Tag Archives: dictionary

December 12, 2012 · 10:22 am

the dictionary project author interview: thomas page mcbee

Today, we feature an author interview with Thomas Page McBee. I first became familiar with Thomas’s work through this piece on Salon.com and his ongoing column on The Rumpus, and I was struck by the smartness and poignancy of his writing. I appreciate the way he observes people and incidents, keenly and from all angles, like turning a glass object around in your hand. Enjoy his words.

 

Thomas

 

1. Please share a memory/story/thought in relation to a dictionary/dictionaries:

I do a lot of fact checking for my day job, which sounds dry but is actually a beautiful thing. I find I don’t know what I think I know (how to spell “Robert De Niro,” for instance). I have to adopt a position of healthy skepticism, which is different than doubt. It’s a curiosity. So, that’s a metaphor. Though I no longer work with a paper dictionary, my life is rich with reference material: online dictionaries that contradict my spell-check chief among them. I’m always reading definitions, figuring out how words work. I love the logic behind AP Style, grammar as architecture, the construction of language. Metaphors everywhere! I traffic in them.

 

2. What is your current favorite word?

I’ve been drawn to muscular words like hamstrung lately. I like the combination of jargon, a powerful image, and the right kind of sound in the mouth.

 

3. What is the most obnoxious/insidious/annoying word?

Ugh. Moist. It’s effective; just too effective.

 

4. What word has been your (recent or past) muse?

Vulnerability. Though now I think I’m moving into a different space. Instead of looking at the phrase “Be Vulnerable” before I write, I’m visualizing “Have heart.” For me, there are a lot more dimensions in the latter, and it’s a key shift. With vulnerability, courage can be a byproduct, but with heart, courage — in all of its forms — is the actual engine. I see my relationship to this imaginary reader like I would anyone: sometimes there’s room for all of me, but usually you’re getting a slice. And that’s connection, that offering. It feels more real to me than just full-blown exposure, then asking to be understood. I’m not asking any more, I’m making a dynamic and welcoming you in.

 

5. For The Rumpus, you write a column—or essays in installments—entitled Self-Made Man? If you were to write a dictionary entry for “self-made,” what would it say?

To construct, with awareness and authenticity, a meaningful sense of self; an imprecise, endless fashioning.

 

6. In a recent essay of yours: “Self-Made Man: In Real Life,” you talk about the intersection of public vs. private and visibility vs. invisibility, particularly having to do with other people’s expectations and perceptions of you. I particularly loved this: “I think that we need to quit feeling obligated to trumpet our multitudes at the start of every interaction.” I’m wondering if you could speak a little to these concepts of (in)visibility and public/private life in terms of language and particular words. How can language serve to make us visible or invisible? Or, when does language fail us in our interactions with one another?

I think a lot about public and private space; what we reveal and what we hide and why. I think about it more now that I’ve experienced a gender transition, which just highlights for me all the ways I pass. It makes me question what passing even means; the negative implication is around being something we’re not, but I think it’s about being interpreted through one lens. I used to want to eliminate reductionism of that sort, but now I’m moved into a sense of it as not only a necessary way to maintain privacy and boundaries, but an opportunity to learn more about who I am through the ways I’m visible and invisible, the echolocation of what I put out there in all my shifting.

I think a lot about invisibility, about accepting what it has to offer. I think about the way identity is created and curated on the Internet in fragments; how self-conscious it is. And I think that’s a neutral quality, self-consciousness, where I used to feel otherwise. I’m just interested in what it is to be human, and I think narrative is a way to create a visibility that holds even in moments of invisibility: by which I mean, I think understanding oneself is to understand others, and that’s what allows us to not fail each other — in language or otherwise.

Also, it’s okay that we fail each other.

 

7. Please respond to the following words and definitions*, picked exclusively at random for you:

 

bar·rel  (ˈbarəl),  n.  [ME. barel; OFr. baril; ?  <  LL. barra, a stave, bar; see BAR, n.],  1.  a large, wooden, cylindrical container with sides that bulge outweard and flat ends, made usually of staves bound together with hoops.  2.  the capacity or contents of a standard barrel (in the United States, usually 31 1/2 gallons; in Great Britain, 36 imperial gallons; in dry measure, various amounts, as 196 pounds of flour, 200 pounds of pork or fish, etc.): abbreviated bbl., bl., bar.  3.  a revolving cylinder, wound with a  chain or rope: as, the barrel of a windlass.  4.  any hollow or solid cylinder: as, the barrel of a fountain pen.  5.  the straight tube of a gun, which directs the projectile.  6.  the quill of a father.  7.  the body of a horse, cow, etc.  8.  [Colloq.], a great amount: as, a barrel of fun

 

It’s interesting to think that that which contains is also a system of measure. And, of course, how we have pushed that measurement into the soft space of the immeasurable: a barrel of laughs, for instance. I’m interested in measurement, in containment. I guess I haven’t been thinking enough about barrels.

 

 

gang·li  (gang’gli), ganglio—

[gang·li-o— (gang’gliə),  a combining verb meaning ganglion, as in ganglioplexus

gang·li-on (gaNGglēən), n.  [pl. GANGLIA (ə), GANGLIONS (-ənz)], [LL.  <  Gr. ganglion, tumor],  1.  a mass of nerve cells serving as a center from which nerve impulses are transmitted.  2.  a center of force, energy, activity, etc. 3.  a small tumor growing on a tendon.]

 

I have thought a lot about neurobiology, especially mirror neurons. I’m not sure how connected this concept is to ganglions but since I’m not a scientist, I choose to not worry about that. Mirror neurons seem to me a biological imperative for empathy. They act when seeing another animal performing a similar action: you flinch when someone else gets hit by a ball. We all learn so much through reaction. There’s a baby that lives upstairs, a toddler now, and she went through a whole period where she behaved exactly like her dog: barking at strangers in a soft woof. We are each other more than we know.

 

 

 

tab (tab)  n.  [earlier also tabb  <  Eng. Dial.; in some senses contr. Of tablet; in others, associated or merged with tag],  1.  a small, flat loop or strap fastened to something for pulling it, hanging it up, etc.  2.  a small, usually ornamental, flap or piece fastened to the edge or surface of something, as a dress, coat, etc.  3.  an attached or projecting piece of a card or paper, useful in filing.  4.  [Colloq.] a record; reckoning.  5.  in aeronautics, a small auxiliary airfoil set into the trailing edge of an aileron, etc.

 

It’s interesting that human technology goes so far beyond our modern digital definitions. To think, the person who first created a tab. I always imagine buttonholes: what it would feel like to put your coat on for the first time with such ease. Revolutionary actions need not be large, just profound. I try to remember that.

 

 

fa·çade  (/fəˈsäd),  n.  [Fr.; It. facciata  <  faccia; LL. facia; see FACE]  1.  the front of a building; part of a building facing a courtyard, etc; hence, 2.  the front part of anything: often used figuratively, with implications of an imposing appearance concealing something inferior.

 

Thinking about if it’s possible to have a façade that doesn’t “conceal something inferior.” Inferior! I mean a façade of calm, of strength, of ease doesn’t necessarily conceal an inferiority, just a complexity that isn’t public. It’s interesting to think of all the ways we attach value, even in areas of supposed neutrality (the dictionary, straight journalism, you know, language). To think that there’s an authoritative source for anything feels very dangerous to me. My own narrative is multiple, how can I ever believe that the world is anything but a prism of perspective, blended?

