CHOOSING THE RIGHT WORD

 

Mark Twain said, “The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter. ’tis the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning.”

I was writing about an upcoming workshop I’m offering in May–GIVE RISE TO WONDER–when I tuned into a webinar in which the author used Twain’s almost right v. right word as a jumping-off point for his presentation. It inspired me to think about how I might approach this topic with writers (and with myself)

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My Outrage Is Volcanic

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Yet another mass shooting at a school. Yet another slew of hate-filled comments on social media and in the news by Republican politicians and their supporters. Yet another “Our prayers are with all of you,” from a Godless president. My outrage is volcanic.

(What follows is a long post.)

It began when I saw the headlines on Wednesday afternoon after spending a few hours in the company of a friend. First at the Met Museum where we saw the David Hockey exhibit, which I encourage anyone in New York to see. I left suffused with his sense of colour–pinks and greens and blues and yellows, very bright reds–and the way he does palm tree leaves, and all manner of sleights of hand by which he drew me into his world. Followed by lunch at a nearby Italian restaurant, and conversation.

Then I came home and logged onto the Internet to check my email. And there it was:

Another mass murder of school children, this time, teenagers. 17 DEAD the headline read.

Yesterday, a friend wrote about the Florida shootings and someone commented: “Don’t use this horrible trajedy [sic] to promote your political beliefs.”

I won’t repeat the whole of my comment to this woman–the first half expresses my outrage–but here’s the second:

Second Amendment Rights say this, and ONLY this:

“A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.”

Had the Framers been able to foresee what kind of weapons we have created in the 20th and 21st century, they would have framed this Amendment quite differently.

The Oxford Dictionary defines MILITIA as:

“A military force that is raised from the civil population to supplement a regular army in an emergency.”

The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines MILITIA as:

1. a : a part of the organized armed forces of a country liable to call only in emergency [e.g.] The *militia* was called to quell the riot.
b : a body of citizens organized for military service

2 : the whole body of able-bodied male citizens declared by law as being subject to call to military service.

We live in a time and age when no one has to have a weapon, even if called to join a militia in order to supplement the regular army. The regular army has more than enough weapons to deploy to those citizens called to defend their State’s FREEDOM. Not their own personal freedom, their STATE’S FREEDOM. America prides itself in being the superpower that has the most advanced army in the world. When do you think you (now that women have the right to join the army), or any men you know, will be called to join a militia. I’m betting: NEVER.

Every sane, moral person, not just Democrat politicians, has been calling for gun reform. GUN REFORM. Not banning guns. Merely, sensible reform to prevent lunatics and those with criminal intent from being able to obtain a gun without any checks. We’re calling on the ban of semi-automatic assault-style weapons to the public. No one has said you can’t own a handgun. NO ONE. (Personally, having grown up in a country where not even the police had guns, I am shocked that a country like America, which claims to be a civilised country, allows its citizens and police to have guns, but that’s just me. The number of school shootings in my home country, the U.K., since one in 1996, none. Number of deaths by shootings until recently, practically none.)

NONE OF THESE SHOOTINGS IN AMERICAN SCHOOLS HAS BEEN CARRIED OUT BY A MILITIA.

If you can’t think, even for one second, about the loss of those lives–those children who have now been forever denied THEIR RIGHT to post even the kind of outrageous insensitivity that you have; if you can’t imagine, even for one second, what those children’s parents are going through right now, will go through for the rest of their lives–and, I’m betting that not a single one is quoting their Second Amendment rights, at this moment; If you don’t have one cell of humanity in you to realise that what’s happening in this country because people like you think your fictitious Second Amendment Rights are more REAL and IMPORTANT than the lives of other people’s children, then you have no earthly or heavenly idea of what it means to be a moral, responsible human being. And, if you are a Christian, I can assure you that neither your God nor mine (mine being the Roman Catholic God) is looking down on Earth today and saying: “Good job, Lynne Farley, well done! You beat Me to it. You took the words right out of My Mouth.”

