Just one more thing

I frequently have trouble going to bed. Want to do "just one more thing". Corollary, I'm sure, to the morning ritual of "five more minutes". I end up emailing or texting myself story or blog post ideas (like this one), dog groaning to sleep next to me, phone too close to my face in the dark because I've taken out my contacts.

I discovered, quite by accident, that while my phone has a miniature version of Word on it, there is no way to, using the Word app, send the file to myself. There is, however, a way to have my phone read it to me, which was startling to find out in the dark one evening. Text to voice programs tend to be fun, when one uses them voluntarily. Listening to the little robo voices can lend interesting perspective. And they are unforgiving if your sentences are crap.

Funny thing, though. In those dim days a few years back when Limewire was still legal, I got a copy of Ginsberg reading "Howl" at some university or another. It was amazing, because "Howl" is always amazing, but it was also interesting because he sounded somewhat like a text to voice program.  Obviously, there was a depth of feeling in Ginsberg's voice that I have yet to hear one of those canned voices replicate. I'm still wrapping my head around "Howl", even all these years later (though I can recite the beginning of it from memory), and I hesitate to declare what emotions I think those were necessarily. A certain defiance, but also a certain level of wistfulness. It's a unifying poem at times, particularly in the third part, with the "I'm with you in Rockland" refrain (which I've seen, on the Internet, make a neat tattoo).

The "I'm with you in Rockland" part makes me think of other...mental hospital? Sanitorium? poems. "Flee on your Donkey" and "The Music Swims Back to Me", both by Anne Sexton, both just as wistful. There's also a disarming level of frankness in Ginsberg's work, and Sexton's, that can at times make you check to see if anybody's watching you read. Or make you check to see if your fly is done or whatever.

Poetry, even if I don't like it so much, is so very naked at times. It lays you bare, past the clothing, flays you right down to the bone.Fiction, though I dearly love it and feel actually comfortable writing it, still leaves you a shirt at least. Most of the time. I think because it's longer it gives you time to catch your breath, adjust your mask.

This isn't to say there aren't fictional pieces like poetry. Sometimes the language a writer uses is just so. You savor it, rolling the words over in your mind like a smooth stone, or a new vintage at a wine tasting. You explore what they evoke. It's hard to maintain that paragraph after paragraph, page after page.

Words Unsaid

Once I discovered that I could read books for myself, I was no longer at the mercy of my family readers. I picked my own books and reveled in the luxury of being able to read them --- myself --- whenever I wanted. However long I wanted. I in fact used to get in trouble, at home and at school, for "reading too much". At least I wasn't out robbing old people, right?

Reading only to myself resulted in an exponential total books read. It's also resulted in my knowing words that I do not, in fact, know how to pronounce. People don't use them. Seriously. "Wont" was a word Jack London used a lot in Call of the Wild; not many eight year olds hear that in everyday use. "Wan" is another one.

What about Latin? You know, the dead language? How exactly do you say "vici", of "Veni, Vidi, Vici?" Is it like "victim" or is it like "vice"? It's hard to talk about a show Doberman you like (Protocol's Veni Vidi Vici) when you can't actually pronounce the whole of her registered name; her call name is Fifi.

It's hard to sound cool reciting Ginsberg's "Howl" from memory if you trip up at the word "dynamo" (it's pretty early on, if you're not in the know).

I also try very hard to say peoples' names correctly. At work, I'm the one who makes the library's phone calls to people who have available holds. I'm occasionally confronted with a first name I have never seen before, or heard. Or heard of. When possible, I Google it and listen to a pronunciation of it (a few baby names web sites have this, apparently. Thank God.) Sometimes even that doesn't work, and then I pray for a voicemail. That way, I can say "An item you ordered" instead of butchering their given name.

I try to keep these things in mind while I'm writing. I say sentences out loud, to see how they fit together. I ask myself if I've picked the fifty cent word, instead of the one that people will be more familiar with. I ask myself if I've picked a ridiculous name, that nobody will actually know how to pronounce. I've read entire books without knowing how to say one of the main character's names. Case in point, L. M. Montgomer's Emily of New Moon trilogy; I know how to say Emily, obviously, but her best friend's name is Ilse. Do you say it kind of like "Isles", the other word for islands? Do you use a hard "i", as with the word "Is"? Is the "e" at the end pronounced in an "a" manner (like Elsa, but with an I?) Of course, if I watched the television series (it's on Hulu), I'd have the answer already.