I have words, miniscule and humongous, hiding in closets and hanging from ceilings in the maze corridors of my mind. I pull them out and dust them off, like lost treasures from an antique attic, admiring their structure with nostalgic remembrance before tucking them back inside the overflowing locked chests from which they were removed. Words like dodecahedron and Constantinople, limpet and wastrel; words full of tongue on teeth and bite on lips. Words that feel far too good in one’s mouth to share indiscriminately.
Verisimilitude.
Hypothetical.
Melifluous.
They roust me in the night like restless lovers seeking comfortable positions, nestling in together against their neuron blankets, cozily settling back into sleep even while keeping me awake. Words with sharp edges and lean lines, lush curves and pillowed flesh.
Scherzo.
Eiderdown.
Ingot.
Reconciliation.
They wander sometimes, my woolly flock of verbiage, and I attempt to shepherd them back – at least to the very tip of my tongue – so as not to lose them to the wolves of ether. (It doesn’t always work. A bleating vocabulary is bound to be devoured by fiercer language, or – at the very least – strand itself on cliffs of ineptitude once in a while.)
Occasionally a word arrives at the last minute, breathless from running rebelliously about, and shows up in the nick of time for answering Important Questions with an exclamation point.
Hypotenuse!
Cerebrum!
Scheherazade!
Einstein!
Marionberry!
They are my constant companions, my linguistic menagerie. Palaver and chatter and prattle and clack, confabulation and conversation and colloquy and communion, repartee, observation, plaudits and tête-à-tête… I pet and cosset and groom and herd the hairy multitude into some semblance of obedience. (Even as I acknowledge that no tiger can truly be tamed and that elephants have a place in some rooms.)
But sometimes…
Sometimes their acquiescence is as yielding as a deep-rooted weed, stubbornly entrenched in the fertile soil of my imagination. And, like me, they endure flood and drought, heat and freeze; they wilt and crisp and are torn from the clay in which they are so comfortably ensconced, but they will germinate again in the driest firmament.
Pertinacious.
Intractable.
Obstinate.
Recalcitrant.
“Semantics,” they say.
Ah, but ‘they’ don’t understand.
.
.
.
I have words.
Exquisite,
Magniloquent,
Diaphonous
Words.
It behooves people not to use archaic terms. As a student of crosswords I have ran across such things as sphygmomanomater. That is a challenge to the spellchecker, but not so much to the patient’s arm. In the days of Pythagorus the word dodecahedron could gain you access to virgins even if they weren’t Vestal.
Actually I made that last bit up. But speaking fast and loose of a dodecahedron could get you killed. The mathematician that discovered the next largest regular solid had a sculptor carve one for his headstone. It looked rather like a giant golfball when he died. Later it was indistinguishable from a sphere. But hey, an eagle didn’t drop a turtle on his head. Aeschylus.
Superannuated terminology, from the arcane to the in{s}ane… I know I can always count on your didactic tutorials. 😉
Though I’ll freely admit I have more interest in monumental balls than in virgins, regardless of whether they are Vestal-ly variegated. 😛
In the spirit of Christmas, reach for the balls of Holly, He’ll be pleasantly surprised.
When I was little, shouting out the words to “Deck the Halls,” I didn’t understand ‘boughs of holly’. The only holly I knew, until at least the age of 6, was Holly Hobbie. So I pictured a bunch of Holly Hobbies in gingham dresses, lining the hallway and bowing/curtsying in their Christmas finery while I was “FALALALA-LAAAAAAH, La la la LA”-ing at the top of my lungs. 😀
The other festive melody I was prone to shout-sing was Angels We Have Heard On High. The extended glooooooooo-rias are just plain FUN to yell. (In both my languages.) 😉
Oh, keep going — I’m almost there, man. 😀
Oh, dear. So what you’re saying is, your…erm…ingress is imminent? 😛
LOL!! More like a Phreatic eruption. 😀
I am not a qualified volcanologist, but I’m fairly certain that would be… Steamy. 😛
And that’s exactly what that post was ……. 😀 :-O
😀
I do love your talent for words!
🙂