A Collision of Universes in a Rug…or Lucretius On the Nature of Things

Last night my friend and long-time colleague Brigita Krassaukaite arrived at my home armed with beer and a packet of Quadratini dark chocolate wafer biscuits. I don’t drink beer but I do eat wafer biscuits. I had put a bottle of Beaume de Venise Muscat in the refrigerator for Brigita who drinks sweet wine and eats wafer biscuits. She had come over late, she felt, though it was only eight-thirty, to work on her bio for her debut rug design at the International Contemporary Furniture Fair this weekend. I had asked when we met last week if I might read it.

After she was seated comfortably in the armchair I said, “Your bio is perfect if what you’re looking for is a job in corporate and your aim is to be as interesting as last week’s news.” She unleashed her infectious laugh. Almost nothing can quash Brigita’s love of life, its absurdities, its mysteries. Her love is expressed in her personal beauty, her tenderness toward all living things (except cockroaches), her love of individuality, her advocacy of aesthetic beauty and strength in Woman, her deep love of art…and her most disarming quality, an unquenchable openness to truth.

I have known Brigita for fourteen years, through perhaps some of the most difficult years of my life, in my capacity as an administrator of my father’s estate. Through thick and thin she was there for me. And, more importantly, for my father’s art. Perhaps out of everything she did for my father’s art and his estate, all of which I have not one second’s doubt my father would have admired, approved and been proud of, it is her trustworthiness and optimism that remain most dear to me. I mention these two particular qualities of her as art expert, colleague and friend because she shares them in her rug Stand, in spite of its sobering inspiration. Stand will be on display in the Dandelion Rugs booth, as part of the International Contemporary Furniture Fair at the Jacob K. Javits Conference Center, May 14-17, 2016.

What always disarms me when I speak with Brigita about art, in spite of knowing her well enough that I should no longer be taken by surprise, is her originality of thought, her depth of felt perception, and her unerring ability—like an arrow released from Artemis’ bow—to strike at the heart of a work’s voice, its illumination of the culture that gave birth to it through the artist’s vision and sensibility. I think I am always caught off guard because Brigita always speaks so little about herself. She rarely displays the depth of her knowledge of art and life, either philosophical or practical, unless asked point blank. It is like tapping on the side of a mountain, not expecting much to happen because in general a mountain is still, silent, tranquil, and suddenly finding oneself inside Aladdin’s cave, surrounded by infinite treasures and gems hitherto unimaginable.

It took very little effort on my part to revise her bio with her and bring her vision and voice to the page. (As I write this about voice and vision I am reminded of Peter Brook’s famous statement on producing a play: If you just let a play speak, it may not make a sound. If what you want is for the play to be heard, then you must conjure its sound from it.) If you wait for Brigita to speak about herself she may never utter a sound—that much was clear from her original bio. It would have served well as a wrapper for fish and chips from a chip-shop in the old days when this quintessentially English and best of all take away foods was liberally sprinkled with salt and malt vinegar and wrapped in old newsprint. But her bio did not serve well to describe her as an artist, and designer of textiles and rugs.

If you spend time in communion with Stand, you may find yourself drawn into the world of an extraordinary mind and soul. Brigita’s mind absorbs everything life has to offer, as much as any one mind can. Her soul breathes in and releases the eternal beauty of Woman and her stand in the culture into which she finds herself born.

I had only seen an early sketch, a tiny photograph on an iPhone screen. I was unprepared for the finished work: a collision of universes assailing my visual and emotional experience, transfiguring an object of everydayness into the ineffable.

Stand. Designed by Brigita Krasauskaite. Hand knotted in India.
Stand. Designed by Brigita Krasauskaite. Hand knotted in India.

She wrote later that night, “I would never found Myself in words without you.” I did not reply. If I had, I might have said: “I would never have found you in words without you.”

BRIGITA KRASAUSKAITE

Brigita Krasauskaite

In her debut design for Dandelion, Brigita Krasauskaite meditated for two years before and during production on the intersection between where women stand in the culture, and the universality of geometry that has inspired every culture to express the ineffable; finding that expression in the rhythms of Nature that shape the unique landscape of every country, inspiring their artists to pay homage to Nature’s boundarylessness in their art.

Born in Kaunas, Lithuania Brigita Krasauskaite received formal training at the Vilnius Academy of Arts where she completed Masters degrees in textile design and fine art.

