It's All About Words

I have to admit to a life-long fascination with words. As a kid I'd take down the biggest dictionary I could find and pick a page and read the words and definitions. They seeped into my mind until, sometimes, I could feel them floating around in my mind like the music that's always there. (Yes. I have a mental soundtrack. It doesn't necessarily have anything to do with what's going on, but it's there. Right now I'm mentally humming "Never My Love." Sometimes I annoy myself.)

Sending me to look up a word or spelling has always been an adventure. I once spent two hours looking up ten vocabulary words for a homework assignment. OK, next word is ablative. A's, an, ag, ae.... Ooo! Aeolian! Aeropause!

When I read I find myself pausing over a rich, perfect word, or phrase. Even reading silently I pronounce each word in my head, and I stumble over the awkward phrase like a verbal cat that's wandered in front of me. And I'll stare at the blunder and try to figure out what the writer was trying to do, and how I could fix it.

It's a curse, yes. But at the same time I get true joy out of the delightful, subtle twist of meaning a really good poet can put on a sentence.

So it's a blessing, too.