Des Mots

The rain is coming down again, more intensely. I hear a lawn mower. Times have really changed since two years ago. I hope this band project is good and goes somewhere. I also hope Mark and I can be friends. He’s very intelligent and nice and seems to care about me even though we’ve only met once. I suppose I’m a worthy guy in spite of what my family thought. We all gave each other hell for no good reason, and when things aren’t logical I don’t stick around. The rain stopped as suddenly as it began. Just light sprinkles. … I can live with myself now even if my family could not. I consider them quite ignorant and narrow minded, maybe not worth my concern. Not even Jeff could disabuse himself of redneck family beliefs and lingo. Perhaps he was unwilling to let the others go. I felt like I had no choice but to exile myself. The language I use is peculiarly mine, a creole of formal and colloquial English. Basically it is conversational speech. Writing original thoughts is a veritable art. Socrates said something about original thought. I guess that’s what I and many other bloggers do. Those who can’t write well might have trouble formulating ideas from scratch. My mother and sister used almost nothing but stock phrases, never thinking of taking the building blocks of speech and articulating thoughts of their own. James Joyce mentions having used philosophers such as Aquinas as “lamps” for illuminating his own notions. First you learn the terms and then you can build whatever you desire.

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