The rug Stand: Its inspiration and the artist’s manifesto.

Upon stepping into a mosque in Turkey overflowing with its glorious craftsmanship, I was rudely awakened by the reality of not being able to admire the sumptuous mosaics of the central main dome from within the central prayer space [because it was roped off and…only men can go into that space…] of the architectural masterpiece.

preparatory sketch for the rug "Stand" artist, Brigita Krasauskaite
preparatory sketch for Stand

Although my eyes were able to freely travel throughout every angle of the beautifully tiled interior, it was not until they rested upon the enormous rug, with its repetitive pattern, which physically unites the entire space, that I finally was able to stop thinking about the religious restrictions.

preparatory sketch for the rug "Stand" artist: Brigita Krasauskaite
preparatory sketch for Stand

Stand was designed using a combination of two contrasting patterns: the opulence of Baroque style ornamentation juxtaposed with the intertwining structure of the mosque’s rug pattern; both superimposed over and seeming to restrain the depiction of three standing female figures uncovered from the waist down.

Preparatory sketch for the rug "Stand." artist Brigita Krasauskaite
preparatory sketch for Stand

It is my continued interest in and love of textiles which fueled to my decision to use the medium of floor covering to convey the fact that a rug is one-dimensional; and when standing upon it we are all on one even level. Essentially, we are all equal.

The rug "Stand" in Central Park, New York.
The rug, Stand, designed by Brigita Krasauskaie, displayed on a rock in Central Park, New York

Mother of Rome, delight of Gods and men,
Dear Venus that beneath the gliding stars
Makest to teem the many-voyaged main
And fruitful lands- for all of living things
Through thee alone are evermore conceived,
Through thee are risen to visit the great sun-
Before thee, Goddess, and thy coming on,
Flee stormy wind and massy cloud away,
For thee the daedal Earth bears scented flowers,
For thee waters of the unvexed deep
Smile, and the hollows of the serene sky
Glow with diffused radiance for thee!
On the Nature of Things – Lucretius

The theory of Democritus held that everything is composed of “atoms”, which are physically, but not geometrically, indivisible; that between atoms, there lies empty space; that atoms are indestructible, and have always been and always will be in motion – Wikipedia

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Where have all the Children Gone

Today is the third anniversary of the previously unspeakable in America: A mass shooting of first- and second-year children in their school rooms as they began their school day on the 14th December 2012, ten days before Christmas.

I don’t know what the ratio of children celebrating Christmas was to other seasonal winter holidays, but I imagine there was such anticipation in the air of all the joy this particular holiday brings–that of peace and goodwill to all. It is the time of the great Light Festivals beginning with Diwali and ending with Christmas or Hanukkah (depending on when Hanukha falls in the Jewish calendar).

All the expectation and joy of Christmas, presents from Father Christmas; chocolate gold and other gifts to celebrate Hanukkah; the season’s Festival of Light was about to begin.

Hanukkah that year began on the 16th December and would end on December 24th, passing the baton of light to Christmastide, which would reign for the next twelve days. But the twenty children at Sandy Hook Elementary School who died at the hands of a mass shooter would never see these things again. Their lives were snuffed out in the blink of an eye.

Mass shootings are now an occurrence of such regularity in the United States it has been calculated that since Sandy Hook, on average, one child has died every other day as the result of a mass shooting. These shootings have taken place in schools, cinemas, malls and other public spaces: all places that should have been a safe haven for any of us to occupy, let alone for children to attend without fear.

On the 14th of December 2012, I was in the middle of putting up Christmas ornaments over my fireplace mantel when I heard the news. Among my Christmas decorations I had placed a large angel on a side table in honour of my childhood memories of Christmas as the holy birth of Christ.

I was raised a Catholic and until the age of eighteen attended Church every Sunday, and on every Holy Day of Obligation. This ritual had begun with my First Holy Communion made at the age of six.

I left the Church at the age of eighteen. My mother told me after I had missed going to Sunday Mass once, when I was sixteen, as long as I lived her house I had to attend Church until I was old enough to vote. Shortly before this incident, Great Britain had lowered the voting age from twenty-one to eighteen.

