WRITING TOPIC — I BELIEVE…

believe

Definition:	accept as true, credit with veracity, follow a credo, judge or regard
Synonyms:	v. 1. maintain, assert, opine, hold, consider, regard, conceive, trust, have faith in, confide in, credit, accept, affirm, swear by, have no doubt
Quotes:	♦ In the sky, there is no distinction of east and west; people create distinctions out of their own minds and then believe them to be true. — Buddha   ♦ I believe that every person is born with talent.  — Maya Angelou   ♦ The probability that we may fail in the struggle ought not to deter us from the support of a cause we believe to be just. — Abraham Lincoln   ♦ 20. Believe in the holy contour of life — Jack Kerouac from BELIEF & TECHNIQUE FOR MODERN PROSE
Antonyms:	disbelieve, distrust

I believe…

Do you believe in the Lock Ness Monster, the Man in the Moon, Santa Claus? Do you believe in finding Big Foot, flying saucers, ghosts in the machine? Do you believe this year will be better than the last? Do you believe in yourself, your visions, your dreams? The things I believe change from year to year, decade to decade. I used to believe in the tooth fairy, the Velvet Underground, peace, love and rock and roll. What do you believe?

In the 1950s, a radio program called This I Believe was hosted by journalist Edward R. Murrow. Each day, Americans gathered by their radios to hear essays from people like Eleanor Roosevelt, Jackie Robinson, Wallace Stegner, Helen Keller, and Harry Truman—anyone able to distill the guiding principles by which they lived into a few minutes. (For inspiration, you can listen to essays on broadcasts from the 1950s at This I Believe.)

What are the principles by which you live? Are they different than they were two, three, or four years ago? Do you hang around friends who share your beliefs? Or push to expose yourself to other ways of thinking. The goal of the contemporary version of This I Believe (revived on NPR in 2004) was not to persuade Americans to agree on the same beliefs, but to encourage people to develop respect for beliefs different from their own.

Get out your fast writing pens and write the Topic I believe… at the top of your spiral notebook (or start tapping away on your computer or Smartphone).

You can write a haiku, tanka, or gogyohka  practice and post it in the comments.

Or you may be surprised at what you discover when you follow the rules of Writing Practice —- I believe…, 10 minutes, Go!

-posted on red Ravine, Monday, January 2nd, 2012

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WRITING TOPIC — 3 QUESTIONS

Question Mark, Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, Minneapolis, Minnesota, January 2008, all photos © 2008-2009 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

A few weeks ago, I watched an interview on Bill Moyers Journal and was mesmerized by the work of Anna Deavere Smith. It is tough work. She takes on controversial subjects most would not touch in our sanitized, politically correct language of the day. Her 1992 one-woman performance Fires in the Mirror explored the violence between Jews and Blacks after an August 1991 civic disturbance in the New York neighborhood of Crown Heights in Brooklyn. Her solo performance in Twilight: Los Angeles dramatized the 1992 riots that broke out in L.A. following the first Rodney King trial.

For her current one-woman play Let Me Down Easy, Anna Deavere Smith interviewed Americans from all walks of life about healthcare, medical, and end of life issues. After 9 years and 300 plus interviews, she chose 20 people; through their words, body language and speech, she transforms on stage into each one. I’ve only seen snippets of her 90 minute performance on TV. And from bullrider to politician to Buddhist monk, I could hear the voice of all America inserted into the healthcare debate, leaving little room for doubt — something has to change.

We are trying to bring disparate worlds together, not so that we can all get along, but so we can see out of the ‘me’ into ‘us.’

— Anna Deavere Smith

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Highlights

Below are few notes I jotted down while listening to her conversation with Bill Moyers. A few may seem cryptic, but will make more sense when you watch the interview:

• Though Walt Whitman and Abraham Lincoln lived in the same town and Whitman saw Lincoln 22 or 23 times, they never met. Maybe it was a good thing; Whitman was doing another kind of work for the country. [Related article: Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman: War’s Kindred Spirits]

• The title Let Me Down Easy came to her almost out of a dream. There are two songs with the name. Of the title, James H. Cone of the Union Theological Seminary said they are the words of a broken heart and can be interpreted as broken love. “Don’t do it harshly. Not too mean. Let it be easy.”

• Let Me Down Easy is a call about grace and kindness in a world that lacks that often —  in a winner take all world.

• Death is the ultimate form of loss, the ultimate form of abandonment

• It broke her heart to know that we, with all of our money and technology, believe that we can afford to leave people so alone

• Are we afraid of being poor, afraid of losing, afraid of being sick? Is that why we distance ourselves from that reality all around us?

