all valid questions
do you have a word that, when you hear it, conjures its opposite meaning in your mind? when i hear the word ‘pariah,’ or especially when i see it written, i imagine a holy person, shrouded in white and light as a feather, people following behind hoping to touch a hem or catch a blessed nod. does the word itself sound holy? all those open vowels certainly give it an airy purity. perhaps i associate outcasts with martyrs, or maybe it just sounds so much like messiah.
do you ever get words stuck in your head, the same way you inexplicably wake up singing an early 90’s salt n pepa jam? last week i got out of bed with the words ‘marquis de sade’ running themselves in loops around my brain. maybe i dreamed i was traveling to france, because i remember thinking it was a river. when i saw that the actual marquis de sade was a writer, i immediately remembered having him buried somewhere in my mind with the word ‘sadism.’ but don’t those words roll out more like a million-dollar rug, or a Renoir?
do you ever get words stuck in your head, the same way you inexplicably wake up singing an early 90’s salt n pepa jam? last week i got out of bed with the words ‘marquis de sade’ running themselves in loops around my brain. maybe i dreamed i was traveling to france, because i remember thinking it was a river. when i saw that the actual marquis de sade was a writer, i immediately remembered having him buried somewhere in my mind with the word ‘sadism.’ but don’t those words roll out more like a million-dollar rug, or a Renoir?