Even though I no longer attend Church, Christmas has always remained for me a Holy Holiday, a Festival of Light, a moment of remembering Peace on Earth and Goodwill to All.

In my house it was first and foremost a sacred holiday. There were presents, and as a child I loved receiving and giving them. But from a young age I was aware of what I can only call The Mystery of God. So that even though I no longer believe in the God I was raised to worship I still believe in the Great Mystery of our interconnectedness, that mystery the Mystics call the Sacred, or the Divine.

The shooting at Sandy Hook destroyed one of our most sacred holy holidays celebrated around the world.

On that Friday, I made a small memorial for Sandy Hook, surrounding my Christmas angel with tea lights. On the floor I placed a number of Jewish memorial candles. I have continued this ritual every year. As soon we turn the corner into the month of December I am aware of the 14th looming on the horizon.

Every December my heart breaks for these children who had barely begun to create their destinies in the vast tapestry of Life, and for the adults who died with them. Every time I hear of another mass shooting in America my heart breaks all over again.

Today I watched a news programme briefly of a mother who spoke of how difficult it is to walk down school hallways, especially around this time, where the walls in corridors have Christmas artwork made by children from different years. These wounds will never be closed for these parents or for any parent who has lost a child to violence. I have no words of comfort. But as long as my heart lives it will remember your children.

The Privilege of Colour, the Prejudice of White

Like most controversial stories, this one began with a Once Upon a Time that lasted for approximately five seconds, before all Hell broke loose. As my response to this particular Once upon a time is quite long I will post it without further preamble.

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Inside the Underbelly of a Facebook Whale

I posted the original Facebook link that sparked the whole controversy to my wall a few days ago.

Yesterday a post in the Guardian–Meg Rosoff sparks diversity row over books for marginalised children–appeared.

A post on the American Indians in Children’s Literature blog regarding  Meg Rosoff’s comments on Facebook was (as I learned) a response of Call-out Culture. *

* Briarpatch Magazine defines Call-out Culture as follows. “Callout culture refers to the tendency among progressives, radicals, activists, and community organizers to publicly name instances or patterns of oppressive behaviour and language use by others. People can be called out for statements and actions that are sexist, racist, ableist, and the list goes on.”

I confess, as I read the list on Briarpatch, I felt as though I was reading a list from the House Un-American Activities Committee…the particular line of that feeling being brought on by, “and the list goes on.” None of which is to say that bigotry or prejudice in any of its nefarious forms should not be called out. But in all progress towards a greater humanity should  we not remember our humanity, above all else, and not allow it to be overshadowed by political rectitude?

Here is my response to the post on the American Indians in Children’s Literature post linked above, which the moderator and owner of the blog permitted to publish.

Hello Everyone,

Let me begin by saying I am not white. My parents were from Goa, India, my father emigrated to London in 1949, my mother followed in 1950. I was born a year later, lived there until I was thirty. I have since lived in the United States. I was an extreme minority during my growing years in England. Central London had so few Indians, that from the age of three until eleven, I was the only brown-skinned child in first my day nursery and later the two primary schools I attended.

I happened to read the thread that has generated this blog response because Laura Atkins (whom I do not know) appeared on my Facebook home page. She had mentioned Meg Rosoff and because Meg is a Facebook friend (and a personal friend), I suppose Facebook decided I should also get to know “a Laura Atkins” (as Jane Austen might have written it).

Although Laura’s posting of Edith Edi Campbell’s post and the ensuing thread appeared on my home page, and I was able to read all of it, I was not able to comment. Therefore, I hope, since the comments are moderated, you will permit my observations; which will be at variance with many of those who have already commented here, and possibly be in disagreement with that of the blogpost writer.

First, I would like to quote what was actually said because that seems to have been like touchpaper to dynamite. And, second, I would like to share my own very definite experience of growing up a minority in London where racism is always simmering under the polite veneer of British pleases and thank yous. (As an American friend once said, “The British are born saying, ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you.’”)

Here is what Edith Edi Campbell said:
I would say there are so few books for queer black boys, but there are just too few books for all our marginalized young people.

