Last weekend we lamented the loss of words.
\nHow they were stolen and multiplied and proliferated until they lost their meaning
\nand power
\nby those who didn’t understand what they meant
\nbut did
\nperceive that they had meaning
\nand power.<\/p>\n
I lament these words
\nstretched beyond their elasticity now floppy and loose
\nbecause it feels so hard to find meaning in the first place:
\nLike the arguments I had as a kid, in defense of big words
\n,that I can only win in retrospect,
\nwhere I would have said,
\n“the point isn’t to bludgeon you with their size*”
\n* though I’d be a liar if I said it wasn’t that, a little
\n,”but that it’s amazing to find that one word,
\nthat captures, that encompasses, that makes true
\nall the contradictions and nuance and confusion of an idea or an experience.”<\/p>\n
That lets you escape the feeling that it hasn’t happened until you can name it.
\nWhich I think was what I needed more than profanity*
\n* the words that didn’t need defended around that time.<\/p>\n
And the lost words were like that,
\npowerful
\nessential to trying to understand something, to figure it out
\nbut fuzzy. Foundational
\neven though we couldn’t quite pin down what they meant.
\nThey could be two things at once, in two places at once.
\nUncertain
\nbut always aware of their presence.
\nAnd now their absence.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last weekend we lamented the loss of words. How they were stolen and multiplied and proliferated until they lost their meaning and power by those who didn’t understand what they meant but did perceive that they had meaning and power. I lament these words stretched beyond their elasticity now floppy and loose because it feels… Continue reading Big words<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[628],"tags":[20666,569],"class_list":["post-2514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ideas","tag-appropriation","tag-language","entry"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4wnIz-Ey","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2515,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2514\/revisions\/2515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.terrorware.com\/geoff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}