I'm amazed that, even as an adult, my grip on language still finds ways to flex and tighten around the elusive concept. I like to think I learn a new word every few days, though I have no counts or data to back that up. I'm seldom discouraged at the flagrant abuse of language I see in the world around me, like humanity is--on the whole--backsliding on the BRB LOL way of communicating, peppering their sentences with "like" like so much..pepper.
Once during an IM argument, I told a friend that his spelling was "atrocious", to which he promptly laughed. Honestly, it really was atrocious. At the time, his grasp on the English language was tenuous at best, but my efforts to educate him on the importance of proper spelling would've been fruitless, like the escapee from Plato's cave come back to tell the others what he'd seen. I've been noticing this sort of mentality popping up in a lot of other instances as well:people speaking and writing and instant messaging in some endlessly shifting cockney pidgin with no regard for the rules of grammar or spelling. I dont proclaim myself the golden boy of the written, spoken, or instant messaged word by any means, but some, i feel, are taking it too far.
I've been reading more lately. I try to get in a few chapters of a book every day, if possible. Currently, I'm barreling into the last 75 pages of "Hell's Angels" by Hunter Thompson. Great read. Thompson, i feel, approached language with an almost supernatural energy, as if his words were divined by tea leaves or the placement of tarot cards.
I remember hearing that Hunter would sit at his typewriter, stalk still, and suddenly--ZANG!--receive a jolt of energy, which he would promptly displace upon the keys of his Smith Corona. To learn to write, he would type "The Great Gatsby" over and over, allowing his hands and fingers to feel the music of the keys re-creating what he believed to be one of the greatest literary works in recent history.
Once I finish "Hells Angels", I have several other books queued up. Next is "Brave New World", for which I could not be more excited.
I've noticed my personal language has evolved somewhat over the last few years. Some time in the last two or three years, I started consciously limiting my use of the "you and me" dynamic in conversations. When one says something like "you and I have a problem", it becomes an entirely too personal affair. That language is meant to be as deliberate and specific as a bullet, and it can make tempers flare if used improperly. "You and me" can have some positive value when talking to a close friend, or to drive a point home, but in my usage, i tend to avoid it whenever possible. Instead, I started consciously using the "we" dynamic in conversations, as in "we have a problem". This language communicates that while there is a problem, you're not alone, partner, for we have a problem together. I've noticed that people react more favorably to "we" versus "you and me"
Language can tell you a wealth of information. If someone says "...when i was young" , this language is polar, its night and day, as if youth is some innocence that this person once possessed and can never again retrieve. This is not necessarily true, though if the individual is talking this way, they may just be a sad sack and a lost cause. The tendency ought to be toward the expression "...when i was younger". While still an expression of haves and have nots, it suggests that youth is not suddenly lost and gone forever (LOVE that Guster album, by the way), but rather that it leaves or drains from a living thing at an unknown and unpredictable pace unique to that living thing. I find this approach to be a slightly rosier take on aging. While youth is both finite and temporary, I believe the individual can, with practice, retain some of it for the later years.
Fairy tales can come true
it can happen to you
when you're young at heart
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