Play on words, Play with words: what do you want to know about you?
My first poem, which I can recite by heart, woke me up. I wrote it with crayon on paper, and the word play stunned me. I was probably about 5. I remember marveling at the non-rhyming rhythm, how the words spelled backwards carried another layer of meaning, and my delight that this thing came from my hand.
The poem taught me about myself. And I believe all creative acts do much the same thing: we make things to know ourselves better.
So what do you want to know about you? And what can you make to reveal it?
Fast forward to today, and my decision to practice this craft of writing, my way. And I often feel like I’m living inside language. What I mean by this, is ordinary words have come alive to me, and I learn them1 in my daily life, one by one by one. If I don’t know a word (or even if I do), I look it up, consider disambiguation, and delight in the relationship between the varied meanings across time and variants2.
Then things seem to happen in my life directly related to the terms I’m reflecting on. That’s the fun part.
It reminds me when a teacher told me, “if you want a great life, read great literature.”
Like the word bemuse. To me, this term also means “be a muse” with subject/object bewilderment. To me, a state of bemusement, is like studying a subject with a squinty eye. Muses traditionally bring inspiration to artists, but perhaps they too, find inspiration in the resulting works. I think so.
More Terms
The last bit of time has also brought me to new, personal understanding of the following words, which I sometimes call Terms of Endearment (TOE). I will likely make visual art about them one day, lest anyone say I’m confusing our shared language. Sorry, if this is getting all babel-ly.
Promote | Pro Moat – that emotional space that professionals need between themselves and their clients. Given that I work in the business of promotion, but don’t promote myself, a moat is an apt symbol for how I protect myself and get the job done for others. Every professional must protect themselves from energies trying to seize their personal castle, people trying to get ‘more’ for less from a sovereign. When you hire a pro, we are engaging two kingdoms, not one. And kingdoms negotiate at a high level.
Prepositions – this is a pile of words, all with viscerally felt implications. Ever have a friend “check in” on you? This is both a kind act of reaching “out” (from their standpoint). Sometimes, checking “in” is a way a person checks the temperature of their entire world with you. How does it feel? Usually good, if the person is a friend.
Prepositions are astonishing, because if you pay attention to the movement or positioning indicated by them, you can experience entirely different perspectives in your body. Think about jumping around vs jumping on vs. jumping in. The prepositions dramatically change where your body feels it is in relationship to the subject, even if you are not moving. This video is a great example of feeling positioning because it reveals viscerally (and intellectually) the understanding Neil deGrasse Tyson has of the chaotic Three Body Problem.
I can’t watch him and his fists representing chaotic stars without getting nauseous.
Space – I find myself longing for more physical work space (currently I run a mini-empire out of a closet under some stairs, a table, and a backpack), and mental space too. Space is a metaphor for all things with infinite exploratory potential: the empty areas between objects, the space between time lines, and even the acceleration of expansion of the universe, and dark matter are fascinating.
Space is also a region of our shared physical world that a bunch of tech bros seem intent on utilizing for their own reasons. So um, if I have to see one more phallic launch by fire into our stratosphere, or hear about some hopped up rich dude saving humanity by launching humans to a place we’d freeze and can’t breathe the air… well, I don’t know.
Let’s take care of home first, then enjoy space for a respite from tight quarters, I say.
Intend | In Tend – Tending to ones inner self, which mandates awareness of one’s inner nature. Like tending a garden, in-tending means we are clear on what we are in relationship with the outer world.
Hormones | Whore Moans – What can I write that’s any clearer than this?
Bemuse
FOOTNOTES & SUB-SUBTEXT 😉
- I have wanted to go back to school for etymology, linguistics, fine art, writing, and/or physics, but am not yet in position to do so. Plus, then I’d have to decide which discipline. Yet this self-study way, I get to work on learning about them all, inside my every day life, and weave together my own ‘masters’ program and document the work with you. ↩︎
- I loved this book. Daniel Tammet shares how he taught foreign languages abroad using methods of association even more than memory. He helped the language come alive for his students. ↩︎
