THEY TELL ME WORDS ARE DEAD

Let me tell you of MY HISTORY with words.

ENGLISH words.

I was raised on words in BOSTON.

We consider ourselves KEEPERS OF THE LANGUAGE.

Even with our funny accents.

But then I entered the convent with nuns from all over.

And I lost a lot of words.

Then I went to TORONTO for eight years

where hardly anyone has English for a FIRST language

and being in the heart of LITTLE ITALY every fourth phone call

was in ITALIAN and I was the phone operator and all our staff were ESL.

And I lost a lot of words.

And then I was diagnosed with a non-functioning thyroid and that caused "brain fog" (yes, the technical term) for many years.

And I lost a lot of words.

And then five years ago

I almost died.

An experience far beyond words and poems and even music.

And I lost a lot of words.

Now they tell me words are DEAD.

That it's all about the viz-yoo-al now.

IMAGES. Post-word-literacy.

As much as I LOVE and USE

ALL the NEW media:

iPods, Bluetooth, txting, Flickr,

YouTube, Google, Facebook, cell phones,

digital cameras, Tivo and the like

I believe there is a qualitative difference,

not better, just different

when it comes to words

deep words vis-a-vis utilitarian words

deep reading vis-a-vis utilitarian reading

and it's not so much about words really

but LANGUAGE.

But now we're wading hip-deep into PHILOSOPHY and CULTURE and WHAT IT MEANS TO BE HUMAN

and I am not afraid of that. BIO! (Bring it on!)

They tell me words are DEAD.

Well I say: poppycock.

I am tired of losing words.

You will have to pry WORDS from my cold, dead fingers.

"Only a continuous tradition of gentle speech, with all its implications--the avoidance of boredom and vulgarity, the exchange of complicated ideas, the observance of subtle nuances of word and phrase--can preserve the written tongue from death, and lifelong habitude to such speech alone schools a man to write his own tongue."
--Evelyn Waugh