Episode 002

On language     
         ...be careful with it

After writing the rest of this post,  I found the perfect word to describe my efforts as they relate to my blog in general.  The word is anonymicule and is the word worth know for the week  of Jan. 23-29 from my Merriam-Webster email.  It is so rare that my Mac spellchecker is marking it as misspelled, but I triple checked it.  Accent is on the second syllable if anyone cares.  Now, as to the definition… “an insignificant anonymous writer.”  I know I put my name on the blog, but as a total unknown writer I think it fits.  On to the real post…

I wish for a word in English that occurs in Spanish,.   The verb gustar indicates that something is pleasing to you, that you like it, which is the English usage of like, usually referring to something on the order of books, food, etc., as well as people.  We, i.e. English speakers, also use the word ‘love’ to indicate we like someone or something a lot. The verb encantar, although it can be used to indicate that something is enchanting in Spanish, is used when an English speaker uses the word ‘love’ in the sense of ‘I love Zoom”.  I will be sparing in the use of the word ‘love’ to mean ‘really like’ and try to only use it as meaning a deep emotional attachment to a person, or possibly an animal that we are particularly attached to*.  I loved Medoña, my Pomeranian, mi perrita negra.

I could get tired quickly of saying ‘ I really like’ something, so suggestions would be appreciated because I really like most of my life and have come to accept the things I wish I had done differently.  I love my life in general and it is not an exaggeration even though, as I said in the intro page, I live in a small apartment (small two-bedroom apartment, which does give me a storeroom for all my yarn and fiber gathered over the years (bought before rents started skyrocketing the past couple of years) as well as a place to throw all my Amazon boxes until I can get them recycled; in plainer terms, also a junk room.

How do I find happiness in this restricted world where I can no longer read easily nor drive. What exactly is happiness.  There have been uncountable treatises and volumes written on this subject, since writing became the way to communicate over distance and time in the early civilizations.  Happiness… I tend to agree with Marcus Aurelius and his Meditations which I found not too long ago, thus finding the right word to describe my particular way of being happy.  I would like to change the word happy to content.  I am happy, even joyous, at times, but mostly content with my current life, to have what I have mentally and physically in several senses.

Language causes pictures to form in my mind, as it does for most people**.   This may be why reading fiction is mo longer inviting.  Even the science lectures on youTube cause a movie or cartoon in my mind, the latter when I have no previous image to extrapolate from*.  And I did watch quite a bit of TV at certain point in my life, from MASH and Hill Street Blues to star Trek and pro football.  The only sport I would watch now if I had a TV would be baseball, so why have one; the news is available through email, apps, and the ever-present youTube which also feeds most of my craving to know what the world is about, with a smattering of Twitter.  As to the latter I tend to follow geology, ancient history, NASA, etc, and, I confess, dog and cat videos.

There are so many words that I probably don’t use correctly (read "educatedly") in English, much less Spanish, but who does.  Oh, maybe Stephen Pinker.

µ moo

*Do not write me to say that I ought not end a sentence with a preposition; I am not writing in Spanish or Latin or whatever other language that use prepositional phrases for their phrasal verbs!  That dictum came from the period when it was fashionable to impose Latin grammar on the germanic language known as English.

**Some people say they cannot visualize, but I find that really hard to believe.