 

 

hy·pog·na·thous  (ˈhī¦pägnəthəs),  adj.  [hypo  +  gnathous], having a protruding lower jaw.

 

I’m not sure I understand if this word applies to humans or only insects, but I do know that having a pronounced jaw was my dream for a long time, and now it’s a reality. Like I said, I believe in the profound, however small the container.

 

 

*Definitions taken from Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, copyright 1955.

 

 

Thomas Page McBee pens a column about masculinity, “Self-Made Man,” for The Rumpus. Find his work in the New York Times, TheAtlantic.com, Salon, the San Francisco Weekly, and the Boston Phoenix, where he is an editor. His manuscript, THIS FRAGILE FORTRESS, about crime, forgiveness, and what makes a man, won the Mary Tanenbaum Nonfiction award from the San Francisco Foundation and was a finalist for the Bakeless Literary prize. He’s spoken about his work at colleges across the country. To learn more, visit thomaspagemcbee.com or follow him on Twitter, @thomaspagemcbee.

 

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November 30, 2012 · 7:31 am

ring·neck·ed

ronnie-fieg-dr-marten-bowery-blue-camo-07

 

It’s the last day in November and so today we host our last essay in our first nonfiction november at the dictionary project. We are so pleased to have guest writer Nishta Mehra. Nishta writes a wonderful blog about food and life featuring both stellar recipes and poignant essays. Enjoy her writing here and check out her blog for more.

 

 

ring·neck·ed, (riŋ-ˌnekt) adj.  having a distinctive colored stripe or stripes around the neck, as certain animals and birds.

 

 

My Doc Martens are a holdover from what my partner Jill lovingly refers to as my “Baby Dyke” years.  They are one of the few extant remnants from this phase, along with memorized song lyrics to many, many Indigo Girls songs and a few very dear friends.

The boots are so objectively ugly—mud brown and clunky—that it must have physically pained my mother to spend money on them the year I asked for and received them for Christmas.  I was not particularly tough, badass, or butch, but those Doc Martens made me feel like I was, a little bit. They were not the norm at my very genteel and preppy all-girls’ school in Memphis, Tennessee, but they weren’t all that noticeably different, either; it’s not like I went after purple patent leather or boots that laced up to the thigh.  My boots were quietly defiant, marking me part of some alternative club the same way that the shoes’ very soles stamped a brand imprint into soft ground.

I don’t know why I saved my Docs; I stopped wearing them a long time ago.  Perhaps they seemed too significant, too sturdy, too potentially utilitarian to get rid of.  Or perhaps I was too nostalgic for those coming out years, my earnest, angsty youth.  But kept them I did, unable to throw them out or give them away each time I packed up my dorm room or apartment closet.

 

—

 

They come in handy the first time I go dove hunting with Jill.  It is early in our relationship, maybe the second year.  We are living together but still exploring each other actively, floating into new corners of experience like kids in bumper cars: meeting parents, learning quirks and proclivities, sharing passions.  For this afternoon, she dresses me in an old pair of her heavy canvas camouflage pants and a soft t-shirt (also camo), but is at a loss with what to do with my feet, for hers are much smaller than mine and I will not fit into any of her old boots.  Suddenly I remember my Doc Martens, long neglected and relegated to the bottom of the closet.

“Perfect,” she says as I lace them up, feet remembering just how much these damn things weigh.  I stand and examine myself in the mirror; it is the first time I have ever worn camo in my life.  I look like some alternate version of myself, still not particularly tough, badass, or butch, but feeling more the part than usual.

In the field, I follow behind Jill, treading my way through knee-high brush, grateful for the secure footing of my clod-hopper boots.  She has a gun slung over one shoulder and a folding stool over the other; I carry my own stool, a small, round cooler filled with water, and my journal.  We set up underneath a modest clump of trees and wait.

 

—

 

It’s important to note that Jill hunts for meat, not trophies; everything she kills we eat.  She grew up inhabiting a world that I only read about in books: Where the Red Fern Grows, My Side of the Mountain, and Rascal, stories where the main characters are self-sufficient children deeply connected to the outdoors.  They, like Jill, know the names of animals and plants, are comfortable with silence, have instinctive skills for survival, and are not afraid of much.

Jill shot her first gun at age five.  Her family grew or hunted pretty much everything they ate, skinning and cleaning and canning and preserving, using all parts of the animals they killed—not because it was romantic, but because they needed to.  Because that’s what you did.  Because it was a sin to let a once-living thing go to waste.

 

—

 

I did not grow up around guns, and the proximity of Jill’s shotgun, though I know the safety is on and she is extraordinarily careful, makes me a little jumpy.  In the yellow-brown field around us, bugs and mockingbirds skitter, backgrounded by blue sky.  Our attention is focused on a small watering hole some twenty-five yards away, the hope being that it will draw some thirsty doves on this hot afternoon.

I do not know what to expect, how I will feel about watching the woman I love kill things.  Though a meat eater myself, I came into our relationship with a bias against hunters, a lazy understanding that the sport was necessarily cruel and thoughtless, when for Jill it is quite the opposite.  She hunts to take an active part in the project of feeding herself, instead of shying away from the reality of the death that comes when one creature eats another.  She hunts because she is not a hypocrite, and she is not willing to be a vegetarian.  She hunts to plug her being into the greater cosmos of living things, the wild, cruel, and wondrous food chain into which we are all born.

“Hunting is the only religion I practice,” she told me when we first met, and so I am out here to see it for myself.

After about an hour of waiting, a pair of grey-brown, ring-necked birds appear on the scene and Jill manages to get them both as they come in to land, one smooth motion of lifting the gun’s stock to her cheek and its end into her shoulder.  The sound from the blasts echoes across the field, scattering more distant birds.  Jill locates the discarded shotgun casings on the ground around us and holds one up for me and instructs me to inhale: the sharp, acrid scent of spent gunpowder fills my nose.  “I love that smell,” she says.

We walk over to retrieve the birds before we lose sight of where they fell, their small eyes glazed over and spots of crimson blooming in their breasts.  I have never held a just-dead thing, so recently alive that it is warm and liquid under the surface.  Death has transformed them, making them more lovely and remarkable than they were in life, a kind of reverse benediction.  Before slipping them into her game bag, Jill puts each bird close to her face and whispers thanks for its life.

“You lived wild and free until you died,” she tells a dove, tracing the distinctive dark black ring around its neck with her finger.  “Not in a cage or a pen.”

At sunset, the hunting is done and Jill lays her six birds on the tailgate of the truck.  With skilled fingers and a pair of hunting shears, she cleans their soft bodies, first plucking their feathers, which float out into the air like soft snow for other birds and field mice to use for their nests and burrows.  Then she clips the heads, feet, wings, and removes the glistening innards, tossing it all out onto the ground as an offering of dinner for the creatures that live nearby.  Finally, what’s left are a naked row of breasts and legs, our dinner.

We cook the ring-necks just a few hours later, their flesh meeting flame on the grill,  eating with our hands, taking their bodies into our own for nourishment and pleasure.

 

 

 

 

black-white-on-benchNishta Mehra is a writer, middle school English teacher, and enthusiastic home cook who blogs about food and life at www.bluejeangourmet.com.  Her first book, a collection of essays entitled The Pomegranate King, is forthcoming in early 2013.  She lives in a suburb of Houston, Texas with her partner, Jill Carroll, and their four-and-a-half month old son, Shiv.