• She chose these 20 particular people because they are very connected to the life cycle – death and life

• The most important thing you can do is be with someone when they die

• Art comes in when the official language falls apart. When things fall apart, you can see more and you can even be part of indicating new ways that things can be put together.

What seems to be important to Anna Deavere Smith is the art of listening. And letting what she hears soak into each cell of her body. Words matter. People matter. She believes something she learned from her grandfather (who was also the inspiration for her method of theater) — if you say a word often enough, it becomes you. In a New York Times article Through 1 Woman, 20 Views of Life’s End she says, “I try to embody America by embodying its words.”

Near the end of the interview, Bill Moyers asked, “When did you begin to listen to people so acutely?” Anna said when she was young, she lived next to a woman who weighed 400 pounds. The neighbor would ask her to go to the store to buy her fatback and she’d love to sit on her porch and listen to her stories —  that’s when she started really listening.

__________________________________________

Writing Topic — 3 Questions

How do we teach ourselves to listen? How do we get people to talk about what has meaning for them, moving beyond repetition or sound bites? In Anna’s words, “I say their words over and over. I listen and I wear the words.”

She said she also taught herself to listen by breaking up certain rhythmic speech patterns. She met a linguist at a cocktail party in 1979 who said she would give her 3 questions that were guaranteed to break the patterns and change the way people are expressing themselves:

Have you ever come close to death?

Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do?

Do you know the circumstances of your birth?

And that’s the inspiration for this Writing Topic — 3 Questions.

Choose one of the 3 questions above. Write it down at the top of your paper. Take out a fast writing pen and do a timed 15 minute Writing Practice.

Maybe 3 questions, combined with the wild mind of Writing Practice, will break patterns in our writing and lead us to listen more closely to our own voices.

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Epilogue

Anna Deavere Smith is on fire. In pursuit of her mission to translate art into social commentary about race, poverty, and injustice, she’s won two Obie Awards, been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and two Tonys, and is a recipient of the prized MacArthur fellowship. (Not to mention her role in NBC’s The West Wing, as National Security Advisor Nancy McNally.) You can read more about Anna Deavere Smith at Bill Moyers Journal. Or watch the full interview with Anna Deavere Smith and Bill Moyers at this link.

In November, the Moth Storytelling Awards in New York honored her as their 2009 recipient at the Annual Moth Ball. The Wall Street Journal blog Speakeasy covered the event which was also attended by writer Garrison Keillor. On the subject of healthcare, the blog references a compelling verbal account from Keillor that night about his stroke in September. He had the stroke while on a massage table, eventually drove himself to the ER, and waited 15 minutes in line before he was able to tell anyone he was having a stroke. Read the full story at Speakeasy: Jonathan Ames, Garrison Keillor and Anna Deavere Smith Headline Annual Moth Ball.

In some ways the most effective politicians are the ones who have the best verbal clothes that they manipulate the best way. And there is a gap between that type of clothing and where people walk and where people live.

Whitman was doing another kind of work for the country at that time. Speaking a different song. And I think the politicians can sing to us but I respect, in a way, the limitation of their language. I mean I guess it’s a part of our culture that goes back as far as Jefferson, that they have to be so careful about what they say. My only desire would then be that we would find other places in our culture to work out our differences.

— Anna Deavere Smith from Bill Moyers Journal, November 2009

-posted on red Ravine, Sunday, November 29th, 2009

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Standing Your Ground — Arroyo, Gulch, Gully & Wash

the desert is no lady, C-41 print film, driving across
New Mexico, January 2003, photo © 2003-2009 by
QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

 
 

Yesterday our blog friend from Seeded Earth was reading her journal from last October and posting snippets on Twitter. One journal entry caught Liz’s eye:

 

Is a wash different from an arroyo, or a gully, or a gulch? We drove over a wash (looks like a dry creek bed) called Car Wash. Really. True.

The entry reminded Liz of last May when we went to see Patricia Hampl and purchased the book Home Ground – Language for an American Landscape. She tweeted back to Bo that she would look up the words arroyo, gully, gulch and wash.

This morning when I got up, Liz was placing Post-it notes on those sections of the book before driving off to work. Curious, I thumbed through the bookmarks and started reading. Our Word Of The Day multiplied to four. I was so fascinated by the subtle differences that I was inspired to post excerpts from the Home Ground definitions on red Ravine.

 
So is a wash different from an arroyo, or a gully, or a gulch? Before you read the answer, what are your definitions? They are powerful, visual words that might even make good Writing Practices. Write one of the words at the top of your page — 10 minutes, Go!

