The Aging of Aquarius

I just stumbled across this quote again. I’ve seen it from time to time before but now that we’ve lived in Texas for awhile it makes sense. In the words of Texan Dan Jenkins it rings “dead solid perfect”.

 “I have said that Texas is a state of mind, but I think it is more than that. It is a mystique closely approximating a religion. And this is true to the extent that people either passionately love Texas or passionately hate it and, as in other religions, few people dare to inspect it for fear of losing their bearings in mystery or paradox. But I think there will be little quarrel with my feeling that Texas is one thing. For all its enormous range of space, climate, and physical appearance, and for all the internal squabbles, contentions, and strivings, Texas has a tight cohesiveness perhaps stronger than any other section of America. Rich, poor, Panhandle, Gulf, city, country, Texas is the obsession, the proper study and the passionate possession of all Texans.” 

–John Steinbeck, 1962: Travels With Charley: The Search For America

 

I don’t imagine that anybody in the world can get it except those of us who get it.

John Steinbeck was no Texas braggart, he was a Californian at a time when California was a wholesome youngster of a state just beginning to flower.

I’m no historian or philosopher but it seems to me that between the two Texas has had a rougher time of it and refuses to forget.

But, even if you don’t get it, as Lyle Lovett sings in his song of the same name, “Texas wants you anyway.”

 

 

I’m one of those word nerds who drives his family crazy by correcting their speech and writing. I do it to be helpful, I really do. I’ve learned to lay off in public because people are embarrassed if you point out an error in spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, or word choice. They protest, “You know what I mean,” but they’re really just embarrassed by their ignorance.

 

Why, then, are dictionaries enabling rather than informing them?

 

English is said to be the most difficult language in the world to master. But, for its complexity, it is also the most glorious.

 

There are no true synonyms. Every word that essentially means the same as another has its own unique feeling and implication. These implied emotions and judgments allow excellent writers to write between the lines, to manipulate perspective and emotions by inference rather than directive.

The best writers never tell you what to think or how to feel, they merely lead the way and allow you to discover yourself in their path. That’s the power of the language.

Words are my business. I talk on the radio for a living and write a bit on the side, so this stuff is a big deal for me. I don’t expect most people to understand or care about the subtleties and nuances of the language.

 

I don’t point out slightly off-target utterances, not even to my wife, just the ugly errors that may lead people to misunderstand or misjudge her. But I do ask English speakers everywhere to join with me in protest of officially redefining perfectly good, very specific words simply because so many people are too lazy to learn to use them correctly.

The Oxford English Dictionary has thrown in the towel and declared that the constant misuse of the word, ‘literally’ is now acceptable. It can mean literally or it can be used for emphasis as in, “It was literally raining cats and dogs.”

 

These horribly conflicting definitions are 180 degrees out of sync. The word “figuratively” is effectively dead. “Literally” is now meaningless.

 

Education is apparently no longer the Dictionary’s purpose. The arbiters of our language seem to have decided it is nobler (and perhaps, more politically correct) to reflect rather than guide communication. In doing this they leave it to the reader or listener to determine if cats and dogs are actually raining down from the sky or if it’s just a figure of speech.

 

 And what difference does it make,   you may ask? In this example,   probably none but it does empower hyperbole in ways that make purists like me panic for our sudden blindness.

 

If I can’t trust you to say precisely what you mean or to understand what I’m saying, what is the point in either of us saying anything at all?

 

These days we’re all giving up. We shrug and say, “Whatever.” Even the Dictionary is doing it.

 

We all suffer when our ability to communicate with specificity and clarity is eroded.

 

I understand that language is fluid and always evolving. I’m okay with that even though it can be annoying. I ply my trade using colloquial English and I adore slang, it’s the spice that enriches the language but is useless by itself.

 

Definitions can’t be allowed to contradict themselves just because people are lazy. At this rate, in a couple of generations communication will have devolved into grunting and pointing at things.

 

(That’s neither literal nor figurative, it’s just sarcasm.)