 

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November 20, 2012 · 12:04 pm

third

Bones of Magalonyx Jeffersoni, James Akin after a chalk drawing by W.S. Jacobs.

 

 

Fittingly, our third post for nonfiction november is for the word third. B.J. Hollars offers his interpretation below. I first became familiar with B.J.’s writing when I wrote a review of his book Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America. There and here, I appreciate his attentiveness to history, all of history, and the complicated dynamics existing within people in positions of power.

 

1third  (thərd)  adj :  next after second  —  third or third·ly  adv.

 

 

The Third

 

He was the third, but he was also the first.

The first to press ink to parchment and remind men they were equal.

The first to inform a king across a sea of his irrelevance.

Declarations were made, charges levied, but Thomas Jefferson—seemingly so concerned with the future of a democracy—was concerned also with the mysterious bones unearthed in a Virginian cave.

He was the third, but he was also the first to hold those bones and think: I hold in my hands a monster.

And he was the first to build those bones into a pride of giant lions thundering across the American landscape.

He was the first to designate a room in his White House for bones.

The first to fill the hallways with the corpses of unknown creatures.

I will authorize the Louisiana Purchase, he thought, and then I will return to the bones.

He was the first to fight the French on their theory of degeneracy, which claimed Old World creatures superior to the third-ranked runts born of American soil.

And as a result, he was the first to order the slaughter and transportation of a monstrous moose to prove to the French that America’s beasts were born better.

But.

He was also the first to get it wrong.

The first to dream too hard for too long and make a monster out of a megalonyx.

The first to hold those brittle bones in his hands and think he had a beast.

He did not.

(What he had was a giant sloth).

But Jefferson had dreamed a creature into creation he called “Great-claw,” and though the giant lion did not exist, when Jefferson held those bones in the East Room of the White House, he confused a monster for a miracle.

This from the man who once confused “all men are created equal” with “all white men.”

Who wrote of “unalienable Rights” (but only if you were white).

He was the third to overlook these contradictions.

The third to sound the call for liberty, while fitting shackles to feet and fists.

What he needed, Jefferson knew, was a monster bigger than the one he’d helped create.

A giant lion, he thought, will surely eat this wolf.   

Slavery, Jefferson once claimed, was like holding a wolf by the ear.  And though he held tight to that wolf, he knew not how to release it.

Jefferson also held tight to his giant lion, and though science could not support the stature of the creature, he believed in it all the same.

He believed because he needed to.

Because America needed a giant lion to ensure its dominance.  Because trade routes were at stake, and we could not be not be seen as degenerate.

He was not the first or the second to make a mistake, but the third.  And his mistake was perpetuated by the fourth and the fifth, and on and on until the sixteenth took Jefferson’s declaration as truth and ordered emancipation.

The sixteenth released the wolf’s ear and the wolf killed many people.  Boys in blues and grays poured down hills and soaked into the land as if this, too, was not proof of degeneracy.

The wolf, sometimes, took the form of a gun or a bayonet or dysentery, but mostly it just remained a shadow.

When we speak of the wolf and the giant lion, only one ever existed.

But when America needed a monster, Jefferson held firm—one hand tight on the ear of an impossible wolf, the other on an impossible claw.

 

 

 

B.J. Hollars is the author of two books of nonfiction, Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence and the Last Lynching in America—the 2012 recipient of the Society of Midland Author’s Award—and Opening the Doors: The Desegregation of the University of Alabama and the Fight for Civil Rights in Tuscaloosa forthcoming in 2013. His short story collection, Sightings is forthcoming next year from Indiana University Press. He teaches creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.

 

This word and definition was taken from a 2004 copy of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary

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November 16, 2012 · 1:12 pm

lump·y

 
We are continuing with nonfiction november here at the dictionary project, and I’m so pleased to share with you today the words of Karinya Funsett-Topping. There is so much to appreciate in Karinya’s writing, but I think what I admire most is the way her wit and humor serve to enhance the poignancy and depth of all that she chooses to write about. Please enjoy her piece on lumpy.
 
 

 
 
lump·y  (ˈləmpē),  adj.  [LUMPIER, LUMPIEST]  1.  full of lumps: as, lumpy pudding.  2.  covered with lumps; having an uneven surface.  3.  rough: said of water.  4.  like a lump; heavy; clumsy.
 
 
 

—
 
“Losing both of your parents when you were just a child – how was that for you?” –asked, mid pap smear, by a health care professional. 
 
 
The nurse practitioner with frizzy red hair and a last name that sounds like a first name uses both hands to palpate my chest as I stare at the inspirational images tacked up beside the exam table. There’s a woman lacing up tennis shoes, a bald head, lots of pink ribbons, a race number from a marathon. I look at them and think to myself, as I often do, Do not cry. Do not cry.
 
 
“In dense breasts, some lumpiness is to be expected,” she says, fingers still moving in the clockwise motion that all the self-exam guidelines suggest. “Soft lumps are usually fine.”
 
 
I nod. I do that uncomfortable half smile one does when there’s not really anything to smile about.
 
 
“Think about homemade mashed potatoes,” she says. “If you’re checking yourself and you feel something other than a potato lump – like a hard pea that got mixed in there – then that’s when you should worry. That’s when to call us.”
 
 
I saw her a few more times at the university’s campus health center over the course of my undergrad & grad school years. I heard the mashed potato analogy most often, but sometimes she mixed it up: one year I was advised that it was fine if my breasts felt like oatmeal, but I should watch out for the raisins.
 
 
—
 
 
I was eight when my mom came home with her breast cancer diagnosis. I might have been seven, or nine: at this point there is no one with a reliable memory left to ask. Whenever it was, she was too young to have her concerns taken seriously, and by the time her illness received a name, it was too late. No longer just dealing with a lump, she tried it all. There was the surgery that removed the offending tissue and replaced it with an implant that caused her almost as much pain as the cancer itself.  (“I’m sorry,” I remember her saying as we left the office after her post-surgery check-up. I had stood in the corner as the doctor unwrapped her; green and yellow bruises and stitches, the incision site still fresh and raw.  “You probably shouldn’t have seen that.”) There were chemotherapy sessions where we sat in a big room with other sick people and half watched hockey games on the television (we hated hockey) and there was the aftermath at home when the basement was the one safe refuge from the sounds of my mother throwing-up in the sink. There were the radiation treatments and technicians in lead aprons and that big built-into-the-floor scale at the nurses station that both intrigued and terrified me (I was not a small child) with the numbers it displayed. There were special diets that came and went, when eating was an option for her at all (a plum upon waking, then nothing else for at least an hour). There were frequent trips in the family station wagon to the local natural health store, which resulted in an entire kitchen cabinet being devoted to shelf after shelf of vitamins, teas, and shark cartilage capsules (contrary to the pop-medicine wisdom of the early 1990s, sharks do, in fact, get cancer).  And finally, there were the doctor-prescribed pills that were burning through our savings account and not doing a damn thing else.
 
 
Sometimes thinking about my parents (my father would succumb to cancer too, a few years after my mother did) is like watching a movie without the sound. The images are vivid. The cinematography is great. The actors are beautiful, even when their hair has fallen out and their costumes hang off their skeletal frames. But there’s no sound, and no director’s commentary available to explain the causes or motivations, or to address the why her? question that will linger on, unanswered, forever.
 
