Sunday, February 25, 2007

This is me.

Barbara Sher says:
Take a blank sheet of paper (we’re going to be using a lot of blank paper in this book—it’s the staff of life) and, in a few sentences to half a page, answer the question: “Who do you think you are?” I am genuinely interested in the answer. What do you consider the four or five most important characteristics that define your identity? There are no right or wrong answers, and there’s only one rule: don't think too long or hard. Put down the first and surest things that come to mind: “This is me.”


Ok. This is me: I like trying new things. I like learning. I like to read and to dance and think hard about something when involved in a good conversation with a smart person. I am open minded and empathetic and I try very very hard to see things from other people’s perspectives. I also have a lot of wishes and not a lot of discipline. I am very interested in languages and language; I love literature and wordplay. There are a great many things I want to do but sometimes I realize I want to want to do them more than I actually want to do them. There are a great many things I wish I were more interested in.

Sunday, February 11, 2007

I wish intellectual weren't, like, a bad word

I’m reading Villa Incognito, finally, and I’m thrilled because it’s good and I’m enjoying it and while it’s not Cowgirls or Skinny Legs, it’s also no Fierce Invalids. Hooray! So I’m lying on my bed just now with it and I read a passage in which one character informs another that it’s pronounced sacrileeegous, not as would rhyme with religious. I wonder if this is true, and being the particular kind of dork I am, I reach over and grab my bedside dictionary to look it up. (Of course, the dorkiness here does not refer to my actually looking the word up; it refers to the fact that I have a dictionary next to my bed for just such occasions.) I grab the book and open it... to page 1082/3, which is to say, the exact right page that contains sacrilegious. Seriously, how weird is that?

Yes, of course he’s right, he’s Tom Robbins. The popular pronunciation, sacri-lih-gous, is listed as the second option.