And I’d probably put some of you to sleep. SO I WILL NOW SHUT UP – AND GO FIND A GOOD BOOK!
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