 
The doctors said my mom’s tumor had been in there, growing, for years before there was a noticeable lump; probably even while she was breastfeeding my younger sister. Some days, I look down at my son as he sleepily nurses and silently plea to my chest, please do not betray me.
 
 
—
 
 
I am always watching out for raisins.
 
 
—
 
 
 
 
Karinya Funsett-Topping has been, at various points, a book reviewer, bookseller, arts desk writer for a newspaper, literary journal editor, and chief bedtime story reader. She graduated magna cum laude with a BA in Creative Writing (fiction and nonfiction) in 2005 and an MFA in Creative Nonfiction in May of 2008, both from the University of Arizona. She now works as an editor and lives in Michigan with her husband and two children. She really isn’t always as serious as this piece makes her seem.

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November 14, 2012 · 4:32 pm

the dictionary project author interview: elizabeth crane

Today, the dictionary project hosts an author interview with fiction writer Elizabeth Crane. Enjoy!

 

 

1. Please share a memory/story/thought in relation to a dictionary/dictionaries:

When I was in junior high school, my favorite class was Vocabulary. This is not necessarily reflected in, you know, my vocabulary, nevertheless, my best friend and I thought this was the greatest class ever, because we’d learn new words and then have to use them in sentences and paragraphs and I always loved making the silliest possible sentences. “The bombastic misanthrope could not stop talking about the frowzy conquistador’s inability to show up in a decent shirt.” Also, same best friend and I subsequently created our own dictionary called The Betsy Bugs the Bees and Nina the Nerd Random House Dictionary. We each had a copy, and we filled it with slang, words we just liked, and words we made up, like “Feduchee.” We even had Feduchee t-shirts at one point. So, we weren’t in the popular group, but amazingly we weren’t total outcasts either.

 

2. What is your current favorite word?
I have to choose one??? Jibber jabber. But you have to say it in a 1940s noir movie voice.

 

3. What is the most obnoxious/insidious/annoying word?

Oh man, so many! Some I’d rather not even say. But lately one I don’t like is ‘ugly.’ I don’t like the sound of it and I don’t like the judgment in the meaning.

 

4. What word has been your (recent or past) muse?

I’m having a hard time deciding between “Well,” “Anyway” and “So.” I can always get a sentence started with one of those, even if they don’t stay there for the duration. When I was a kid I thought ‘indubitably’ was the greatest-sounding word ever. It still kind of holds up, though it sounds too fake-Britishy coming out of me.

 

5. Your debut novel We Only Know So Much just came out this year. Were there particular words that you found yourself using often as you wrote?

Some of the characters have a few things that they say regularly: Vivian, the grandmother, likes to follow almost everything she says with “You see.” Gordon likes any three-syllable word, and Priscilla is fond of ‘seriously.’ Otis is obsessed with three jelly beans that his love gave him, and so I repeated the word jelly beans or jelly bellies numerous times, and these words are very pleasant to me. But sometimes I do global searches on certain words that keep coming up so that I don’t sound like a broken record. “Just” is one that just keeps coming up, and just needs to be dialed back.

 

6. If you had to write your own dictionary entry for the word “story,” what would it say?

Tough one! Story: v. to make something true out of something not true (this makes sense in my head)

 

7. Please respond to the following words and definitions*, picked exclusively at random for you:

 

lip (lip), n. [ME. lippe; AS. Lippa; akin to G. lippe ( < LG.) ; IE. base *leb-, prob., what is licked (var. of *lab-, *lebh-, etc., to lick with gusto), prob seen also in L. labium (cf. LABIAL)], 1. either of the two fleshy folds, normally pink or reddish in color, forming the edges of the mouth and important in speech. 2. anything like a lip; specifically, a) the edge of a wound. b) the projecting rim of a pitcher, cup, etc. c) the mouthpiece of a wind instrument. d) the cutting edge of any of certain tools. e) in anatomy, a labium. f) in botany, a labellum. 3. [Slang], impertinent or insolent talk. 4. The position of the lips in playing a wind instrument. v.t. [LIPPED (lipt), LIPPING], 1. to touch with the lips; specifically, a) to kiss. b) to place the lips in the proper position for playing (a wind instrument). 2. in golf, to hit the ball just to the edge of (the cup). adj. 1. merely spoken or superficial; not genuine, sincere, or heartfelt: as, lip service. 2. Formed with a lip or the lips: labial: as, a lip, consonant.

 

I like definition #3 the best. It makes me think of the Bowery Boys. “Don’t gimme any lip!”

 

 

braid (ˈbrād) v.t. [ME. breiden, braiden; AS. Bregdan, to move quickly, jerk, pull, twist, see UPBRAID], 1. to interweave three or more strands of (hair, straw, etc.). 2. to tie up (the hair) in a ribbon or band. 3. to trim or bind with braid. n. 1. a band or strip formed by braiding. 2. a strip of braided hair. 3. a woven band of cloth, tape, ribbon, etc., used to bind or decorate clothing. 4. a ribbon or band for tying up the hair.

 

I always wish I could wear my hair in one long braid, but because it’s so thick, it gets kind of fat and tends to look like a challah.

 

 

sum·mon (ˈsum-ən), v.t. [ME. somonen; OFr. somondre, semondre; L. summonere, to remind privily < sub-, under, secretly + monere, to advise, warn], 1. to call together; order to meet or convene. 2. to order to come or appear; call or send for with authority. 3. to issue a legal summons against. 4. to call upon to act, especially to surrender. 5. to call forth; rouse, gather; collect (often with up): as, summon (up) your strength. —SYN. see call.

 

This is kind of an awesome word I don’t think about much. But I like the way it sort of speaks to possibility, like we can get whatever it is that we need by just calling it forth.

 

 

pro·thon·o·tar·y (prō-ˈthä-nə-ˌter-ē), n. [pl. PROTHONTARIES (-iz)], [ML. protonotarius; LGr. pronotarios < Gr. protos, first + L. notarius: see NOTARY], 1. a chief notary or clerk. 2. in the Roman Catholic Church, one of the seven members of the College of Prothonotaries Apostolic, who record important pontifical events: sometimes held as an honorary title by other ecclesiastics. Also protonotary.

 

I don’t think I’ve ever heard this word! But suddenly I want to call on the Roman Catholic Church next time I need a document notarized.

 

 

dy·ing (ˈdī-iNG), present participle of die. adj. 1. at the point of death; about to die. 2. Drawing to a close; about to end: as, a dying social order. 3. Of or connected with death or dying. n. the act or process of ceasing to live or exist.

 

What we’re all doing all the time. Sigh.

 

Elizabeth Crane is the author of the novel We Only Know So Much, and three collections of short stories, When the Messenger is Hot, All this Heavenly Glory, and You Must Be This Happy to Enter. Her work has also been featured in numerous publications and anthologies. She is a recipient of the Chicago Public Library 21st Century Award, and her work has been featured on NPR’s Selected Shorts and adapted for the stage by Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theater company. She teaches in the UCR-Palm Desert low-residency MFA program.

 

*Definitions taken from Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, copyright 1955.

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November 12, 2012 · 3:35 pm

broad

 

Courtesy of Isabella’sArt, Etsy.


 
For our first guest post of nonfiction november, we are featuring the words of contributor Allie Leach.  Allie takes a zany approach to nonfiction. One of the things I appreciate most about her as both a writer and a human is her willingness to try new things, to ask lots of questions, to seek out those tiny mouseholes where stories reside. Before I met her, she was described to me as this woman who went into college classrooms dressed in a panda suit, you know, to see what happened. Please enjoy her piece on the word broad.
 
