Fluency in Speaking and Writing

My Random Word Generator

Sometimes, like at a wake or after a funeral, it’s really hard to find anything to say. Other times there are way too many words trying to tumble out all at once--for example, times when I recall two funny anecdotes, or two urgent matters, and waver about which one to communicate first. The result is usually speechlessness, which I consider the verbal equivalent of going “splat,” but occasionally the Random Word Generator kicks into gear. The Random Word Generator says things like “be sure to follow the destructions” and once answered the telephone with a very professional “Good Sea Grant” instead of “Good morning.” (“You’re lucky it’s me,” was the response, slightly delayed by a fit of giggles.)

I make fun of my Random Word Generator right along with everyone else, because it seems so inexplicable, but secretly I’m quite pleased by the phenomenon. I just plain like the idea of having an infinite amount of words to choose from. I once argued, in a poetry-writing class, that there are always words for what you need to say, and if they don’t come it just means you don’t know them yet. I believed that then, and I believe it now—but now I also think that some of those words may take more than one lifetime to find.

I have no doubt--in this life, at least--where my limitless supply of words comes from. It comes from the brown flannel board that my mother used to teach me sentences before I ever went off to school. Anyone who’s ever played with “Magnetic Poetry” understands the concept of shuffling words around on a board. The brown flannel board worked in accordance with the principles of static electricity, whatever those may be. At any rate, it was foolproof and fun.

Mom must have started me out with a controlled vocabulary (controlled in an educational sense—limited to the sorts of words a child needs most), but whenever I wanted to use a word that she hadn’t prepared for me she’d simply take a blue or black pen and write the word on a piece of white paper. She'd then use a scissors to cut out a neat little rectangle with the word on it. Imagine, any word I wanted became available within moments!

The brown flannel board was a blessing in my life because it gave me a good command of the English language. To this day when I’m casting around in my brain for “just the right word,” I am searching visually. The words are neatly printed, in my mother’s handwriting, on neat but not exact rectangles, and they have brown flannel spaces between them. This is great for writing. Believe me, I am eternally grateful for facility with writing. But of course I cannot extend this fluency to speaking. It takes time, after all, to read and arrange the words in my head, and sometimes I stop and stare off into space for so long that the people I’m trying to talk to become perplexed or perturbed.


Other People's Foibles

Needless to say, I am not the only person who misspeaks from time to time. There are all kinds of reasons for this, of course. All too often, listeners or readers jump to the cynical conclusions such as "people can't help being stupid or ignorant." As to stupidity--well, we all would do well to remember that we all suffer from that to one extent or another. And as to those errors in speech and in writing that stem from ignorance--they ought to be forgiven to the extent that the ignorance is not deliberate. Speakers, in particular, are innocent until proven guilty! They can't help it if they are young, or if they were born in another country and English is not their first language. Here, in the New York City borough of Queens--ethnically and linguistically the most diverse county in the U.S.--most of the mistakes I hear and see are made by nonnative adult speakers.

While I'm inclined to forgive mistakes in the spoken word, I'm thoroughly dismayed by misspellings on signs and billboards, on TV and computer screens, and in published matter, because I feel these ought to be proper models for people learning to read (both children and nonnative English speakers).

Another thing people can't help, even if they're smart, well informed, and fluent in the language they're using, is the hyped-up pace of living, especially in the public sphere. Newscasters and politicians are particularly vulnerable to getting tripped up in their speech because they generally don't get a lot of lead time to prepare what they're going to say. Although news and sports broadcasters certainly can sound like complete asses, I can't totally condemn them--they're not hired as experts on English usage, but rather for the total image they present in front of a camera.

Politicians should, I feel, pronounce words correctly and construct sentences with subjects and predicates that agree--because it's through their use of language that voters perceive their level of intelligence, education, and other qualifications for office. But the politician, like the broadcaster, is under pressure to deliver "live." In addition, political life demands doublespeak and ambiguity at least as much as it requires polished prose.

Even when a message is delivered in writing, there's still a certain pressure involved. Being a "fluent" writer myself, in the past I never fully understood this--but now that there's less time available in which to write ordinary, everyday things (say, a letter complaining to a health-insurance company or a memo telling a proofreader what to watch out for), I worry that what I produce may not be quite right. I imagine that if I were less proficient with the English language than I am now, and that I wrote more slowly to begin with--well, I can get an idea of the kind of pressure people are under.

I remember chatting with Christina, an interior decorator who lived in New Rochelle and was working as a holiday tree-trimmer in a department store. She is from the Philippines. She got excited about something and told me an anecdote in which she referred to her brother as "she." I'm glad Christina didn't suppress the anecdote for fear of being judged, but I was saddened by something else she said that same day. I asked if she studied decorating in school, and she had. I said, a tad dismissively, that I was an English major. "Ohhh! Do you like writing?" she asked, impressed. So I went "blah blah blah" and then asked her the same. "Oh, yes, I am interested in writing, it seems like a very important thing to do. But I don't write because it takes me so long to get it right."

