the dictionary lives beside me
the dictionary lives beside me now. I have been reading Anais Nin’s “Henry and June”, and her writing is so full of wonderful long extravagant words that I couldn’t bear to pass them by without finding out their full meaning. this book is made up of her journal during the year in which she fell in love with both the writer, Henry Miller, and his wife, June Mansfield. her writing is intense and impassioned. she writes out of necessity, as a drowning person gasps for air. she writes to embroider her emotion on the world.
Since I had pulled out the dictionary to look up the word fecundicity, oona and I looked up words friday evening after dinner. calamity, capriciousness, arbitrary, insouciant. And I found a great word on the site I just linked to – contrails. I have rediscovered my joy of vocabulary!
My dad told me that he used to look up every single word he didn’t know when he was reading. You have to do it straight away, otherwise you forget to go back. I am going to make a point of doing this from now on – it only takes a minute, and how am I going to learn new words otherwise? I’d be missing out on a powerful skill of being able to express exactly what I mean.