 

Gene Kelly, “Broadway Melody,” Singin’ in the Rain


 
 
broad  (brôd), adj.  [ME. bord; AS. Brad; akin to G. breit],  1.  wide; of large extent from side to side.  2.  having great extent or expanse; spacious.  3. extending about; clear; open: as, broad daylight.  4.  open to the sight; obvious: as, a broad purpose.  5.  strongly marked: said of dialects or accents.  6.  outspoken; unreserved: as, a broad statement; hence, 7.  ribald: as, a broad joke.  8.  all-inclusive; tolerant; liberal: as, he takes a broad view of the matter.  9.  extensive; general: as, in a broad sense that’s true.  10.  main; essential: as, in broad outline.  11.  Spoken with the tongue held flat and low in the mouth and the oral passage wide open, as a in father: the current phonetic term is open.  adv.  in a broad manner; widely.  n.  1.  the broad part of anything.  2.  [Slang], a woman or girl: a vulgar term.
 
 

Photo by JPinlac, Flickr


 
 

Not So Practically Perfect on Broadway

 
 
On our first date, about seven years ago in Indiana, my husband and I watched the movie, Mary Poppins. This seems random at first, yes, but we had both grown up with this movie.  At a party about a month before, we were absorbed in one of those great conversations where you realize you have something strange and wonderful in common with another person. And the tie that bound just happened to be, well, Mary Poppins. Still new to each other, we coyly poised ourselves at opposite ends of the couch, and not only watched the movie, but, being the nerdy English majors that we were, dissected the lyrics. If a stranger were eavesdropping, they would’ve thought we were munching on pot brownies.

“This shit’s deep,” remarked Rick. “Think about it: ‘Let’s-go-fly-a-kite.’ The lyrics are so simple and wise. It’s telling us how to find everyday joy in our lives. It’s like…the meaning of life.” I looked at him, mesmerized and in love.

“You wanna go fly a kite?” I suggested.

Four years later, we’re in New York. Rick’s at school at Columbia University, and I’m visiting him from Tucson, where I’m also going to school. We buy tickets to see what else but Mary Poppins on Broadway. Broadway: a word synonymous with the bravado and bigness that is New York City. Full of spectacle and stars and shows. A place I’ve always dreamed of, always in broad, hyperbolic fashion. Located in the heart, the heat of Times Square, I’m surrounded by stampedes, people moving like they’re trying to get somewhere. And aren’t we all? If I panic, if I hesitate for too long, I’ll be stamped by their footprints. And so we dance past each other in a maze-like motion, until we can get through a door. A door that frees us from the ads that look like monster-sized Lite-Brites, each one shouting their show: Mamma Mia! Hair! South Pacific! Wicked! Mary Poppins! And so we escape and slip through the door, hoping for something that’s supercalifragilistic.
 
Rick and I are up in the balcony, holding each other’s hands, being all romantic, and reminiscing about the time we watched our beloved musical for the first time together.

“I kind of thought you were a freak,” I say.

“Why?” he laughs, squeezing my hand.

“Because you kept squealing and hitting the couch after we’d discuss the song lyrics.”

“I wanted to grab you and kiss you really bad,” he admits.
 
Before the show starts, the orchestra begins to play a medley of songs, some of which I recognize, and some of which I don’t. Huh, I think. The curtains rise. The actors sing a string of familiar songs like “Chim-Chim-Cheree” and “The Perfect Nanny.” But even though I know these songs, there’s something lost here. All of the actors have these booming voices that are crisp and clear, but annoyingly and cloyingly loud. What’s so great about the original 1964 movie, starring Julie Andrews and Dick Van Dyke, is that these actors’ voices—even the children who play Jane and Michael Banks—crack and quiver and warble. And because of these nuances, their voices build to create meaningful and moving songs. In this case, singing simple and small, trumps big and broad.

As Act I breezes along, the song “Practically Perfect” jumps out. Wait a minute, I think. Hold the mic-ro-phone. This song isn’t from the movie! And not only is it not from the original beloved movie, my original beloved movie, but this song…it’s…bad. Now, I know that Mary Poppins is a bit of an egomaniac. Yes, in the movie, she does have that amazing, yellow measuring tape that dubs her practically perfect in everyway, but she says this phrase lovingly and with a wink. She doesn’t sing a whole song about why she’s so goddamn perfect. That’s not true to her character; she’s so much more refined than that. Even so, in this new version of the musical, Mary gloats, “I’m practically perfect from head to toe. If I had a fault it would never dare to show. I’m so practically perfect, in every way.” Where’s the humility, the honesty, vulnerability? It’s in our flaws that we’re perfect, and the real Mary Poppins knows this. Heck, she’s dating Bert, who’s a poor but wonderful chimney sweep and street performer. And then she goes on to teach the children about unattainable perfection: “By the time I leave here, you both will be the same. You’ll be practically perfect.” Oh, Lord. Those kids are going to grow up and become two highly dysfunctional adults.
 

“Sister Suffragette,” Mary Poppins


 
By Act II, it’s not just me who’s an unhappy theatergoer, Rick is visibly peeved, too. We both roll our eyes at each other and shift around in our seats. And we refuse to clap after the songs. This is musical warfare, and we’re on the opposing side. I squint my eyes, trying hard to read the program in the darkness, and realize that the song “Sister Suffragette,” one of my favorites, has been excluded. This song highlights Winifred Banks, Jane and Michael’s crusading and empowered mother. Keep in mind that this musical is set in the early 1900’s, when women were fighting for their right to vote. And this song does a tremendous job expressing the vive and vigor of this time period as Mrs. Banks sings: “Cast off the shackles of yesterday! Shoulder to shoulder into the fray! Our daughters’ daughters will adore us, and they’ll sing in grateful chorus, ‘Well done, Sister Suffragette!’” Not only are these lyrics poetic and well written, they’re incredibly poignant. This song has instead been replaced with the song “Being Mrs. Banks,” with lyrics like: “And now although you’re lost, it’s time that we closed the ranks. I’ll fight for the man who needs freeing. The real you no one is seeing.” Now, I have to cut the songwriters—George Stiles and Anthony Drewe—some slack here. These are some great lyrics, but this is a completely different Mrs. Banks from the previous song. Instead of fighting for women’s rights, she’s fighting for her needy husband.

The lyricists of the original 1964 Mary Poppins were two brothers, Richard and Robert Sherman, born in the 1920s to Russian-Jewish immigrants in New York City. The duo went on to win two Academy Awards for Mary Poppins. The Sherman Brothers also wrote songs for other classic Disney hits, such as The Jungle Book, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, The Aristocats, Bedknobs and Broomsticks, Charlotte’s Web, and The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh. And for their work, they won nine Academy Award nominations, two Grammy Awards, four Grammy Award nominations, and twenty-three gold and platinum albums. In short, these bros had mad skills and major street cred. In all seriousness, though, the lyrics and songs that these two brilliant men created were full of smart, historical references, playful poetics, and touching turns of phrase. I can remember watching the movie, Charlotte’s Web, as a kid, and bawling when, as Charlotte was dying, she sang to Wilbur, “How very special are we. For just a moment to be, part of life’s eternal rhyme,” in the song “Mother Earth and Father Time.” Even now, as an adult, I listen to this song, and it gives me pangs.