Here is what Meg Rosoff wrote in reply:
There are not too few books for marginalised young people. There are hundreds of them, thousands of them. You don’t have to read about a queer black boy to read a book about a marginalised child. The children’s book world is getting far too literal about what “needs” to be represented. You don’t read Crime and Punishment to find out about Russian criminals. Or Alice in Wonderland to know about rabbits. Good literature expands your mind. It doesn’t have the “job” of being a mirror.

Anyone who knows Meg Rosoff, who has met her, has spent time with her, who has read her books, will understand that she speaks first and foremost for the freedom of a writer to write what speaks most personally to them, and strongly advocates against writers being forced to meet marketplace demands and agendas. With her “The children’s book world is getting far too literal about what “needs” to be represented” she was not saying anything against anyone; she was merely stating the obvious that every writer battles against—the marketplace demands that stifle real creativity.

If her first comment is read without imputing to it any malice towards Edith Edi Campbell, or anything against the author whose book Ms. Campbell seemed happy to be promoting; if one had given Meg Rosoff as much the benefit of the doubt of good intentions as many on the thread seem to have given themselves and accorded to Ms. Campbell, perhaps a great deal of the emotionality—and, frankly, unnecessary ad hominem attacks and vitriol against Meg Rosoff—might have been avoided. And, instead, a truly thoughtful discussion on diversity in children’s books could have ensued.

Meg Rosoff is in a position, as an esteemed children’s writer—her debut novel, “How I Live Now” having won the Guardian Children’s Fiction and the Michael L. Printz Awards—to speak knowledgeably about children’s publishers, the marketplace, diversity in children’s books, and more. Her own several books are diverse in subject matter and characters and have won numerous awards. But such a fruitful discussion would be predicated on giving her first comment to Ms. Campbell’s post the benefit of the doubt.

As for myself, growing up in London I was both subjected to racism and privileged because of my parents’ ethnicity. Countless times, as I walked down the streets of central London where I lived, people would spit on the pavement just where I was about to step and tell me to go back to where I came from. Racism came my way often in the form of an interrogation at a party, where the polite “interrogation” would proceed thus. “Where are you from?” London. “No, where were you born?” London. “No, I mean, where are your parents from?” India. “Ah, so you’re not from here.”

On the side of privilege, my father, F.N. Souza, pioneered post-independence modern art in India. He is considered one of India’s leading modern painters and he was considered an important British artist during his tenure in England. His work is on display and in permanent collections of major museums around the world. My mother was an haute couturiere who dressed among other women of privilege the editor-in-chief of British Vogue. In this respect I grew up privileged in spite of the colour of my skin and the prevalent racism in England.

I read everything when I was child, every book I could get my hands on, including many books written for boys. I loved every single one. I really cannot think of a single book that didn’t leave me awestruck. And, yet, I never read a single book about an Indian girl growing up in London who faced racism. Granted, it probably didn’t exist, but I didn’t need to read such a book in order to discover who I was, and I don’t think it would have taught me about who *I* was. Because unless the little brown-skinned girl in that book also had my very unusual parents, I am not certain how I could have identified with her.

This is not an argument against writing such a book, but it does exemplify that while a black male child who believes he is queer might be lit up by coming across a book that has a protagonist who “mirrors” his inner life, it is equally possible that such a child will find himself without ever reading such a book. Or will not identify with that protagonist at all. But if that same child reads as many great books as he can—“The Silver Sword,” “Huckleberry Finn,” “The Compleet Molesworth,” “Treasure Island,” any number of contemporary books for boys (or for girls if he prefers, or both)—he will find himself.

Isn’t that the purpose of all the “mirroring”—that was so passionately defended on Ms. Campbell’s thread—for a child to “find” him- or herself?

Reading transported me to worlds I would never otherwise have known. They were filled with characters who were silly, or snooty, or bad-tempered, or kind, but ultimately they were brave. And they prevailed against evil. I didn’t care what colour their skin was. What I understood was this: Regardless of my skin colour I too could prevail against evil, just as my favourite characters did, if I discovered how to be brave.

And, finally, it is not as if we still live in an age where little black boys who believe they may be queer have no role models of male black queers in society at large these days.

