I have loved words ever since my Grade I teacher taught me how to read. Since then reading library books has filled my spare time. I think my initial love of words was heightened with speech training. I was taught how articulating the consonants and colouring the vowels of words is a gift to other people.
When I had children and they began to get older, I loved the words they would use. I can still feel the thrill when Trell would use a large word in a sentence but it was mispronounced. I knew then that he had owned that word and would soon get the pronunciation right.
By the time my children were teen-agers, the number one adage from their father was “Word don’t have meanings. People have meanings for words.” They listened to innumerable 2 ½ minute speeches from him on this topic. He loved words too. For me the idea that words don’t have meanings, that people have meanings for words was a radical shift, one that broadened my interest in how my teen-agers used words, especially when they did not have the same meaning for a word that I did.
Speaking of my love of words, this year I received the gift of The New Yorker, a new issue each week.
I read every article, underlining words I don’t know and circling concepts that are new to me.
When I see beautifully formed sentences I practise the prosody of them … outloud.
I even read the poetry in The New Yorker and I hate poetry.
When I have finished reading the issue, I always plan to go the dictionary and find out the meanings of those words I underlined, or discover where those concepts came from. Sometimes I even do it.
At this moment, I want to pick up a calligraphy pen and illustrate for you how beautiful words can look when an artist dallies with them. But that is not a job for now.
These days, the words I use are scribbled almost illegibly on a scrap of paper reminding me of a job I need to do, or of a thought I want to write about later.
After all of these years, I still love words.
I can’t imagine what my journey would have been like without them.
Arta
When I had children and they began to get older, I loved the words they would use. I can still feel the thrill when Trell would use a large word in a sentence but it was mispronounced. I knew then that he had owned that word and would soon get the pronunciation right.
By the time my children were teen-agers, the number one adage from their father was “Word don’t have meanings. People have meanings for words.” They listened to innumerable 2 ½ minute speeches from him on this topic. He loved words too. For me the idea that words don’t have meanings, that people have meanings for words was a radical shift, one that broadened my interest in how my teen-agers used words, especially when they did not have the same meaning for a word that I did.
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I read every article, underlining words I don’t know and circling concepts that are new to me.
When I see beautifully formed sentences I practise the prosody of them … outloud.
I even read the poetry in The New Yorker and I hate poetry.
When I have finished reading the issue, I always plan to go the dictionary and find out the meanings of those words I underlined, or discover where those concepts came from. Sometimes I even do it.
At this moment, I want to pick up a calligraphy pen and illustrate for you how beautiful words can look when an artist dallies with them. But that is not a job for now.
These days, the words I use are scribbled almost illegibly on a scrap of paper reminding me of a job I need to do, or of a thought I want to write about later.
After all of these years, I still love words.
I can’t imagine what my journey would have been like without them.
Arta
The words you posted on the cupboard above the dishwasher were such a great hook for a conversation with a teen. I remember being shocked by some of the newspaper clippings you would hang there. I wish I could recall a specific shocking example to note here, but all that surfaces for me is the head shaking incredulity of teen being drawn into the words.
ReplyDeleteI used to rip art work out of magazines and post it there. Once a circumspect, and then shocked person saw one of the nudes I had put there and said something to me about it. I was surprised and then taken aback, wondering if I was going far, though to me, I never felt I was going far enough.
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