Back on Broadway, Mary Poppins, Jane, and Michael head to Mrs. Corry’s sweet shop—yet another departure from the movie—where the lady sells silly words, like “Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious.” After they leave Mrs. Corry’s, they walk through a park and these dancing statues start singing “Jolly Holiday.” Granted, these details were lifted from the original book series “Mary Poppins,” written by an Australian woman named Pamela Lyndon Travers. When she emigrated to England and began writing her series of children’s novels about a magical English nanny named Mary Poppins in 1933, she wrote under the pen name P.L. Travers. Even so, seeing people dressed in tight silver body suits with spray painted faces singing “Jolly Holiday,” is almost as frightening as what’s coming up next in this remake. And what’s more, these awkward scenes replace the wonderful park outing, when the whole gang jumps into one of Bert’s paintings and are charmed by dancing penguins, the horse race, the caramel apples, and the subsequent trip to Bert’s old Uncle Albert’s place. Remember when their laughter suspends them high to the ceilings while they drink tea and sing “I Love to Laugh?”

As the disjointed story continues, Rick and I are confused when, after Mary Poppins leaves the family so that they can bond, a new nanny appears on the scene. This Nanny is Miss Andrews, who was Mr. Bank’s frightening, childhood Nanny, (though Mrs. Banks doesn’t realize this when she hires her). Miss Andrews, this super-evil Nanny, sings a new song called “Temper Temper,” with eerie lyrics like “children who lose their temper will lose everything in the end” and “you will not see your parents for quite some time” and “children who refuse to learn will not return,” a line Miss Andrews repeats three times in a row, in a cackling voice. This song was so freaky that kids were crying in the audience. In fact, it’s recommended on the official Mary Poppins Broadway musical website, that children be at least six to attend a performance, because it can be too scary for the youngins’. This song completely goes against the ethos that is Mary Poppins: joyful, humane, and life affirming.  I’m pretty sure the Sherman brothers wouldn’t approve. Although Julie Andrews, surprisingly, did. She actually praised the cast for their new interpretation when she appeared onstage during the curtain calls after a performance in London in 2005.

The musical ends with the sentimental and cheesy “Anything Can Happen,” which is full of clichés like, “if you reach for the stars all you get are the stars, but we’ve found a whole new spin if you reach for the heavens” and “anything can happen if you let it. Life out there is waiting for you, so go and get it” and “Go and chase your dreams, you won’t regret it.” The song is too general, too broad and abstract. The original movie ended with the song “Let’s Go Fly a Kite,” which, in my mind, was perfect. This song is so simple and concrete. And the act of flying a kite is symbolic to the story. Mr. Banks has finally let loose, has finally decided that life’s too short to be uptight and strict. And so he does something simple and joyful: he takes his kids out and they fly kites. What could be a better, more lasting image than that?

In the hubbub of the finale, Mary Poppins reappears, but this time, she’s flying high across the audience, strings attached, holding her famed, black umbrella. The parents and kids and, well, everyone it seems except for Rick and me, are ooo-ing and ahhh-ing and chanting, “ANYTHING CAN HAPPEN IF YOU LET IT!” The crowd roars with applause as the actors give their bows, and yet Rick and I are in our own, disenchanted world. Our arms are crossed, our fists clenched tight. We will not clap for this, we’ve decided. We leave early, as the actors come out for their final encore, and we trudge like Eeyore down the red, carpeted stairs. We walk through the theater’s corridors and can hear the muffled applause and music fading away. For a moment, New York City seems as quiet as a secret. This sensation, though, only lasts for a moment. As we push the theater doors open, we’re thrown into the rainbow fluorescence of Times Square. It’s dark outside and the scene has shifted. The streets are still crowded with people, but I’m not overwhelmed anymore. I want to be a part of it.

 
 
 
Allie Leach lives in Tucson and works at The University of Arizona Poetry Center. Her work has appeared in South Loop Review, Hot Metal Bridge, Diagram, and Tucson Weekly. When not at work on essays, she’s plotting to become a professional tap dancer and collector of miniatures.
 
 
 

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November 11, 2012 · 2:09 pm

sa·bot

 

Tree, Lisa O’Neill


 
sa·bot    (sab-oh)  n.  [Fr.; altered (after bot, a boot)  <  savate, old shoe; via Turk.  <  Ar. sabbat, sandal]  1.  a kind of shoe shaped and hollowed from a single piece of wood, worn by peasants in Europe.  2.  a heavy leather shoe with a wooden sole.  3.  a small sailing dinghy whose hull somewhat resembles a shoe.  4.  in military usage, a wooden disk or soft metalclip fastened to a projectile, formerly used in muzzle-loading canon.
 
 
“Where would I possibly find enough leather
With which to cover the surface of the earth?
But (just) leather on the soles of my shoes
Is equivalent to covering the earth with it”

–Shantideva

 
 
 
The ground was rough. So the girl decided to carve herself some shoes. She was tired of stepping on thorns. She had enough of cuts from tiny pieces of glass. Her toenails were torn. Her arches were sore. Her feet were calloused from walking the stubborn earth.
 
She had tried looking carefully at where she was walking. She had tried looking ahead at where she was going and hoping for the best. She had tried praying for the ground to be other than it was. She had tried laying out a mat which she would pick up and throw in front of her every few steps. All of these were tiresome. None of these worked. So at long last, she decided, though she was no carver, to carve herself some shoes.
 
She went walking to the place where there were many trees and once she arrived there, she considered them keenly. She placed her hand against the bark. She felt the smoothness of their leaves between her fingers. She considered the maple, the mesquite, the magnolia. She sat on the roots of mighty oaks. She pressed her nose to the skin of the cedar. She did this for days, or was it weeks? She smelled the sassafras. She leaned her back against the bark of the elm. She touched the ashes. She tasted the sap of the pine.
 
She wondered which wood would give best, which would mar her feet. She considered what she knew about the rings inside those trees, the color of the wood. She considered the way the wood would sound when it met the earth, in walking or in dancing.
 
She walked to where the water met the trees, she waded, and finally, she settled on something. Cypress.
 
She pulled something sharp from within her coat and she began to saw. She thanked the tree and took her branch with her.
 
The girl found a place on the earth to sit and placed her large branch across her lap. She had never made a pair of shoes before. She had never carved anything besides letters into words, color into walls. She wondered where to begin. Begin with this wood, she heard. Begin with this tool. Begin with this time.
 
So she did. She found the process long, this slow hollowing. The only indicator of time spent was a small curve in the center of the block. And yet there was something satisfying about the sound of her knife cutting into the wood and the sight of curled shavings falling to her feet.
 
She scraped and she notched and she pulled. She worked and as she worked, she sang. These were the songs she had been taught over the years. Her mother had sung them. And her mother’s mother had sung them. They were songs about truth and what it means to sit in the presence of another human being. She became lost in the music and the slow rhythm of scraping and when she came out of her haze, she saw she had cut a hole clean through.
 
So she began again, slowly carving, this time not forgetting where she was. People passed her as she worked, some offered to help her carve, some gave her suggestions. She thanked them, she listened, and then she continued to work. The light turned to dark then to light then to dark again, and still she carved. She noticed the rings in the wood. She noticed the changes in color. She noticed the smell of its skin. She chipped, she chiseled, she cleaved and divided. She etched, she hacked, she hewed. She molded and modeled and patterned and sculpted and shaped. She, at long last, whittled the last bit of excess away.
 
