Today I ran across something fascinating.
The Paris Review has a recurring section called "First Person" in which are published essays written in the, well, you know. This month's offering (which word is a misnomer; I'm sure the author was paid handsomely) is entitled "The Eleventh Word" and was written by a woman named Lulu Miller. The article/essay/whatever-it-is was accompanied, for reasons that will become clear as you read it, by this illustration:
So for your reading pleasure, wonderment, and general perusal (note use of the Oxford comma), here it is.
Please share with us your reactions to Ms. Miller's piece. I was strangely reminded of the passage in the book of Genesis where God brought the animals to Adam and whatever Adam called each one, that was its name.
What's in a name? A rose by any other name woul smell as sweet. Somebody said that once.
In other news, today is what used to be called Columbus Day in the United States of America. It commemorated the day in 1492 when a certain Italian sailing under the financial backing of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain landed on an island in the Bahamas and was said for many years to have discovered America. America had been there all the time, of course; he just encountered it on his voyage. He was not even the first European to encounter it. Vikings had done that several centuries earlier and several hundred miles farther north. And the indigenous people had been around for quite a while before that. October 12th is now called Indigenous Peoples Day instead.
Old habits are hard to break, and I'm doing my best. But it's more difficult when the world is falling apart and the things you thought you knew are disintegrating before your eyes.
As the world I thought I knew decays, shatters, dissolves and shifts I do wonder how much of the 'new' order I will willingly embrace as it emerges.
ReplyDeleteI’m not willingly embracing any of it. Instead of emerging, I hope it crawls back into the hole it came from. (Is that too strong?)
DeleteI found the piece to be a bit of a jumble. The story of her child learning new words was sweet. As a mother I also gloried in my children learning to speak. Looking for deep meaning behind the child screaming at being in a strange place puzzled me. All he needed was a hug and the knowledge that his mothers would protect him. Her examples of words conveying certain feelings of well-being was good. Over all I enjoyed the article. Thank you.
ReplyDelete“His mothers” is another phrase that jars my brain. Sorry, I prefer the world I knew.
DeleteThe author of the article seems to be saying she fears, does not like, or at least is suspicious of words, yet she makes a living by writing carefully contrived, over-written pieces like this (it takes one to know one). I'm not convinced she understands the psychology of language development either. Like Emma I thought it a jumble.
ReplyDeleteThanks for pointing out the author’s incongruity.
DeleteWe'll I'm not sure what I read there. The article seemed all over the place, and I skimmed the last bit. I enjoyed reading about her child learning new words. There is joy in naming things and communicating with others.But saying he had night terrors because he knew words is a bit of a stretch.
ReplyDeletePerhaps the coptic picture gave the kid nightmares. And what did the cinder block killing the woman in the hammock have to do with words?
It is interesting to get everyone’s reactions.
DeleteI enjoyed and understood most of the article. There is a great joy in a child learning and understanding new words. I understand the fear of the unknown. When we know and understand something it can (but not always) be less frightening. But what I did not like was the author's conclusion. I do not agree with the thought that learning words and their meaning creates a wall between a child and a parent. I believe an experience named and understood enhances the sharing of that experience rather than the opposite.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you, Bonnie.
DeleteI read the comments here before the article and i was going to ask Tasker what he meant by "over written, contrived writing"
ReplyDeleteThen I started reading the article and found out. It bored me and simultaneously reminded me of every painful first time parent I've met. I stopped reading 80% of the way in and I don't think I missed much.
The world changes and things jar, I still want a brass band in church but we have Hillsong instead. My daughter wants her children to be at her wedding. What next?
What next, indeed! I shudder to think.
DeleteThat is a very well-crafted autobiographical piece. Thank you for sharing it. I must say that I never had reflections like Lulu Miller's as my two children grasped language and sought to use words to communicate their sense of the world. To me the acquisition of language was all very natural and positive. Nothing to fret about. I notice that Lulu Miller thought it was okay to escape her parental responsibilities to spend time in the countryside while no doubt her "wife" was left holding the baby on her own. That seemed rather selfish to me.
ReplyDeleteAll in all, her viewpoint seems to be a unique one from a unique perspective.
DeleteUnlike Kylie, I read the article before I read any comments. I'm very glad that I did. I probably wouldn't have bothered reading the article if I had. Life is too short and time is too precious. As it was I was fascinated and read it from beginning to end and parts of it several times.
ReplyDeleteMy immediate reaction was that the wall hanging scared the wits out of the child. Then when I read the paragraph before the antepenultimate paragraph about the woman in the hammock and couldn't make any sense of it I went back and read the last four paragraphs again several times. I still couldn't make sense of it.
Most of the article was comprehensible even if I had severe doubts about its logic. As a child I was terrified of the dark when alone. As a younger adult I was terrified of coniferous forests when alone (I haven't tested my fear in the last few decades because I don't come across coniferous forests when walking now).
Unlike climbing a rock face or skiing where the dangers are known the dark and a coniferous forest present us with an opportunity to fear the unknown.
I sometimes suffer from severe nightmares (which I term night stallions) and sometimes wake in the way that the child did. My vocabulary is pretty comprehensive (except when trying to do crosswords sometimes but I generally do them when I’m awake) and I don’t see any correlation between my night stallions and a lack of vocabulary.
Here endeth (you will be pleased to learn) my comment.
Thanks be to God.
DeleteI hope that sin always startles me and that I don't 'try to adjust' my way of thinking to current affairs. The times grow ever more evil, but God is the same. Yesterday, Today, Forever. The article? Sounds like a confused person trying to make sense of themselves. I just don't think life (as God intended it) is meant to be that complicated.
ReplyDeletePam, I didn’t say I was trying to adjust. I said I was trying to understand. They are two very different things.
DeleteI shouldn't have put ' marks in there. I was actually speaking about myself and my opinion....not trying to quote you, RWP. (I talk better in person as I don't usually think like other people do, lol!)
DeleteThanks for clarifying!
Delete