No writer has a single narrative within them, as their life. We are all deeply influenced by our ethnicity, our culture, our socio-economic status, our religion, or dismissal of it, and so on. As writers we have entire universes at our disposal; and so many more dimensions that make up who we are. This depth and complexity of being an individual, and of being simultaneously part of a familial as well as a social culture is what allows great writers to mine material for their greatest works—the whole of that living diversity within themselves.

If they are then Black and Queer and decide to write a children’s book for queer black boys, they’ll do it because they want to (which was the author’s point of the book in question and not because “diversity is a trend”). This, by the way, was also Meg’s point, but she was shouted down. She listed the subject matters and types of young people she’s interested and passionate in writing about, all of whom are vastly different from her own sexual preference and ethnicity. But that comment was entirely glossed over.

What she tried to say, and eventually gave up, was that the marketplace cannot create an agenda for writers and then expect a great book to be the result.

Isn’t that the subject we should be discussing, and doing something about, instead of wasting our limited and precious time in vilifying a fellow writer?

The Age of Transformation: Where Nothing Is Safe, Especially Not Your Identity

Since there’s a conversation on the merits or demerits of Richard Prince’s recent “transformation” of photographs lifted from Instagram happening on the Facebook wall of my friend John E. Simpson, after he posted this article, I came across a different one, which said, among other things, “Everything inspires everything. But this isn’t an excuse to blatantly steal. If I plagiarize a column from Saltz and replace his byline with mine, would he consider it genius?” – Allen Murabayashi

I think the answer is that it would still be plagiarism if the only thing Allen Murabayashi replaced was Jerry Saltz’s byline.

However: What if Murabayashi were to take Jerry Saltz’s text and reformat it with different calligraphy and computer fonts; in much the way Richard Prince took Instagram photographs and “transformed” them using silkscreen? Would Jerry Saltz’s text be considered sufficiently transformed that it would become Murabayashi’s to sell, for as much money as his “transformation” could attract? Or could Jerry Saltz claim that merely altering the font and “look” of the text didn’t transform the originality of his thought realized through his choice of specific words?

At what point, or in which way, can one use another person’s writing, verbatim, and claim that by manipulating it visually– that is, calligraphically–the text itself has been transformed? Because that seems to be at the heart of the Prince argument and his “transformations” of other people’s images.

And if I alter this remediated image of Prince’s exhibition of photographs he appropriated from Instagram, does my remediated image qualify as an original work of art? Perhaps. At the moment, however, it simply qualifies as fair use, having been published in news articles and reposted widely on the Internet.

prince-photographs

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A New Chaucerian Age?

 

Cognac.jpg

I met Yvonne Durant at Brasserie Cognac, my favourite neighbourhood restaurant, the night before last Thanksgiving. I had finally made the move, the day before, to an apartment I purchased on the east side last summer.

We had (and have) yet to file the paperwork to the building for the proposed renovations.

By October it became clear the renovations were unlikely to begin before this summer, if then. So I gave the landlords of the west side apartment I’d occupied for ten years my required 60 days’ notice and relocated the other side of Central Park. Knowing I will have to move again once the renovations commence, it was quite a procedure to decide which items to unpack, and which ones to put into storage until the renovations are complete.

Yvonne was seated at an adjacent table. She struck up a conversation and I was charmed by her quiet elegance, easy demeanour and conviviality towards someone she had never seen before.

I have come to the conclusion that I am not a social animal, at all. I can be sociable–especially with friends and family members I  love–but I really prefer solitude to crowds. I would never start up a conversation with someone I don’t know, even if the person looked intriguing. Never is an exaggeration of course, but it’s rare for me to initiate a conversation with someone I haven’t met before.

Since that night at Cognac, I’ve had the pleasure of running into Yvonne at another local restaurant about a week before Christmas and  then, a couple of weeks ago, she came to my apartment for dinner.

This morning, she sent me a link to her latest blog post Yesterday Were National Grammar Day. (Somewhere among my numerous books in storage I have a copy of Woe is I, mentioned in the post.)

Grammar, syntax and spelling are strange beasts, and often disagreeable bedfellows. They evolve as culture does; and, as we all know from first-hand experience, very few of us like change, least of all the evolving kind.