And then she looked at her work. These wooden shoes were not entirely even. They were not exactly smooth. She held one in each hand and considered their weight. She thought about her efforts and why she had begun in the first place. These would not be the most comfortable shoes. They would not be the most attractive. They looked like they had been made by a beginner. And they had. These shoes would not spare her the miles walked in them. They would not spare her the wrong turns. They would not keep her from encountering hard rain or hot sand or a horizon obscured by too much foliage. These shoes would not do this. No shoes ever would. But still, the girl had made these.
 
She slipped on the shoes.
 
She began to walk.
 
 
 
 

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November 11, 2012 · 12:23 pm

nonfiction november

There Is Nothing Wrong In This Whole World, Installation by Chris Cobb, Photo by Andrea Scher

 

Hi Dictionary Project People,

I am very pleased to announce that we are adding a new event to our repertoire: nonfiction november.  I tend to write nonfiction essays for the regular weekly words. During November, I wanted to open the doors to other nonfictioneers. All month, we will be featuring short essays inspired by bibliomanced dictionary project words.

While we are on the subject, might I just say that I’ve always been a little unsatisfied by the word “nonfiction” as a descriptor for the genre. A definition in negation. A genre defined by what it is not. I haven’t as of yet found a word or phrase that works to be encompassing of the whole genre, but I’d love to see one. I think what most attracts me to nonfiction as a genre, to write in and to read, is the discovery of all that is true and truly bizarre in our world. I like making connections between seemingly unconnected things. I like listening to people’s stories and thinking about the ways they intersect with art and music and culture, with things I’ve read and things I believe. I like the attempt to get to the heart of the matter. Truth and reflection and beauty are of course present in all genres of writing. Nonfiction, I think offers one thread of connection between the writer and reader: here’s what I see, let’s make sense of it together.  I look forward to sharing with you the nonfiction pieces of writers this month. Stay tuned.

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October 24, 2012 · 2:48 pm

the dictionary project author interview: ander monson

Today, we feature an interview with Ander Monson, author in all genres and known innovator in the world of nonfiction. I think what I appreciate most about Ander’s work is how he brings to the forefront the unexpected and neglected musings that are often relegated to the sidebar, the footnotes, the parentheses. These ideas are investigated, interrogated, violently disassembled and put back together again in surprising, compelling, and sometimes confounding ways.  As he once told me, the essayist’s job is to show the inner workings of the writer’s brain on the page. Enjoy these synapses, these nerve endings.

 

 

1. Please share a memory/story/thought in relation to a dictionary/dictionaries:


I’ve collected old dictionaries for years, starting mostly when I lived in Alabama, and happened on a whole pile of them at Alabama’s Thrift Store, now named, instead, America’s Thrift Store. I’d buy them all. I must have had forty. They were all well outdated. I wondered what worth there was in an outdated dictionary. But they had the most lovely images: etchings, woodcuts, weird handmade diagrams of things. I got excited. I kept them for four years, acquiring more, but had to discard most of them when my wife and I moved to Michigan. They weigh a ton. They take up too much space. But first I pillaged them. Now I restrict myself only to specialist dictionaries (medical dictionaries, photography dictionaries, tool-and-die dictionaries, mathematics dictionaries, etc.) and to my OED condensed, 1971, in micro-script. It comes with a magnifying glass.


2. What is your current favorite word?

Library.


3. What is the most obnoxious/insidious/annoying word?

Utilize.

 

4. What word has been your (recent or past) muse?

I almost never think of words as muses. To me they’re tools—sometimes worlds.

 

5. Could you talk a little bit about the interaction of words and space in your work? 

Well, that’s a big question. I’ll narrow it down a bit. The piece I wrote for this, Dear Sepulcher, is part of this book project I’m finishing up this fall in which I write short, associative, compressed essays in response to things happened on in libraries: five words (in this case), a passage from a book, a striking image, an snatch of overheard conversation, a human hair, a punch card, homophobic marginalia, a packet of seeds, a due date stamp, just to name a few. Once written, they are originally published back into the book in the library in which I found the originating thing. So they’re words written in response to words I found in any one of a series of particular spaces (libraries, loosely defined), and published back into that space as a communication to a future reader. In this way I’ve been thinking of the library as a medium, a meeting space for brains to find each other. I’m also collecting these short essays as 6×9 cards, unbound, unordered in a box. So in their production I’m thinking about space and language, image and design (as I often do in my work). How language can be a tool of design—or design a tool of language. Either can serve the other, but they work best when they can have a conversation.

 

6. Please respond to the following words and definitions*, picked exclusively at random for you:

 

se·pul·cher  (ˈse-pəl-kər),  n.  [ME. & OFr. sepulcre; L. spulcrum < sepelire, to bury],  1.  a vault for burial; grave; tomb.  2.  a place for the safekeeping of relics, as in an altar.  v.t.  to place in a sepulcher; bury.

 

Al·a·bam·i·an  (ˌæləˈbæmɪən), adj.  of Alabama.  n.  a native or inhabitant of Alabama.

 

ken·nel  (/ˈkenl),  n.  [ME. kenel, keneil;  OFr.  *kenil; LL. canile < L. canis, a dog],  1.  a doghouse  2.  often pl. a place where dogs are bred or kept.  3.  a pack of dogs  v.t.  [KENNELED or KENNELLED (‘ld), KENNELING or KENNELLING], to place or keep in a kennel.  v.i.  to live or take shelter in a kennel.

 

Pa·pe·e·te  (pəˈpētē), n.  a seaport on Tahitia: capital of the Society Islands and French Oceania: pop., 8500.

 

re·ta·li·ate  (riˈtalēˌāt),  v.i.  [RETALIATED (-id) RETALIATING], [<L. retaliatus, pp. of retaliare, to require, retaliate < re-, back + talio, punishment in kind < talis, such}, to return like for like; especially to return evil for evil; pay back injury for injury: as, if he is hurt, he will retailiate.  v.t.  to return an injury, wrong, etc. for (an injury, wrong, etc. given); requite in kind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

*Definitions taken from Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, copyright 1955.

 

 

Ander Monson is the author of a host of paraphernalia including a decoder wheel, several chapbooks and limited edition letterpress collaborations, a website, and five books, most recently The Available World (poetry, Sarabande, 2010) and Vanishing Point: Not a Memoir (nonfiction, Graywolf, 2010). He lives and teaches in Tucson, Arizona, where he edits the magazine DIAGRAM  and the New Michigan Press.

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October 15, 2012 · 1:24 pm

sur·ren·der

 

By Lisa O’Neill. Image of a collaboration of artist Gregory Sale and poet Tc Tolbert at the Phoenix Art Museum (click image for more details)

 

sur·ren·der (­­­­­­­­­­səˈrendər) v.t.  [OFr. surrender; sur-, upon, up + render, to render],  1. to give up possession of or power over; yield to another on demand or compulsion.  2. to give up claim to; give over or yield, especially voluntarily, as in favor of another.  3. to give up or abandon; as, we surrendered all hope.  4.  to yield or resign (oneself) to an emotion, influence, etc.  5. [Obs.], to give back or in return.  v.i.  to give oneself up to another’s power or control, especially as a prisoner; yield.  n.  [Anglo-Fr.  <  OFr.  surrender  (see the v.);  inf. used as n.],  1. the act of surrendering, yielding, or giving up.  2.  in insurance, the voluntary abandonment of a policy by an insured person in retrun for a cash payment (surrender value), thus freeing the company of liability.

