Words
10/02/13 04:53
I am not an inventor of words. To my knowledge I haven’t contributed a single new word to the rapid acceleration of vocabulary in our generation. I have left that job to the scientists with their quantum theories, quarks, polymers, protons and potential energy. I have witnessed as the techies, with their lust for more and more data have led us through the parade of megabytes, gigabytes, terabytes and now petabytes. Though I do not know the term for a thousand petabytes, I am sure that it is a word I will be using before long. No, I am not an inventor of words. I’ve left that task to the rappers with their street cred and penchant for finding funky rhymes for everything from bling and beat boxes to thick and threads and the ever present “Yo!”
No, I do not invent words. I say that I am a writer. It might be accurate to say that I am an arranger of words. My daily habit of placing 1,000 words in a pattern called an essay or a blog doesn’t even employ a thousand words, really. Instead I use the same words over and over again. Sometimes when I read my blogs, I wish I could break myself of the habit of beginning sentences with the word, “so.” There are a lot of other words that I overuse.
And I am no poet. The precise placement of syllables escapes me. When I try to rhyme I end up with silliness, not rhythm. But there is also a rhythm to prose, though the rhythm of my writing might not be evident. It comes more from the dancing of my fingers on the keyboard than any other source.
My wife and I were married during the summer between our junior and senior years of college. Prior to our marriage, I had typed a few of her papers. After our marriage, we were full-time students for five more years, finishing off our college careers and graduate degrees. Our entire educational careers to that point were supported by a single Olympia portable manual typewriter. When we married, we thought that it would be no problem to share a typewriter. To begin with, I am a bit of a worrier and I am uncomfortable as deadlines loom. As a result, I am most comfortable when I have completed an assignment a few days before the actual deadline. Susan has more ability to work to tight deadlines. She can produce quality work under pressure and has demonstrated that ability over and over again. I don’t know how many times over the years we have mailed in our tax returns on the deadline, prepared by Susan, always meeting the deadline, always accurate. The couple of times that we have been audited, the auditors have commented at the precision and accuracy of her work. Other deadlines have been met, even if she has skirted closer to them than I might have otherwise done.
The other reason that we had no fear of sharing a typewriter is that Susan is an “evening” person and I am a “morning” person. But as things turned out I did my share of typing in the evening and closer to deadlines than I might have otherwise done. Susan has a particular way of typing that is a series of quick letters and then a pause and then more letters. The rhythm of her particular style of typing made it impossible for me to sleep when she was typing. I am not sure if my typing is more rhythmic, but it seems so to me.
Of course, these days, none of this has any particular meaning because the computer keyboard is far too quiet for it to disrupt my sleeping. Susan can type in any manner she wants as late into the evening she wants and it has no effect of my sleep. And these days, we actually have different computers.
Still, I like to think that there is a rhythm to my writing. A thousand words a day. Day after day. I’ve missed only one day in seven years now. Still, quantity is not a good measure of one’s output.
In order for there to be rhythm, there must be silence – some things need to be left unsaid. And in this life, the unsaid is sometimes the more meaningful than that which is spoken. Sometimes the space between the words is more important than the words themselves.
I don’t know what other writers think, but I do, on occasion, wonder what, if anything that I have written will have lasting value. I write primarily for a temporal audience. My blogs are read one day and forgotten another. There are so many words that it would take a monumental effort to go back and read the writings of previous days. I don’t expect that anyone will ever be enticed to do so, though vanity compels me to make them available on my web site. The few things that I have written that have been published in the traditional manner are also of fleeting value. Most of my publications are magazine and journal articles that appear one month and are forgotten the next. I am, after all, a preacher who casts words into the world. As soon as one sermon is ended another is begun. Today I have four services. Each will be unique, with variations in the words chosen adapted to my audience. Three of the services are in health care facilities where the residents are not noted for their capacities at memory, especially short term memory.
