Word Playa Hata

I'm going to start a twitter. I don't keep a journal, but I've always thought it would be cool over time to keep tabs on your life that you can look back on later. Journaling would be too tedious. Twitter seems a cool way to do it quickly and regularly. I've never done it before. I imagine you could send updates from your cell phone.

Aak's twitter seems a receptacle for his obsession with words. Today it's psithurism. Yesterday it was hypergelast: one who laughs excessively. This last one has the distinction of being the first Aak entry to entertain me. Well, maybe there was another one...nope, nothing I can think of.

When I was an English major in college, I always felt like I was missing out on something that I couldn't put my finger on. Some people are just junkies for language, such as my online partner. There's something about words that seems to access the pleasure centers in their brains. They talk about things like the rhythm of language. I have a distinct memory of being in a poetry class where we were studying Wordsworth and one of the students mentioned how the language sounded like "da-DA-da-DA-da-DA-da-DA" in his head while he was reading it. I have never had that experience. I never hear or feel or in any extracurricular way sense the words that I'm reading. Luckily, it's very possible to semi-fart your way through a liberal arts college education. I love books, and get excited when I can be exposed to new ideas and imaginary adventures, but there's just some sort of pleasure they get that I don't.

I grew up under parents who valued reading highly. My Mom read to me a LOT, but I was one of those difficult to corral energetic types who wasn't too keen on sitting still for some blasted words. I was much more the type to take a device apart and see how it works. I could do that for hours. I did well in math when younger, but lost track somewhere in high school. Sophomore year Geometry, actually, which I later learned was where liberal arts minded people excel. Too bad I didn't know it at the time, because I could've comforted myself in that thought at 15. At the time it was just a math class which I didn't do well at, and therefore I must no longer be good at math. I think the subject clicked with like a couple weeks to go in the year, but by then it was only enough to pull out a decent grade.

The point of all this is that I find it very interesting that most people seem to have it hard wired in their brains to like certain types of endeavors and not others. Right now in school I'm reconnecting with my desire to solve problems after years of trying to make other avenues work. It's funny how at home I feel while doing problems again. I'm still early in this process, and it takes a lot of work, but I'm having a ball. But if you were to put another type of person in this pursuit they would hate it. (Whenever I sit down to do some homework, people have no qualms saying "oh, I HATE math." Imagine if I were to say that sort of thing indiscriminately to people that I meet.) People like Aak get off on hearing some sort of linguistic construction or rhyme or rhythm or whatever, and I would rather be tarred and feathered.