 
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arroyo

The Spanish word arroyo means “large creek.” Often steep-walled, an arroyo may be flat-bottomed sand or laden with boulders and gravel. Arroyuelo and arroyito are the diminutive forms and mean “rill” or “brook.” Arroyos are ephemeral streams, carrying water only briefly during such events as spring runoff of the summer monsoons. In the American Southwest the words arroyo and wash are sometimes used interchangeably, as are arroyo seco (meaning “dry”) and dry wash — though the English terms often describe shorter or abbreviated water courses stretching less than a mile and not necessarily part of a specific arroyo.

 –Arturo Longoria from his home ground, The Texas brushlands, Zapata County, Starr County, Texas

 
 
gulch

In the western United States, gulch is a word for a small ravine. Deeper than a gully, generally narrow and steep sided, shallower than a canyon. Miners often found gold or other minerals concentrated in a gulch’s swash channel. The Blue Cloud Gulch and the Old Dominion Gulch in Montana each yielded gold, silver, and copper for many years. Artifacts of ancient civilizations are also sometimes exposed in a gulch. In Grand Gulch, Utah, for instance, the Anasazi left their mark in red sandstone. In the profusion of gifts offered by gulches, none was more spectacular than the one discovered by a miner in New Mexico in 1987. He saw the tip of tusk in a gulch; the remains were later identified as those of a Columbian mammoth. Public and scientific interest brought about a full excavation of this site, now known as the Dry Gulch Mammoth Site, exposing a grail of bones.

 –Elizabeth Cox from her home ground, Chattanooga, Tennessee

 
 
gully

A channel worn in the earth by a torrent of water carving out a deep ditch is called a gully. Gully erosion happens after a rill, a high-velocity rush of water, has moved large amounts of soil along a depression or drainage line. As water wears away the land, the rill — the geomorphic feature — becomes a gully; cutting farther down, the headlong water makes a gulch, until the cellar doors open into a canyon. Geographers distinguish between gullies, washes, and arroyos on the one hand, and cañadas on the other, according to the materials involved. Cañadas — like cañoncitos — slice through bedrock. Arroyos and washes cut through flat layers of valley deposits; and gullies and gulches erode hill-slope materials.

 –Elizabeth Cox from her home ground, Chattanooga, Tennessee 

 
 
wash

The word wash is used to describe areas where subtle contours allow water to flow, or “wash,” from elevated sites to lower zones, like the bottoms of canyons or along gullies or next to ponds. Carrizo Wash in Arizona and Hunters Wash in New Mexico are examples of washes that run for many miles. A dry streambed or creek is often called a dry wash. In some areas of the American Southwest the words arroyo and arroyo seco are used interchangeably with wash and dry wash. In Desert Solitaire, Edward Abbey writes: “Streambeds are usually dry. The dry wash, dry gulch, arroyo seco. Only after a storm do they carry water and then briefly–a few minutes, a couple of hours.”

 –Arturo Longoria from his home ground, The Texas brushlands, Zapata County, Starr County, Texas

 

-partial excerpts from Home Ground — Language for an American Landscape, published by Trinity University Press

 
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-For more information on the Home Ground Project or to purchase your copy of Home Ground — Language for an American Landscape, important links can be found in the post and Comment conversation at Home Ground — Back In The Saddle. 

Gratitude to the writers of Home Ground, to Bo from Seeded Earth for asking the question, and to Liz for responding. Together they became the inspiration for this Writing Topic.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, September 16th, 2009

-related to post: Midwest Poets & Writers — When Can You Call A Place Home?

 

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Word Love

funkadelic!!, and a collection of other words and phrases I love to say, pen and ink on graph paper, doodle © 2008 by ybonesy. All rights reserved.

When I was in high school there was this guy, John Armijo, who had big stretchy lips, white Chiclets for teeth, and a clown smile. He wore his hair ala Vip’s Big Boy, and he talked like a Valley Girl, except masculine.

He made up a word—funkadelic—which he used the way others might say cool.


          “Hey, Charles Castillo is having a party this Friday night.”

          “Funkadelic, man!!”


And there was the way he said it. Funk-a-DELLL-LICK. Emphasis on the DEL with a stretching out of the L, then a slow transition into LICK. Before long, John’s word became part of the lexicon of our entire group of friends.

But more important, hearing John say funkadelic was the first time it hit me that I love the way some words sound. I like how they form in my lips, how they make my tongue touch the roof of my mouth, and how my voice lingers over certain syllables.

That word—funkadelic—had all sorts of word-love associations in my mind, none of which you might expect. Funkadelic made me think of Helsinki made me think of melanoma made me think of lucidity. Something about the way the mouth and tongue and lips worked together got me going in a ribbon of sound and shape.







I will go out of my way to say certain words and phrases. Take the name of that famous discount clothing store, the one where you have to pore through racks to find designer brands in the right color and size. Ross Dress for Less.