This is not the first time I've heard this. It makes me sad because I believe that people who are interested in expressing themselves in writing should be encouraged to do so. My dismay and despair make me fear that the battle is lost. There will be--perhaps already are--two levels of language: one accessible only to native speakers who have the time and resources with which to dot their i's and cross their t's, and the other that's not "correct," but rather inflected by Spanish, Chinese, black vernacular, and other speech patterns. This latter language has the virtue of being generally understandable to all--but its prevalence hinders interest in, and understanding of, the rich vocabulary and nuances of multigenerational English.

I worry that when I use somewhat offbeat words that I am partial to--like "inherent" or "concomitant" or "diabolical"--I am excluding lots of intelligent people. At times like those, I wonder if there's anybody out there who longs for an infinity of words-on-demand posted on a brown flannel Web site, with pronunciations, spellings, and definitions that you could access via telephone. I know it would be music to my ears.

Christmases Past

I have a few entries in draft format, but none that I'm ready to let go of yet. So here are some poems, a journal entry, and an artist's statement representative of my Christmases Past.

Year-Old Tinsel
(1975)
Someone’s always left out at Christmas
Lonely homework,
Dead wrapping paper,
Year-old tinsel,
Broken ornaments,
Burned out lights,
Gifts to be returned.


Golden Chains
(1975 or 1976)

Sometimes
Golden bracelets sparkle up
and blend into meaningless round glows of light,
reminding me of the time
when I looked out the windowpane one rainy winter night,
and was captivated so by the Christmascolored radiance
of the lines of tiny Christmas lights.
(They shine in carefully wrought imagelessness
those fragments of random artists’ innocence:
I thought:
All the goods of our hearts are here.)

Sometimes I sit
pretending to meditate, blending into nothingness,
yet overwhelmed by overlapping brightnesses:
Too full of tears, too full of hate.
Guilty, I go over every memory,
and even while splintering time into these
fragments of shouldn’t-have-done seconds,
I think:
If only all the goods of our hearts were here.


12/9/03

Usually in December I want to buy myself presents. This year, there is no money to buy myself, or anyone else, any presents. So instead I bought some materials with which to make Christmas decorations, donated a $15 gift for a woman at a local shelter, and signed up to participate in two Secret Santas to the tune of $10 apiece. Of course I can’t spend nothing, even when that’s what I should do.

What’s very clear to me, in spirit, is that Christmas is all about decoration. That’s always been true for me, but this year in particular. Part of me is mourning my cousin Kelly, who created beauty out of branches and berries and had a lot more artistic integrity than I do--she was a pure naturalist, pure minimalist, never seduced by a bit of gold or glitter. Part of me is playing around with the meaning of the word “gift.” It’s rare, strange, new for 2003, but I feel like giving--not getting. I want to take materials, make them into stuff, and in the making create stuff that is of value. I want to give this value to other people, even if only by putting it in a place where others will see and admire it. Some might call that exercising a gift.

Be that as it may, I can’t really make any efforts, apart from decking out the front of my house, as I am limited in resources and limited in time. So, nobody’s getting nothing, and I am being ostrich-head-in-the-sand. It would be appropriate to say, now, in a timely way, “I can’t afford to exchange presents with you this year.” But I am not ’fessing up to my friends. As [my husband] might ask--I hear his voice in my head--“And why is that, [my name]?”

The other thought pattern that’s operating right now, and the one that’s interfering with Responsible Adulthood, is that Christmas and the Winter Solstice are the season of miracles, where light and glitter usher in all kinds of surprising grace. Kindness. Triumph. Unsurpassed glory. I’m convinced Santa Claus and his eight flying reindeer will land in the undisturbed field of snow at the farm across the way. I can hear the bells already. I am as rational as a child, and I await a new birth. I wonder if there’s anything Christian about it.


The Snowflakes of 2003

A performance piece celebrating the Christmas season, derived from a desire to be known and to “belong” in a new business setting, The Snowflakes of 2003 exceeded expectations. It made people happy.

The project was created without a budget and in haste. Working with standard photocopying paper over a period of several days, the artist cut out about fifty snowflakes, each with a different six-pointed design. Without unfolding any of the snowflakes, she put them into a small basket, and on December 19, 2003, brought the basket around to colleagues in her office. Without saying what was in the basket, she invited each person to “pick one.” While the intention was to include as many people was possible, there was a strong element of chance and a little bit of impulsiveness involved in determining who actually had the opportunity to make a selection. Nobody who was approached declined the offer. A few were puzzled, but almost everyone expressed delight when they realized what they had received.

The magic of selecting and the element of surprise in unfolding transported adults back to the innocence of their childhood; the face-to-face contact imparted meaning; and the humble nature of the material, paper, coupled with the individual nature of each snowflake design, completely bypassed any sense of mass commercialism. Through a series of actions of uncommon simplicity, Snowflakes 2003 redefined the experience of giving and receiving a “gift” and, perhaps, enabled participants to connect with the true spirit of Christmas.

Subject Matter: Need to Restock

The trees are getting finished faster than I am coming up with anything interesting to say about them. To pick up a few loose ends: On the one hand, when some of my friends and acquaintances heard what I was doing this season, they wanted to know if I liked working outdoors, or if the trees were cut down before I decorated them.

