An admission behind my vow: my daily post arrives because words escape me. After four years of memos bulleted lists missives to donors MOUs, I don't find words easy to love.
terms appellations expressions designations names locutions vocables
The list of words for word in my thesaurus, its window ever open. I didn't want to use word twice in two sentences. I couldn't think of word's twin, I tried to find something as beautiful, I wrote terms appellations expressions designations names locutions vocables as the thesaurus suggested, nothing worked. I don't find words easy to love.
I don't know what has happened to my language. It doesn't want to breathe.
2 comments:
It doesn't want to breathe.
But this is a wonderful sentence! Sometimes it's the simplest metaphor that is the most telling and the most powerful. I'm not saying, simply, with Sidney, "look in thy heart, and write," but the thought of the thesaurus window open on the desktop is pretty scary to me: I use it only as a point of last resource.
Are you missing your regular writing place? Your window, your garden, the sounds of home?
I'm addicted to thesauri and dictionaries. I take some cheer from the fact that Wallace Stevens, a poet I admire, regularly read the dictionary.
Then again sometimes I consult these things as a way of NOT doing work, dithering over word choice rather than writing.
I was never overly fond of my writing space at the old house (a cramped converted nursery), so it isn't the home per se I'm missing. Actually the 6 Month House is a great place to write: the city bustle that surrounds it reminds of the house in which I composed my dissertation. I think what I'm having trouble with is my transition from administrator to the rest of my life as scholar/writer. That horizon seems too long, the obligations too numerous, and my skills too rusty.
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