Still, it is hard to predict which words will remain. Lincoln said, in his Gettysburg Address, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here . . .” He couldn’t have been more wrong. The world did note and has long remembered every word he said. School children have been memorizing his words for generations. Politicians have striven to match his tone and his style, if not his brevity.
I, too, have failed to master Lincoln’s art of using fewer instead of more words. It may be, when all is said and done, after all of the words have been written, that there is more truth in what I have left unsaid than in the words I have written.
No, I do not invent words. I say that I am a writer. It might be accurate to say that I am an arranger of words. My daily habit of placing 1,000 words in a pattern called an essay or a blog doesn’t even employ a thousand words, really. Instead I use the same words over and over again. Sometimes when I read my blogs, I wish I could break myself of the habit of beginning sentences with the word, “so.” There are a lot of other words that I overuse.
And I am no poet. The precise placement of syllables escapes me. When I try to rhyme I end up with silliness, not rhythm. But there is also a rhythm to prose, though the rhythm of my writing might not be evident. It comes more from the dancing of my fingers on the keyboard than any other source.
My wife and I were married during the summer between our junior and senior years of college. Prior to our marriage, I had typed a few of her papers. After our marriage, we were full-time students for five more years, finishing off our college careers and graduate degrees. Our entire educational careers to that point were supported by a single Olympia portable manual typewriter. When we married, we thought that it would be no problem to share a typewriter. To begin with, I am a bit of a worrier and I am uncomfortable as deadlines loom. As a result, I am most comfortable when I have completed an assignment a few days before the actual deadline. Susan has more ability to work to tight deadlines. She can produce quality work under pressure and has demonstrated that ability over and over again. I don’t know how many times over the years we have mailed in our tax returns on the deadline, prepared by Susan, always meeting the deadline, always accurate. The couple of times that we have been audited, the auditors have commented at the precision and accuracy of her work. Other deadlines have been met, even if she has skirted closer to them than I might have otherwise done.
The other reason that we had no fear of sharing a typewriter is that Susan is an “evening” person and I am a “morning” person. But as things turned out I did my share of typing in the evening and closer to deadlines than I might have otherwise done. Susan has a particular way of typing that is a series of quick letters and then a pause and then more letters. The rhythm of her particular style of typing made it impossible for me to sleep when she was typing. I am not sure if my typing is more rhythmic, but it seems so to me.
Of course, these days, none of this has any particular meaning because the computer keyboard is far too quiet for it to disrupt my sleeping. Susan can type in any manner she wants as late into the evening she wants and it has no effect of my sleep. And these days, we actually have different computers.
Still, I like to think that there is a rhythm to my writing. A thousand words a day. Day after day. I’ve missed only one day in seven years now. Still, quantity is not a good measure of one’s output.
In order for there to be rhythm, there must be silence – some things need to be left unsaid. And in this life, the unsaid is sometimes the more meaningful than that which is spoken. Sometimes the space between the words is more important than the words themselves.
I don’t know what other writers think, but I do, on occasion, wonder what, if anything that I have written will have lasting value. I write primarily for a temporal audience. My blogs are read one day and forgotten another. There are so many words that it would take a monumental effort to go back and read the writings of previous days. I don’t expect that anyone will ever be enticed to do so, though vanity compels me to make them available on my web site. The few things that I have written that have been published in the traditional manner are also of fleeting value. Most of my publications are magazine and journal articles that appear one month and are forgotten the next. I am, after all, a preacher who casts words into the world. As soon as one sermon is ended another is begun. Today I have four services. Each will be unique, with variations in the words chosen adapted to my audience. Three of the services are in health care facilities where the residents are not noted for their capacities at memory, especially short term memory.
Still, it is hard to predict which words will remain. Lincoln said, in his Gettysburg Address, “The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here . . .” He couldn’t have been more wrong. The world did note and has long remembered every word he said. School children have been memorizing his words for generations. Politicians have striven to match his tone and his style, if not his brevity.
I, too, have failed to master Lincoln’s art of using fewer instead of more words. It may be, when all is said and done, after all of the words have been written, that there is more truth in what I have left unsaid than in the words I have written.