Category — Insights

Blueberry pie, apple pie, Kenny’s laughter and wrap-around hugs, Buckley’s cuddles and sleepy morning puppy breath yawns, Marky’s generous massages and video game glee, Jon’s voice, Magda’s soothing conversation, Lauri’s silliness, Jen’s mothering, Joseph’s RainCloud heart, Sarah Elizabeth’s hope, Cheryl’s soft quietness, Tim’s playfulness, Dara’s cookie night, Austin’s silly expressions, Aliyah’s cheeks and pouty lip, Doris’s quirkiness, Sparrow’s ballet, Golden’s bright eyes, Alyssa’s Europe heart, Stephen G’s John Deere fetish, Annie’s wildness, Camille’s home cookin’ and eatin’, Tara’s Jew pride, Trish’s King of the Castle face, Abby’s compassion, Liz’s art of worship, Mitchell’s Southern stories, Bunny’s cheer-infused greetings, Dave’s jokes, Mikey’s brotherliness, Nathan’s colorful language and honesty, Shannel’s ideas, Stephen’s humbleness, Kimberly’s Guatemala pants, Crystal’s cookie fetish, Grey’s sleepy newly awakeness, Jamie’s kindheartedness, Becker’s subtle humor…

Singing. Writing is part of the mind + part of the heart. But singing is HEART. In its entirety. To me, singing is breathtaking. When I watch someone sing, and sing well, and sing from the heart, an aura bursts from the singer’s body, an aura composed of a bass-beating vitality and lightening flashes of pumping blood. Or, otherwise, the aura exudes the aloneness of a person and air, and the singer’s voice seems like my own, the echo of my thoughts in my head.

I am not a singer nor a musician. If it feels like this for me, how does it feel for those who actually express it like this?

To all my friends out there who have the expression of music in them, please continue to live in it. For yourself, and for others.

Thanks to Across the Universe for inspiring this post.

Alrighty, all you wordcreators out there, stop your cryin’. Your opportunity has come. Well, it was always there, but you probably just didn’t know until my sagacious blog filled your wordcreating brain with a new hope. The particular dictionary of Merriam-Webster seems to have very minor qualifications to induct a new word into its book of fame. You can achieve these qualifications as easily as Palin can name a newspaper. (Err, crap, perhaps a little more difficult than that.)  All you need is the human mind, the ability to speak, and a little bit of social networking-although, I suppose, those who are mute could create new signs (like these children).

According to Merriam-Webster’s website, their editors daily scourge magazines, newspapers, books, etc. to find new words or even new uses of words (impossibler!). The website also mentions that “Any word of interest is marked.” 

So, flipping through the dictionary, I come across “camel hair: 1) the hair of a camel or a substitute for it, 2) cloth made of camel hair or of camel hair and wool.”

Already, there are so many chances for your success!! Ape hair isn’t in there…take a shot at that one! Make a fun little phrase of it…and just make sure to define it correctly: “ape hair: the hair of an ape.”

I think I’ll take swing at this. Hmm…how to make a word of interest. Let’s see. One of my favorite new phrases is “bloop bloop.” Unfortunately, the transitive verb “to bloop” is already recognized in Merriam Webster, but minimally defined more than “a backformation of blooper.” 

Here’s my definition:

“bloop bloop: royally screwing up and laughing your guts out until they form a six pack.” 

Now here are some fictional scenarios to show prime possible contexts for “bloop bloop”:

“I almost stripped up the stairs and slammed into Keira Knightley! ” said Steve Carrell in anxiety upon receiving his first Emmy.

He bloop blooped. Big time.

Let’s go for an undirty, nonsexual one. In honor of the Nicaraguan children:

The little girl with rose petal cheeks looked up at her mother, eyes condensing with human rain, and said disappointedly, “Mommy, I bloop blooped in the bathtub.”

Uh, did I say undirty? Guess I meant unsexy. This is definitely unsexy. And also completely different from the definition I had previously assigned. Gotta love the English-language rule of …NO rules! One word can mean many, many, many things!

So please, spread your knowledge of all the different animal hairs and other fun new phrases and take your shot at making this impossible-to-master list of words (i.e., the English dictionary!) even more inconceivably impossibler. (Use impossibler enough, get it published, or just get someone who is good at getting published to use it, and no longer is it improper but irregular!)

Without pointing a finger, no one knows who the hell’s business it is!!

Some days it just makes me irate that English does not differentiate its morphemes for the second person singular and plural and their possessive. There are just VITAL times in which these pronoun twins desperately need a distinguishing birthmark. For example, when someone says, “You’re gonna die,” the other people in the room perk up, asking each other, “uh, hold on! did he mean singular or plural possessive?” because if they are included in the “You’re,” that gets his/her/their ass/es shot! In a room with only one other person, no biggie. In a room full of hundreds, the pronoun becomes utterly impotent. USELESS! This must be why the majority of the time “you’re gonna die” is followed by “bitch!” or “motherf****er!” Sometimes these nasties can cause tremendous relief. The other people in the room look at each other thinking, “ah, motherf****er’s gonna die, not me!” 

Down with the pronoun. Save the expletives!

I generally do not like talking that much. It wears me out. I like to hear other people talk, but not too much. I used to be one of those who socially did not know how to talk enough. Lately (the past year or so), I’ve 180′d into the person who crosses the border of talking too much. I am acutely aware of when I overtalk-it’s very much the same sensation for me as when I venture from the tipsy range onto the drunk border. In that case, my eyes have trouble not rolling. I seem to be the only one to ever notice this, which is darn surprising because in my mind I’m imagining that I look like I’m going into an epilectic fit. So, when I talk too much I feel quite similar, but for some reason I cannot stop myself! Well, tonight there was a discussion group event about the church in America. I really wanted to go, then realized that every Wednesday for the past two months I’ve chosen to interact with make-believe lives more than real lives. Especially if I’m to be talking about the church that I haven’t been involved in, acting like Miss Opinionated, I’d feel really stupid. Well, I went anyways, and oddly was blessed in this setting of real people regardless of my penchant for the fake world. I even got answers from the Spirit at this group. I usually personally feel like God’s favorite thing is to hide the answers from us and make us wait a reaaaallly long time for them…but in a playful way. Well, I didn’t come for answers or expect answers, and I got an answer. Simple but strong and clear in a way that I know it is an answer, not a thought. From the medley of other people’s opinions, I learned about God’s hunkering for the mystery, not to bewilder us, but to teach us things at the rate we can grasp them and also to develop trust in Him.

See, for quite awhile now I’ve feared those “messy” spots in relationships, the spots where you really want to be a great friend to someone but you just don’t know which is the right path between two very opposite paths that are available. Everyone in the world deals with this on a daily basis, I’m just sensitive to it because I am terrible at confrontation. Tonight I learned that leaving it a mystery is ok. Just act, and when you don’t know what to do, act anyways and hope the Spirit is guiding you. Until I develop a more mature relationship with God, that’s how it’s going to be. And that’s part of learning maturity in Him. And He’s ok with that. 

The point of this blog is that often times I feel like talking is futile, repetitive, surfacy, etc. But really, the ideas inside of our heads are special-we wouldn’t be special otherwise. And talking, even if it’s surfacy, is part of community. God likes that.  =)