However, I have a feeling that in ten years—maybe even five—we will start to see “u” as an acceptable alternative to “you” in formal writing, along with other texting abbreviations. Many new words and expressions that technology continues to inspire–and to direct–the current generation to invent have already begun making inroads into every day usage. The Oxford English Dictionary and other notable lexicons have begun to include them as acceptable forms of the written or spoken word.

New spelling, as an outgrowth of texting, is something I’ve been reflecting on for a while. I have a feeling we are on the cusp of a Neo-Chaucerian Age–where language is about to make a paradigm shift, the likes of which we have not seen since the 16th Century. I think about how technology is driving us to change the way we spell–and perhaps even change the meaning of–words Shakespeare invented. Words that since their invention have been the cornerstone of the modern English language.

 

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My friend Seth Michael Donsky’s work in progress is called Irregardless, because one of his characters–not quite Mrs. Malaprop but, like her forerunner, a graduate of the almost-but-not-actually-real school of words–uses “irregardless” practically as her trademark. Each time she’s corrected by another character she retorts, “You know what I mean!” And, in fact, we do. (Yesterday, Seth told me that in some online dictionaries, irregardless is rapidly becoming an acceptable alternative to regardless; so that, very soon he fears, it will no longer be a valid joke in his play.)

I don’t spend a lot of time parsing grammar when I write even though, among a variety of jobs I’ve held, I have been a copy editor and own a much tagged edition of the Chicago Manual of Style. For me the most important thing about the function of grammar is that it frames my internal and external perceptions and precepts in a way that makes them accessible to other people.

 

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This image of the latest–and last–printed edition of the Chicago Manual of Style is here because I adore azure blue. All the editions of the Chicago that I’ve owned and own have covers of fire engine orange–not my favourite colour by a long shot.

If Lesley Gore can cry at her party I can post a pretty cover of a pretty useful book. It’s my website and I’ll post if I want to, post if I want, post if I want to…. (It’s the ultimate postmodern reprise.)

 

I love Yvonne’s blog post title Yesterday Were National even though it’s apparently incorrect grammar. It has for me a musical ring to it.

I’m terrible at haikus but anyone who loves to write them, feel free to share your best riff on Yesterday Were National Grammar Day.

The fiction of grammar

For some reason entirely unfathomable to me, John E. Simpson‘s post on Facebook: Should you vaccinate your child? made me think of grammar fanatics, and the fact that I wouldn’t know how to parse a sentence to their satisfaction. I don’t remember being taught grammar the way Americans talk about it. Actually, I don’t remember being taught grammar at all, but I’m pretty certain I was. Perhaps I was made to break down sentences into their components and I’ve simply forgotten because it was so boring. But I can say that, today, I couldn’t name the different parts of a sentence, or the name of a clause and why it’s called that, or what one type of clause does over another type of clause. And I don’t care. Why should I? I have all the grammar I will ever need in order to write intelligibly.

Knowing more grammar than I already do will not help me to achieve my goal to write well. Though just the right amount of grammar–like Baby Bear’s porridge with its right proportion and temperature–will allow me to share ideas with other sentient beings beyond my felicitous feline, Zuli Souza, and my dangerous delightful dragons, and hopefully be understood.

writers who think it’s paramount, or even important, to know the difference between a deponent verb and  another type of verb (and I’ve seen quite a few on Facebook over the years argue about this stuff); unless they actually have to teach grammar for a living, or because they’re home schooling their child to pass national exams, knowing how to deconstruct a sentence for the Grammar Police will probably save them from grammar jail, but it won’t impress their readers if the writing is the sibling twin of sawdust.

In the middle of the night, after I had written this post, I remembered something a spiritual teacher I was with for about ten years once said about her ex-husband (and men in general). In her often hilarious way, she shared an anecdote of how one of the reasons she had divorced her husband was because of his obsession with things, in her mind, he obsessed over for the wrong reasons. She said, “He was constantly worried about the size of his penis. But I told him: It’s not the size of it that matters, it’s, ‘Do you know how to use it to its greatest effect?’

That about sums up a good and natural relationship to grammar. It’s not about how big your knowledge of it is, but how well it serves your desire to use an amazingly abstract medium–words–to make visible that which would otherwise remain hidden.