Monday, November 16, 2009

Word Nerding

A Li-Young Lee poem excerpt to start:

Persimmons

"Other words
that got me into trouble were
fight and fright, wren and yarn.
Fight was what I did when I was frightened,
Fright was what I felt when I was fighting.
Wrens are small, plain birds,
yarn is what one knits with.
Wrens are soft as yarn.
My mother made birds out of yarn.
I loved to watch her tie the stuff;
a bird, a rabbit, a wee man..."


As for me I'll have this: sedentary and sedimentary.
The latter refers to a geological process where eroded earth is swatted around and the pressed down to form a type of rock. It takes a long time to form said shale, or limestone, or sandstone, or enter-Googled-sedimentary-rock-here, but it does not take nearly as long to form adipose tissue. Ahem. Fat. And that is due to the former vocabulary word. Lately, I have been exceedingly sedentary. Sedentary in office chairs, car seats, on mattresses propped up on a pillow, in front of a screens and dining tables, kitchen counters restaurant table runners. And I have been doing very little running. It is.. a lifestyle, that of which I am thinking up creative and time efficient ways to combat and tear myself out of.

But, on the bright side of life that The Life of Brian tells us to always look on, I'm employed. I suppose these are my just desserts.