Today I looked out and remembered an old song. Only it was as new as the dawn. The notes warbled uncertainly, then cracked, but still a tune went on. Sometimes we must sing badly to ever sing again.

Today I sat down and remembered an old grief. Only it was as sharp as a thorn. And we walked, he and I, and spoke words that were never spoken. Our witness was the sky, the earth, a house and a river.

 

Probably

February 3, 2010

I love the word “probably”. It’s such a stout little achiever. It does so much, yet asks for barely any recompense. It sounds great too, like the crumbling of bread or the pleasant rumble of small boulders as they trundle down a ridge.

We say “probably” when we’re not really sure, yet want our words to have the ring of authority. “I will probably be promoted by June,” we say. Or: “It will probably rain tomorrow.” Or: “Our GDP growth will probably be 5.7 percent this year.”

If the word were to become extinct, would we be able to swiftly find a substitute just as sturdy, just as good? Probably.

Road

January 31, 2010

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I — I took the one less travelled by,

and saw Martin Luther, Martin Luther King, Marie Curie, Helen Keller, Tolstoy, Voltaire, Gandhi, as well as Genghis Khan, Adolf Hitler and a whole host of other sundry folk I did not know, and who looked like you and me. (There were quite a lot of people, in the end.) Everyone was plodding resolutely and trying not to look back at the fork in the path. “Well?” I asked. “What kind of difference does it make?”

“I think, my dear,” said Abraham Lincoln, patting me on the back kindly, “You will find that the difference is different for everybody."

 

Sensitivity

January 28, 2010

As a child, I listened in puzzlement to the story of The Princess and the P. Why was P chosen among all the letters of the alphabet, I wondered, for identifying a true princess? Was it because the word “princess” itself starts with a P? Was it because, when placed horizontally on its back, the letter P looks like a sleeping human, albeit one with a very big belly?

Would an A have been too angular, while an O would have just rolled out of bed? I assumed that a small p, rather than a capital P, was placed under the twenty mattresses and twenty eiderdowns, the better to test the sensitivity of a princess.

Only later did I understand that it was a pea, not a P. But now I’ve also come to understand that the speech the princess makes on waking up is full of double entendres. So maybe, as a child, I was on to something after all.

 

Lost

January 27, 2010

Where do the words that get censored go?

I feel we should track them and pin them down, before they wander off too far. You see, once you lose one word, it is all too easy to lose    , then three, then       and eight     six hundred and             billions and so on and      .

And before    know it, whole sentences of ours                , our history, our       , our      of ourselves and            we stand for.                                                      And what      become of    then?