The dictionary is three hundred and sixty five pages long. We memorize a word every day, until we have the whole thing down pat, front to back — the limits of our language. I express myself with the words I learn every day. Terse. Happy. Afloat.
Three hundred and sixty five pages seem like eternity, printed in tiny letters, eight points high, until you realize how many feelings are lost from the pages. Is there a word for the loneliness you feel after a thunderstorm, when the lightning no longer flashes across the sky, and the terror has retreated? Was there ever such a word? I hope that I will know when I finish learning the words in school; one at a time, until I can fill my heart with every word there ever was.
Our language teacher, Mrs. Macready, walks with clipped steps, and checks our grammar twice. Any word over two syllables long is crossed out in red pen. Clipped, efficient style, that’s the thing, Mrs. Macready says. We will be journalists and writers one day, churning out leaflets of propaganda and how-to manuals, and we must make sure that we are understood. There is no room for a susurrus when a whisper will do. Everyone must understand what we say.
And so, we practice in the school room, for hours on end, typing out bland reports of the weather, our family’s activities, our classmates’ conversations, dutifully turning them in, to be marked and graded, until we are masters of our art.
Every Tuesday, the routine is interrupted for a history lesson, so that we understand the mistakes of the past and do not repeat them. Mrs. Gilbert, the history teacher, has a haggard look about her face, and tells of unimaginable luxury – families who wasted six hours of electricity to indulge in hot meat, people who kept animals in their house, but never ate or milked them, children who kept secrets and told lies.
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Re: Prompt 3
Date: 2011-06-09 02:35 am (UTC)Three hundred and sixty five pages seem like eternity, printed in tiny letters, eight points high, until you realize how many feelings are lost from the pages. Is there a word for the loneliness you feel after a thunderstorm, when the lightning no longer flashes across the sky, and the terror has retreated? Was there ever such a word? I hope that I will know when I finish learning the words in school; one at a time, until I can fill my heart with every word there ever was.
Our language teacher, Mrs. Macready, walks with clipped steps, and checks our grammar twice. Any word over two syllables long is crossed out in red pen. Clipped, efficient style, that’s the thing, Mrs. Macready says. We will be journalists and writers one day, churning out leaflets of propaganda and how-to manuals, and we must make sure that we are understood. There is no room for a susurrus when a whisper will do. Everyone must understand what we say.
And so, we practice in the school room, for hours on end, typing out bland reports of the weather, our family’s activities, our classmates’ conversations, dutifully turning them in, to be marked and graded, until we are masters of our art.
Every Tuesday, the routine is interrupted for a history lesson, so that we understand the mistakes of the past and do not repeat them. Mrs. Gilbert, the history teacher, has a haggard look about her face, and tells of unimaginable luxury – families who wasted six hours of electricity to indulge in hot meat, people who kept animals in their house, but never ate or milked them, children who kept secrets and told lies.
Our way is better.