Skip to main content

Letters and words

It never fails to fascinate me how powerful words are. How a little letter, such as an "x" can change the whole meaning of the words and punctuation prior to it. Even now, you're reading these words and they're doing stuff to your mind; sometimes we read things that change us, that stick with us. Something a person (be they fictional or real, no matter) said long ago or recently can stick with us for life.

I read a lot and, though my mind is getting better at it, quotes don't stay with me for that long but one particular day I was rather sad and I was reading Dear Mr Potter (compiled & edited by the wonderful Lily Zalon) and someone quoted Dumbledore. The quote was "it does not do to dwell on dreams, and forget to live." Perhaps it was the alliteration in this quote that made it stick with me, or maybe it was the significance it has to the situation I was in then... but it's stuck. It pops into my head when I find myself wallowing and wanting things that I perhaps cannot have - I, like Dumbledore advises against, forget to live. I don't look around me and appreciate what I've got, I don't stay as calm as I should and I am sometimes over dramatic and emotional. These words give me comfort and remind me to live my life and not live, purely, in the land of the could-have-should-have-would-have.

Words hold so much more than the meaning behind them; they encapsulate memories, feelings, symbols. Something that someone has written can show us so much about them and the way they're feeling, if they choose to show that in there writing (though sometimes we cannot help but subconsciously allude to our own lives). It provides something concrete and separate from ourselves and that shows so much about us; I guess that's why diary writing is so appealing - we tend to forget things and how we felt and the words we wrote down at that time remind us.

When we, for example, text we follow social conventions: emoticons, a lack of punctuation (some of us, anyway), bad grammar (again, some of us) and the whole fandango about "x"s. We put kisses on texts for a reason... everyone seems to have their 'standard' kisses which they tend to hand out without thinking. But we, being totally over-analysing, interpret a text completely differently when the number of "x"s are reduced. Something as simple as one fewer letter makes the whole dynamic of what the person is saying change. It seems trivial, but in other contexts, the lack of a comma or letter does exactly the same - except it's different somehow. Some people take the "x" thing very seriously, others don't. We don't seem to have an 'accepted' rule on it, which makes things very confusing and complicated when it comes to interpretation.

Although this much is true about texting and the social convention (and confusion) of adding "x"s to text, this is pretty much the same with every piece of writing, we all interpret letters, words differently... that's what makes it so great though, words would not hold that power otherwise. The next time you get flustered over the amount of kisses someone is sending you stop, think and appreciate it. This flustering and confusion is what makes words so fantastic.


Keep smiling and DFTBA.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

"Teens don't read"

Earlier today Maureen Johnson pointed out that the view of "teens don't read" in the UK is deeply entrenched (which is a word that I now love  and had never heard before). As a teenager in the UK, the stigma around reading seems to be - to me - it's "uncool", it's "geeky", there "aren't any good books out there". I think the fact that a lot of teenagers in British schools are exposed to older literature or, perhaps, not that popular literature in lessons and forced into over-analysing and spending countless hours on 'what the author meant'. A point that was raised in this twitter discussion was that people didn't want to be seen reading, or didn't want to be seen reading certain books. It's made me realise that I never   ever ever  see people reading in the older years in my school ( ever ). Perhaps the odd year 7 (12 year old) or year 8 (13 year old) will read, but - from experience - they will probably be ...

This is my Metamorphosis

Yes, it is that time again. Claire is feeling low-key-stressed  so she submerges herself in water. In actual fact, normally I get to a stage a high-key-stress  before getting into the tub - this time, I only have access to a bath for 2 more weeks (due to moving... for the third time in a year) so I thought I'd make the most of my local Lush. A while ago I spotted Metamorphosis  and asked the member of staff to show us what it did (she gave us pick of the store). Now... I love the smell of this bath bomb (my bathroom and skin slightly smell of that lovely concoction of scents). The wow-factor was less impressive with this one. Which leads me to the questions: is that always an imperative for a successful bath bomb? Does it have to look absolutely beautiful, or can the warmth and smells lull you to a sense of happiness only a bath can achieve? The fact that I would definitely buy Metamorphosis again, says "no, the prettiness doesn't matter", but I loved  the smell ...

The people I have met through ink

I read somewhere once that one of the reasons books are so great is that one can pick them up a second time and feel how you did, or remember where you were the first time you picked it up and opened it. I stand by this idea as to one of the reasons I love reading so much. I am perusing the wonderful words of Ali Smith's The Accidental for my level 1 module 'Introduction to Narrative' and whilst this module is all very technical (and trust me, I do love that!) I am really enjoying reading a novel where the characterisation leaves a bitter sweet taste in my mouth and when I close my eyes all I can see is Amber; how she looks, how she dresses, how she smells... I love that. I love that I can read 200 pages or so of one novel and suddenly there is this person inside of my head and I can't get her out. Not so long ago I read R. J. Anderson's Nomad (the second in the Swift series) and I was brought back to why I adore fantasy so much. I felt like I wanted to fly, and...