Offensive

This is going to seem like old home week, but it’s not really. And you haven’t wandered down Reminiscence Alley or Recap Cul-de-sac or Memoire Privé or anything like that. I mean, I know it looks that way, but looks can be deceiving.

When we were stuck in our writing, and by we, I mean those of us who wrote poetry, including those I’ve previously mentioned, one of the exercises we used to do was to grab a dictionary, preferably a decent sized one, close our eyes, open it up and point at a word. It could be any word. Like the word, “literally,” for example. You get the idea. Then we’d write a poem about the word but preferably using the word. Really, the only rule was that the word chosen needed to be incorporated into the poem somehow. It was fun and good at unblocking writers. Sometimes we’d be really daring and try to craft a serviceable poem taking turns writing line by line – not something silly like you might see in those threads in various forums. No way. This was serious stuff. I tell you, some of those poems turned out all right. I was as surprised as anyone.

So I thought, why not introduce the same kind of thing for the blog. It’d be good exercise and useful for those weeks when I can’t think of some eldritch subject to drone on about, using words that are only tangentially applicable with only the widest sorts of definitions. I digress.

So, obviously, you need a proper dictionary to do something like this. You can’t rely on the desktop versions. Those puny paperbacks probably don’t even have the word, “blowhard,” in them. But I know for a fact that The Random House Dictionary of the English Language does. This beast has 2059 pages of unabridged definitive goodness in it. I could post a photo of mine instead of linking to one that is similar (the white, second edition one), but I can barely manage to post words to the internet, so a link it is. Oh, and by the way, you pronounce it just like you think you do:

blow-hard: n. Slang. an exceptionally boastful and talkative person.

It’s obviously a great big honking dictionary made back in the day. Which day precisely is in doubt, but the year isn’t: 1973. This thing really belongs in a library, but I’m glad to have it. Freddy O’Toole, a lovely man who helped me through a lot of things, gave it to me. I’m glad he did. It’s the gift that keeps on giving. And I think of him when I look at it. I won’t tell you where I think he got it, because even men have to have their secrets sometimes. This dictionary has a special place in my heart, more so than most books mainly because I know how highly he values books, and what can be learned from them and the trust he placed in me giving it to me. He rightly believes that wisdom, not just knowledge, can be found in books. He’s right, you know. Maybe there will be more on wisdom and such in a later post. Imagine that: that’s kind of like my first commercial, except in writing I think it’s more appropriate to refer to this as foreshadowing. Don’t believe me? This is what the big honking dictionary gives as a definition, minus all the gobbledygook about how to pronounce it:

fore-shad-ow: v. t. to show or indicate beforehand; prefigure.

I’m telling you, this dictionary is great stuff, great stuff! The President of the United States of America is Nixon and there’s an atlas included that highlights a mystical place called Yugoslavia, along with a number of foreign language dictionaries......that's right, within a dictionary. Major world history dates are also included, with the very first date being this, "c3200-2870 B.C. Rule of the first and second dynasties in Egypt". The damn thing is 3.5 inches thick. Words aside, it could be a weapon.

That said, I needed one word to kick off this great new experiment for the blog. And so I took down the dictionary and opened it up. What word did I open it up to? Well, that’s simple – the word I opened it up to is the title to my blog this very day.

And so there you have it – now you’ll know, kind of, what to expect when you see a one word title. Writing is all about give and take. The writer needs to give a little, the reader’s responsibility is to take a little and vice versa. You know how it goes. However, it needs to be said that I didn’t expect to take so much time providing the context and the background for these exercises, essentially and hopefully building up expectation and curiosity around how I’m going to use the Chosen Word, and then not even define, much less use or write about the word. Trust me, I really didn’t expect it at all, and I know it’s cheap and more than a little odious, or impertinent, or hateful, or…...