On the other hand, however, the job description of "tree trimmer," along with my glittery countenance, has made me memorable to the people I'm taking a class with on Wednesday nights. I feel a little sad that I don't have too many new anecdotes to share with them.

From Nesting to Wiring

Well I am just so impressed with myself. Only a short while ago, I was building nests; now I've evolved to wiring whole buildings! Not too many jobs offer such breadth of experience.

The Brotherhood of Electrical Workers need not worry, as the wiring I'm doing (fortunately for all living beings) has nothing to do with electricity; it's simply a means of anchoring larger-than-usual ornaments, which happen to be shaped like buildings, deep within the branches of a tree. Like--tree houses. Or--birdhouses. Uh-oh, the more I think about it, the more similarities I see between human architecture and nests--it's simply just that we people tend to build our houses on the ground. And so perhaps I had best quit thinking now, before everything turns into a pineapple.

The Half-Life of Glitter and Other Secrets of the Universe

Try sneaking up on a Christmas tree, and you may observe ornaments hung deep within the tree--practically hugging the trunk--visible only as flashes of color or reflected light when you walk by. Though it is not perceived individually, and it is not perceived in its entirety, each of these tucked-away ornaments makes its contribution to the whole. One of my coworkers claimed that the hidden decorations add "invisible girth." She is so right: You can feel their weight, sense their shape

Try sneaking up on a tree-trimmer, and you may wonder, "what is the half-life of glitter on the human scalp?"

Be that as it may ... to reprise the tea kettle theme from an earlier entry: I actually attended a tea this past weekend. The hostess had outdone herself preparing a bountiful spread of good foods, and she had three different kinds of tea in three different tea pots, each perched on a round metal platform with a hole in the center. Underneath each pot of tea was a petite round candle in a metal cup. Each candle burned with a small bright open flame. I gazed in enchantment for a moment, and then blurted out: "Wow--I didn't know tea lights were ever used to warm tea!"

autumn morning

I am up early this morning and it's dark outside, prompting reflections about this time of year in this part of the world. October is generally a time when everything seems to decline--the length of the daylight hours, the temperature, and my mood. But this year is different; only the daylight is slipping away. It remains warm outside, and I dwell within an artificially lit, thermostatically controlled environment, happily overpreparing for a holiday that is over two months away. Perhaps "gearing up" at this time of year is unnatural, but it feels healthy, even beneficial. At any rate, I wake to discover October is two-thirds over before I've even remembered to dread its snake-hiss changeability and the inevitably barren landscape at its end.

And all from hours of unwrapping ornaments apparently constructed from plastic and spit!

Everything Is a Pineapple

A few years ago when I took a drawing class, I spent a month drawing a pineapple. Per the assignment, I created a semi-abstract composition consisting of multiple views of the pineapple—the pineapple viewed from different angles, at various “zooms,” and dissected into an assortment of parts.

Characteristically, I got way too into this project, not in the process of drawing, so much, but in reading and thinking about pineapples. Eventually, it seemed to me that “everything is a pineapple.”

Now what do pineapples have to do with Christmas trees? Not so very much, perhaps, but I can’t think of a better summary for my thoughts, which are about the interrelatedness of apparently unrelated things.

There is one clear connection between pineapples and evergreen trees, and that is the pine (spruce, fir, etc.) cone. Pineapples, in English and at least a few other languages, were so named because of their visual resemblance to a “pine” cone. Interestingly, both the scales on the pineapple and the “whatevers” on the pine cone are arranged according to the same geometric pattern, an arrangement that serves in Nature to pack the most punch--it fits the greatest possible number of seeds into a given available amount of space. The patterns involve Fibonacci numbers, those same Fibonacci numbers that figured in the plot of The Da Vinci Code: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, 33, 54, 87. . . . This series of numbers has, historically, been used to determine pleasing proportions in architecture since the time of the Ancient Greeks. The proportion is so appealing to human eyes that it is often called “the golden mean.” Anyway, at the time I was working on my project, the more I looked around me, the more I saw real-life evidence of the golden mean. Hence my saying “everything is a pineapple.”

Ah, well, at any rate . . . I hope I’ve at least suggested the general theme of design. Now that I’ve taken the idea this far, I am going to hijack it in a different direction—remember, I’m trying to explore relationships between apparently unrelated things.

For millennia, my day job has been that of a copyeditor and proofreader. Editorial professionals make a vital contribution to published writings of all types. They are not, however, usually the authors of the material. In the most general terms, the copyeditor’s job is to discern the author’s intentions and then tweak the language—the author’s use of words, sentence structure, and so on—so that the message (that is, what the author wants to say) will come through to its intended audience with maximum clarity and style.

I thought perhaps I might be making a career change, but I find that tree-trimming is more like copyediting than I ever would have supposed. In contrast to professional designers, who are judged in part by the individuality and originality they bring to a project, copyeditors are accustomed to interpreting and implementing another person’s message without leaving their own distinctive mark on the work. In this respect, the copyeditor-turned-tree-trimmer has an advantage over an interior decorator, say, or a florist. . . .

Oh, man, I am too tired to think any more right now.