Something to think about

If you could judge a book by its cover, you'd never read Language and Human Behavior by Derek Bickerton.

But you can't, and you should.

Among the many, many thrilling ideas in this book is the suggestion that we all think largely in words. That we need words to think. That these concepts are linked, and that language produces thought.

I don't know about you, but to me, that's a thrilling idea. I naturally want to conclude that by extending our language, we extend our ability to think. I've found this to be true myself, as, I expect, have you.

But there are languages that encompass different concepts from our own—concepts that are inexpressible in English. What are we missing by not having words for those ideas? How much are we limited by this? And to that point, how much are we limited by the vocabularies we do have, which certainly represent only small portions of the total the language has to offer?

If you're going to concern yourself passionately with some issue that's completely beyond your control, and reasonably ethereal to boot, Derek Bickerton will give you something to think about.

Paradiso

Remember this? It's been a while, but since then I've read the Inferno and Purgatorio. Now I'm in Paradiso, and brother, is it sweet.

To be honest with you, I began reading the Inferno when things were indeed hellish. Not as hellish as they'd ever been, and not as hellish as they got, but on the whole, they were hard.

You know what I'm talking about.

It's not inconceivable that I dreamed, on some level, that things would change as I read through the cantos, threaded my way through the seven circles of hell and up the spiralling mount to Paradise. Because sometimes books do mirror life. Coincidentally, sure. But it happens.

As in this case.

Paradise doesn't look like I thought it would. This isn't what I fought for. Now I know how Dante felt when he found himself unexpectedly in Eden. How did everything get so pretty so suddenly? When did the sky lift, and what's that light up ahead?

So my trick seems to have worked. Here we are in a glorious place where all faces show love, and a calm beauty prevails. Let it last, Alighieri.

Such pretty words

In The Grass Harp, Truman Capote conjures a little girl who calls herself Texaco Gasoline, "because they were such pretty words."

Sometimes, words are pretty. They feel good in the mind, in our ears, on our tongues.

For me, one of those words—on a par, I think, with Texaco Gasoline for mundanity—is telephone.

To think of the thing in my pocket taking the same name as an object that sat in small squadrons on office desks the size of tennis courts, with rotary dials, multi-coloured so you knew which one was for what, is crazy. To call the thing in my pocket by the same word as something with two horns attached to walls in English manor houses, which would connect you to an operator, is equally crazy.

The word telephone is so much more indulgent than the clipped, expedient, modern "phone". Telephone is luxuriant. Telephone takes time to say and to listen to. Three glorious syllables, which I like to draw out, instead of one.

Grown adults snigger when I call my phone a telephone. Friends chuckle. It's just a phone! Right?

Well, shorter isn't always better. And telephone is such a pretty word.

Unintelligible

Today's incredulousness is brought to you by a major web brand:

What's the problem? The dulled out scribble beside the Live Chat alert, friend. Can you read it? I couldn't, and it doesn't get any bigger when you enlarge the text.

Beige on beige tinytext. I'll keep that little gem in mind for the next time I don't want to communicate something.

Resolution

My professional New Year's resolution is pretty simple:

Don't write anything you don't want to read.

This could be rewritten as "Don't write anything you don't want to", but I think the extra word will add validity in the face of crushing, soul-destroying client requests which, though they're few and far between these days, do still come in occasionally.

The precipitate of those final weeks prior to Christmas, this resolution feels useful. While I'm hardly a literary snob, there's a fair bit I don't want to read. Fortunately, most of it is actually dross.

This is writing

These days, the only "me-time" I get is after 1am. Which is saying something, given that I live alone. And that I'm on the bus at 6.30.

The only way I eventually get to sleep is two shots of rum, drunk with determination and in quick succession, straight from the jigger in the dim-lit pantry while the warm breeze teases the Blackwood by the window.

[promised]

[had promised myself something good would happen.

I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.

I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good would happen.
I had promised myself something good]