Christina and Rée and Erin are making magic with words. They do it all the time and o! it makes me wild with envy and it makes me stutter with wonder and each word they choose is so right that I find myself holding my breath as I read all the way to the end where the explosive whoosh as my breath releases all at once in a cloud of joy.
Some of my blog friends have stopped up their mouths with silence. Did you ever read Harlan Ellison’s I Have No Mouth & I Must Scream? That is what I would feel like if I couldn’t talk or write or write about talking or talk about writing or write about writing. No words! A very quiet nightmare.
Beware. There are words fizzing and seething. A word geyser in the making. But no promises as to coherence, just that I am feeling the need to spew and shoot off my mouth and gurgle out this gush of words that keep bottling up in my brain. You should tap me gently on the head a few times perhaps before opening me.
Outside the window a darkling blue sky with shadow clouds. Chill temperatures greet each morning and evening this week and the wind flaps flags and rustles leaves and bends saplings. I notice the green and the not-green.
I feel the need for a pet, so much so that I keep thinking about trying to talk my husband into disregarding and daring the risk. Is it a spring thing? Fish aren’t enough. Everyone is out walking their dogs but us and we would so like to be out walking a dog. I know this is an unrealistic and petty fever of desire that bubbles under the surface. It’s not his fault: I have allergies, too.
Today, a gift of food from some of Anders’ students: Croatian nougat (chocolate yum!) and mixed nuts from Iran. Pistachios & almonds & cashews & two more I don’t recognize and since the labels are in Arabic I’ll remain clueless. I don’t think of myself as liking nuts mostly because I don’t like them any way but salted. No almond M&Ms for me, thanks. I like girl candy: no nuts! Haha! I would like to see a pistachio tree.
I know how to write my name in Arabic, if the college acquaintance who taught me how to do it wasn’t lying and making me believe that the Arabic for SUCKER was Elizabeth in a wavey dotted curlique of script. In high school I learned the Greek (Humanities & Art History) and Cyrillic (Russian Studies) alphabets and even how to write my name in Egyptian heiroglyphics. I have them written down in a journal somewhere. There’s something soothing about knowing how to write your name in other languages. Although, my memory of how to write my name in Arabic might not be so accurate anymore and I might actually be writing URKELBREATH instead of ELIZABETH when I do it now. I should ask my Asian colleagues how to write my name in Japanese, Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean. Then I could use a brush and paint my name black and spikey on white white paper. Add a spray of leaves and a red circular stamp. That’s my name, don’t wear it out.