Sunday, December 31, 2006

Words

Say them. Feel the way the syllables form and curl around your tongue. Watch them turn cartwheels and somersaults across the arena of your imagination. Smell them. Taste them. Delight in the pure joy that comes from a metaphor well-used or a comment well-directed.
Dare stop the tears that well in your eyes when Steinbeck's characters hold their heads high in The Grapes of Wrath. Try suppressing that giggle as Bertie Wooster bumbles again, and sniff in contempt as Jeeves saves the day again. Gaze agape at the fount of fables that is Neil Gaiman.

Why stop at reading? Stand tall when you deliver that impeccably worded one-liner with a smirk on your lips. Cringe when someone uses the same three adjectives all the time to describe completely unrelated things. Distill some of what you read (nay, drink, imbibe) into something of your own.
Try and make them stand on their own feet. OK. Maybe you are ambitious. Try and make them do their own stunts.

Use them. Respect them as they are your best friends. And your worst enemies.

6 comments:

CAR said...

Awsome post. Happy new year!

navrina said...

Extremely well written blog !
Every letter perfectly fit in the delicate "word" string, making it a beautiful "blogged" necklace !

Happy New Year,AB...


Navrina*

Ajay said...

CAR, Navrina: Happy New Year to you too. Thanks! Some posts 'just work', and I'm happy this came out as well as it did.

CAR: I have a post swirling in my head about your post on Quarter-Life crisis. Expect it here in a week or so.

Anonymous said...

aaahsome

nupur said...

Ajay: "Stand tall when you deliver that impeccably worded one-liner with a smirk on your lips. "
Can you please teach me how to get to that? I have been, all my life, stumped to get the right words to say at the right time! I see that people who read a lot can rattle away all those ear shattering words that put people in place ;-)

Ajay said...

Cathy: Thanks :)

DQ: It's not about reading. It's about usage. A close friend in COEP used to use all his vocabulary to good effect, and I realized that the only way to keep words from Barrons in my head was to use them. So I do. :-). It doesn't work all the time, but when it does, it's sooo sweet.