Sunday, 18 November 2007

• Nostalgia

  These words dropped into my childish mind as if you should accidentally drop a ring into a deep well. I did not think of them much at the time, but there came a day in my life when the ring was fished up out of the well, good as new.  -John Steinbeck
  

  This may sound absurd but on my journey of ascertaining the English language, I’ve come to relate words to memories.  People notoriously associate smells and even sights to past occasions, examples being peppermints and Christmas or cookies and grandma.  Certain words, however, bring about deeper remembrances within my own lifetime.  My limited vocabulary resembles a blockade of knowledge and wisdom.  Now, with dictionary in hand and stricter ears in use, I partake on a mission to relearn how to articulate.

  Yesterday, a meeting bombarded my work schedule and while my co-workers droned out the speaker, I listened carefully to her word selections.  Conduit, a magnificent word, used in the reference of a person transmitting information from the computer and relaying it the audience.  “I’m just a lowly conduit,” the speaker said to very little laughter due to her power point file acting erratically.  I wondered why the speaker chose the word conduit, a choice that affected her joke, as no one quite understood it.  How would I incorporate it? 

  During my lunch break, a newspaper article questioned the second amendment and used the word constitutionalthicket to describe his argument.  Where in the world did the author learn such an irregular word?  The word settled on its laurels, resting on the tip of my tongue for the remainder of the day. 

  At school, Professor Jacoby talked of democracy and asked his sullen students in class the definition.  While skimming a dictionary, I found another word that caught my eye:  De novo.  Defined: to begin again and I stopped in mid-thought.  Where had I experienced that word before?  It hit me, a hammer to the sternum; I had read it in a love letter written from a girl who lived an entire ocean apart.  I felt myself wasting away in class.  My feet grew antsy, eyes drawn to the clock and exit; I needed to find that love letter. 

  Once home, I sat in the eye of a storm as a whirlwind of paperwork and clutter encircled me.  After an hour of searching through unkempt boxes and smaller containers of non-word related mementos, I found a bundle of envelopes wrapped in a taut rubber band.   Amazingly, I had kept them intact and sorted by date. 

  Reading the letters for the first time in years, I imagined myself creating and choosing the words on the paper.  Going through similar motions, would I use her same methods?  Could I change the course of time, loving and living happily ever after?  No, but the mere thought of altering the past by the variety of my vocabulary revealed that these love letters contained pieces of her soul.  It seemed impossible to pour your heart out and not expect spillover.  

  Her name was Jackie and we had met at a concert in London.  I tried on numerous occasions to acquire her hand alongside her first true love, music.  Not a day would pass when the soft delicacies of symphonies filled her loft; music her father used to play when she was a child dancing halos in her living room.  She possessed a confidence unusual of people in their early twenties and behind her lightly jeweled eyes predicated a belief that she could change me.  De novo, she would say, you can always start again.  Unfortunately, for her I could not.  I don’t have the words or the ability to explain the dismemberment of our relationship. 

  My quest of English enlightenment continues to open memories I figured closed.  What associations are possible for the words conduit or constitutionalthicket?  Will they be feelings of remorse and regret or understanding and pleasure?  De novo, maybe now I am starting anew.  The outlook is clear, the greater my terminologies within this language become, the higher probability that I will remember who said what and never forget why they said it. 

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