© D.L. Williams, August 16, 2013

I got my first kiss from a girl when I was in third grade. That’s what, about eight years old? That seems ridiculous, though I’m pretty sure of it. I was there.

 

Her name was Lorraine Latorre and I recall her only vaguely before and after the moment she appeared out of nowhere and, for no reason I can recall or imagine, kissed me on the cheek on the playground.

Let the record show I did not return the kiss.

But I liked it. 

I don’t remember if either of us said anything before or after the kiss. I don’t remember if I thought she was cute before then, though I sure as heck thought so afterward. 

(Stock photo of kids; sadly, not Lorraine and me.)

And let’s stop for a moment right there and ponder something psychologists have no doubt picked apart into tiny, tasteless, tedious pieces:

How can pre-pre-pre-pubescent kids be instinctively attracted to a person of the opposite sex? Isn’t there a biological component required to engage a chemical reaction that third graders haven’t begun to physically develop? 

I didn’t desire Lorraine and I’m sure she didn’t have any such feeling for me. We were eight, we weren’t capable of desire.

So, why was it a happy thing? Lorraine kissed me on the cheek and I liked it. 

But, why?

She was a beauty, I remember that. She had long dark brown curls and a complexion that was just slightly darker than mine. 

If I was writing a sizzling novel of elementary school lust I’d probably describe her skin as “florid” and I’d throw in a passage about the flirtatious, dancing fire in her eyes. Frankly, I don’t even remember what she looked like except for my vague description of her hair and skin. The experience of an eight-year-old sifted through five-plus decades of life is very sketchy and requires a dash of imagination.

Lorraine had an older brother named Ron, I remember that for sure. He was probably in fifth grade at the time. I steered clear of Ron because he was older and just too cool to approach. He was Eddie Haskell to my Beaver Cleaver. And, because I was afraid he’d find out what happened on the playground that day and beat the ever-loving snot out of me even though it was his sister who had kissed me, not the other way around.

But I didn’t just fear Ron, I envied him, too. He was grown up (ten or eleven!) and cool. He lived in the same house as Lorraine. He watched TV with her, ate dinner with her, went on vacation with her for cripes sake and probably even saw her every night and morning in her pajamas!

Lorraine Latorre changed me forever. She injected an Adam and Eve aspect into my life I couldn’t possibly understand at the time and still don’t. But I do remember that moment.

 

She kissed my cheek and I liked it, though I have no idea why.

Like you, I worry a bit. Okay, maybe more than a bit. We all do.

We worry about our jobs and money, our personal relationships and whether our kids are healthy and happy.

We worry about big stuff like climate change and politics, we stress over little stuff  like our weight or a new gray hair.

Worry, worry, worry!

We even worry about that.

On  Friday September 12, 2008, 25 people got out of their beds long before dawn, prepared themselves for work, kissed their families good-bye, left the house and died. They were killed in a freak commuter train crash in Southern California. My KNX radio partner, Vickie Moore, and I told their stories with relative dispassion because that was our job but I never got over the soul-jarring realization that you can walk out of your home one morning and never return.

It happens every day all over the world, of course, but we never imagine it happening to us. Among all the trivial stuff we worry about it never occurs to us to be worried about sudden, dumb luck death.

It happened last night in the nearby, very small town of West, Texas, which one resident described on the radio this morning as “a Mayberry kind of place.” There was a fertilizer factory in West which employed and supported a good portion of the 2,600 people who live in the town. It caught fire at 7:30 p.m. and 25 minutes later it blew away everything within a five block radius.

Now, almost 18 hours later, they’re still looking for bodies, alive and dead. Texas officials tend to play their cards quietly. Ten hours ago they allowed that there may be as many as five to 15 deaths. Most likely there are dozens of others who died with no warning, people who hadn’t even been aware of the fire but were close enough to have life literally blown out of them as if they were birthday candles while they finished supper, watched TV with their families and fed their dogs.

When things like this happen and my work day is done I wonder about that. What’s it like to die with absolutely no warning? One moment you can be laughing and the next moment you’re nothing.

There is no sense to be made of this sort of thing.

But today I’m not worried about anything. Nothing at all.