Words, Those Squishy Things

Language is such a chemical / alchemical thing, so elastic and combustible with salubrious smoke. Put two slumbering, inert words together and the drapes can catch on fire or, at least, cause serious giggles.

I just read an article about a sports team described as exceedingly mediocre. That was worth a sudden smile. Give me an oxymoron and I’m happy. One of my favorites is Dark White. but the most famous is probably from the Bard whose Juliet parted with such sweet sorrow.

My third request for an email address from my step(less) son caused me to write in the subject space, A Gentle Nudge. It worked. He not only answered my request but told me a Gentle Nudge was the name of my step(less) granddaughter’s pre-school.

This got me thinking about possible names for an ice cream flavor, Transcendental Fudge or Existential Sludge. Get Ben and Jerry on line one.

I had names for my three daughters when they were mere tater tots. They are my aviary having each taken flight. Shari, my first-born, was Peanut Annie . Now, the strokes in her paintings move with a kinetic grace, a quiet ferocity.

Janice, my tiny one, now fifty-nine, was Chester Apple. As a deaf person she knows the walls of this world and how to climb them. She orchestrates her life through fathoms of silence with fingers like a Dudamel butterfly.

Lauren had to live with Brewster Gazelle. It is the strangest one of them all. She, in turn, dubbed me Chief Big Toe. Consigned as she is to the middle of the muddle, she has grown elongated wing spans reaching from porcupine meatballs to Venus in transit. She sees back from what use to be into realms beyond.

Those names of endearment were all scrupulously deliberated blurts that somehow stuck, at least in my memory vault.

I must have heard a sort of music or cadence in the syllables of Brewster Gazelle which later morphed to Brewster Gazelleshaft. Maybe I was influenced by the German term Gesellschaft but meaning has little to do with all this. Otherwise, I would have chosen Gemeinshaft. Look it up if you want to impress someone at a cocktail party.

Probably the best string of meaningless words is Fuckingbastardsonofabitch uttered by me only once in my life in a slapping, scratching, punching fight I had with Peter Dalebrook at age 12, I would guess. It was my first and last physical fight and those words flew out of my mouth as my entire repertoire of expletives. I still hear a mellifluous incantation in those sounds though I don’t suppose they would have much success as an ice cream flavor.