I love that place, will frequent it instead of Marshalls all because I have bonded with the name. Never plain ol’ Ross, but Ross Dress for Less. (I was in there the other day looking at trench coats for a Halloween costume and I noticed an abundance of home furnishings. God forbid there’s a name change on the horizon; it just wouldn’t be the same.)

I realize my love of the way certain words sound must have begun long ago, when my brain was still forming synapses (there’s one I enjoy saying). I think back to words of my youth—Piggly Wiggly, Gilligan, Ellie Mae. I can see the dotted line to funkadelic and why whenever I see one of my co-workers, I go out of my way to say her name. Nellie.

When Dee was little, everything she ate she had to dip into sauce—ketchup, salad dressing, barbeque sauce. This led Jim and me to coin the term dippin’ sauce, which ten years later is still one of my favorite things to say.


          “Dippin’ sauce with those artichokes?”

          “Yes, please!”


There are words I start out not liking that later grow on me. Gasamat. Once a word enters that special place between my cheek and gums, I tend to use it as much as I possibly can. Gasamat, Gasamat, Gasamat.

The newly coined staycation was a real annoyance when I first heard it this summer, yet lately I notice it’s growing on me. I think even if the price of gas plummets and airline travel becomes incredibly cheap, I will nonetheless take nothing but staycations for the rest of my days.

Webinar is another word I thought was dumb, and yet I seem to be growing fonder of that one by the day. I might even consider hosting a webinar just so I can say it few hundred times. Who know? Maybe I’ll do four webinars in a week and call it a weborama.

Even when I disapprove of the meaning of a word, what it stands for, I can still like the way it sounds. Robocall, for example.







I’ve decided to start a list of words I love to say. It’s kind of anemic (hmmm, I might consider that one) but I plan to add to it over time. (I also considered making a list of words I didn’t like to say but realized those had less to do with the structure and sound of the word itself and more to do with words being over-used and/or not terribly meaningful.)

Feel free to add words for which you hold a special fondness. Together we can celebrate the joy of vocabulary—in all its funkadelic-ness.




Of all the Words I’ve Loved Before…

   funkadelic
   Helsinki
   melanoma
   lucidity
   Ross Dress for Less
   synapses
   Piggly Wiggly
   Gilligan
   Ellie Mae
   Nellie
   Gasamat
   staycation
   webinar
   dippin’ sauce
   sassy (pronounced sas-seh)
   gangly
   cauliflower (pronounced collie-flower)
   billy goat
   marigold
   robocall
   kleptomaniac
   Quetzalcoatl
   bourgeoisie
   Blas (a man’s name)
   memento
   pimento

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Holding My Bated Breath

I noticed that one of the last comments in The Devil Came Down To Austin contained the phrase waiting with bated breath. It struck me as poetic Old English and I wanted to find out more.

The Word Detective has this to say about bated breath:

The word “bated” is an aphetic, or clipped, form of the word “abated,” and means “lessened or restrained.” In other words, to “wait with bated breath” is to hold your breath while waiting for something to happen. Although “abate” is a fairly common word, virtually the only place you’ll find “bated” these days is in the phrase “with bated breath.”

The word bated is often misspelled as baited. And, I have to confess, when I saw comment #18 in The Devil Came Down To Austin, I had to stop and think twice about the correct way to spell bate (the only current word usage we have of the word bate is bait).

I found an excellent word resource from Michael Quinion called World Wide Words  that credits Shakespeare as the first to use bated breath (in 1596), with Mark Twain a close second:

Shakespeare is the first writer known to use it, in The Merchant of Venice: “Shall I bend low and, in a bondman’s key, / With bated breath and whisp’ring humbleness, / Say this …”. Nearly three centuries later, Mark Twain employed it in Tom Sawyer: “Every eye fixed itself upon him; with parted lips and bated breath the audience hung upon his words, taking no note of time, rapt in the ghastly fascinations of the tale”.

Quinion also addresses why the word bate is often misspelled:

It’s easy to mock, but there’s a real problem here. Bated and baited sound the same and we no longer use bated (let alone the verb to bate), outside this one set phrase [waiting with bated breath], which has become an idiom. Confusion is almost inevitable. Bated here is a contraction of abated through loss of the unstressed first vowel (a process called aphesis); it has the meaning “reduced, lessened, lowered in force”. So bated breath refers to a state in which you almost stop breathing through terror, awe, extreme anticipation, or anxiety.

So when I’m waiting with bated breath, am I holding on to my breath for dear life? Or have I stopped breathing altogether, clinched in the jaws of terror and awe?

I’ll leave that up to Mark Twain, Shakespeare, the word gods, and you.

Saturday, June 23rd, 2007

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