SYN.—surrender commonly implies the giving up of something completely after striving to keep it (to surrender a fort, one’s freedom, etc.); relinquish is the general word implying an abandoning, giving up, or letting go of something held (to relinquish one’s grasp, a claim, etc.); to yield is to concede or give way under pressure (to yield one’s consent); to submit is to give in to authority of superior force (to submit to a conqueror); resign implies a voluntary, formal relinquishment and used reflexively, connotes submission or passive acceptance (to resign an office, to resign oneself to failure).

 

 

On Saturday, I heard Amy Goodman speak. I knew she was a brilliant journalist, having read her work and listened to Democracy Now!, but I was taken aback at what a consummate storyteller she is and at her capacity to be a vessel for so many people’s stories. She moved seamlessly in and out of political events, uprisings, movements, historical dates and figures, details of the stories of people she’d met and words they had told her. She talked about the responsibility of journalists (“to go where the silence is and let people speak for themselves”), about what one immigrant fighting for rights said when Goodman asked why there was a butterfly on their sign (“butterflies know no borders; butterflies are free”). She quoted Gandhi: “First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win.”

I think what surprised me most is that in the face of all of the stories of tremendous, often inconceivable, injustice and oppression, she exuded warmth and humor and a presence that spoke to her overall trust in the kindness and goodness of human beings. Was there corruption of power? Absolutely. Were people, all over the world, suffering in unconscionable ways? Without a doubt. Was much of this suffering caused directly by the policies of our country and were we Americans thus accountable to and responsible for much of this injustice? Yes, certainly.

Was this a signal that we should give up? That nothing could be done? That things were fucked up beyond repair and we should retreat into our homes to eat Cheetos and watch reality television for the rest off our lives? A definitive no.

Here’s the thing about surrender, about surrendering. Surrendering is not something that people in positions of power have any authority or control over. The surrendering must come from the person who chooses to submit. Obviously, the stakes are higher for some than others. Some of us enjoy expansive freedom in our day-to-day lives; freedoms we often take for granted and don’t practice gratitude for. Others live each day faced with imminent threats and dangers to their personal safety and that of their loved ones and communities, oppressed in their own countries and homes.

The one thing that steadily continues to amaze and humble me is the resiliency of the human spirit. That even when beared down upon, when suffering, when up against impossible obstacles, human beings consistently stand up and refuse to concede, to resign, to relinquish, to surrender. This is at the heart of our humanness, our ability to take ownership of our bodies, minds, hearts, souls, even if others beat us down, abuse us, tell us we are worthless. There is power in the unwillingness to cower or be made less than. There is strength in taping up wounds and walking even when broken. We may not have control of the conditions around us, but we do have a responsibility to the flickering of light inside.

Goodman took us through uprisings during the Arab Spring and back to the civil rights movement. She reminded the audience of the media’s dismissive and oversimplified take on Rosa Parks (“she was just a tired seamstress”) that doesn’t take into account that she was trained at the Highlander school and held the position of secretary of the local NAACP. Not only was she actively involved in the fight for civil rights for African-Americans, but she was chosen by the movement to take a stand in this way and to pave the way for the entrance of a new as-yet-unknown preacher to help lead the movement.

 

Goodman conferred some information that was shocking in its irony:

Mitt Romney’s father, George Romney, Jr., when being considered for a presidential run in 1968, warned the Republican party against extremism. He voiced his concerns about and opposition to organizations such as the John Birch Society, a radical right-wing organization that stood in opposition to the civil rights movement. The Koch Brothers’ father Fred Koch was a founding member of the Birch Society. The Koch Brothers have been one of the biggest supporters of Mitt Romney’s campaign.

Because Frederick Douglas was a “difficult” slave, he was sent to Ed Covey, known as a “slave breaker.” The place where Covey lived and enacted his torture on slaves, located in Saint Michael’s, Maryland, was known as Mount Misery. The current owner of Mount Misery? Donald Rumsfeld, the former Secretary of Defense, under whose leadership torture, like that at Abu Ghraib, was conducted. Mount Misery is the site of his vacation home.

 

I think it is easy to point at the many freedoms we have in our culture and to ignore systemic ills that reveal the ways in which we oppress and are oppressed every day: the United States holding the largest incarceration rate in the world (International Centre for Prison Studies); classism and racism embedded in our criminal justice system; our use of the death penalty and also its continued use even in cases of extreme doubt (as with Troy Davis). Dostoevsky said, “The degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons.” And too, I think, by the way in which we choose to acknowledge or not acknowledge how often we tuck people away, out of sight and out of mind.

Goodman spoke of “breaking the sound barrier,” and I think in all the discussion of the economy and the two party candidates batting accusations at one another, the real discourse and debate gets lost. How are we taking care of our citizens? And how are we not? How are we being good citizens of the world? And how are we not? How are we being caretakers of the planet? And how are we not? What are the ways in which our current policies make it impossible for some of our fellow citizens to survive much less thrive?

Here’s another thing about surrendering. Not surrendering becomes easier when we see ourselves as part of a community with others. The greatest myth of our individual-focused U.S. society is that we don’t need one another, that it is okay to take care of “me and mine” and not care about “you and yours,” that we can fill our lives with objects to substitute for intimacy with other human beings, that life is about personal success and that this success is measured by how we appear on the outside and how much money we have in the bank.

This is a myth that pains us because, in our deepest selves, we know it is a lie. We see everyday in countless ways the impact we have on one another. We are interdependent and to propagate the idea within ourselves and our culture that we are not leads to suffering and disillusion, confusion and blame.

From community comes strength and connection, something we all need. When I was in high school, I had a teacher who had adopted a severely mentally and physically disabled child. She and her husband were told by doctors after they adopted him that this infant, now their child, had been within hours of dying. Not because he didn’t have adequate food, but because he, unlike the other babies, had not been regularly held. He was dying from lack of human touch.

The desire to connect with others is at our very core—no matter our political affiliations, no matter the distinctions in our religious or ethical views.

But you know what is required to be a part of community? The vulnerability of being who we really are and speaking from that place, the willingness to have difficult and uncomfortable conversations about how we got to where we are and about the problems that need solutions, the bravery to not turn away when we see someone suffering because it makes us feel dissonance, because we know that in different circumstances that could be us.

Goodman’s new book, written with fellow producer Denis Moynihan, is called The Silenced Majority. The title speaks to the idea that most Americans, even despite differences in opinion, have compassion at their core. They want opportunities to be available not only for themselves but for their fellow citizens. But when the rhetoric is too narrow, too many stories get left out. And it is only through hearing each others’ stories that we learn to understand one another and then act from that space of understanding. Goodman relayed the story of when a joint targeting committee made of staff from The Manhattan Project and the United States Air Force sent suggestions of potential nuclear bomb sites in Japan to Secretary of War Henry Stimson. On the list were Kokura, Hiroshima, Niigata, and Kyoto. Stimson told them to remove Kyoto, not only from the nuclear list but from the list of targets for conventional bombing as well. Why? Because he and his wife had visited Kyoto and they appreciated the beauty and history of the city and enjoyed the people they met there. Through this personal connection, the town of Kyoto was saved. Nagasaki was added in its place.

Amy Goodman said it is movements that make this country great.

And what are movements? Just people. People who have decided to commit themselves to a collective vision that says: we can do better than this. People who, despite the odds and obstacles that face them, do the work anyway. People who, leaning on the strength and knowledge of one another, do not surrender.

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