Fresh Writing: The Assassination of Language

I am writer. This is my craft. The love of words, of language, is what brings me to work each day and has me wander, with creative abandon, over the canvas of the open page. So much can happen with words and the way they are shaped together.

Words can make us cry for what we regret, can send us to the corner bakery to acquire a gooey chocolate chip cookie (or make a batch ourselves) and even escort us to forgive a million sins of humanity. The well wrought story of an orphan child, forced to eat a meal from the gutter, will keep us up into the dark hours of the night in order to discover her fate and then will have us leave our cozy bed in order to cradle our own sleeping child and whisper silent prayers for his or her happiness and well being. Words can slice, devastate, ruin and on the other side, they can make a million promises that the heart wants, perhaps needs, to believe. Words are an alive tapestry with a history that contain layer upon layer of meaning and they point to our evolution as a species—beginning very often in Greek or in Latin and then traveling through countries and time to be more or perhaps less than they were originally intended to be. To know a word, truly know it from the beginning, is to understand others and to know ourselves. Insight can be gleaned by one word spoken or placed just so on the page.

Words. Words. Words.

Like a true New Yorker will talk about her love of Manhattan—I am a wordsmith who can talk forever about my love affair with words, which began in the womb when my sixteen-year-old mother was removed from school and confined to her room for most of her pregnancy. As we traveled together, my mother and me, she focused her attention on books. The epic romance novel, to be exact. Gone with the Wind was a favorite. From that tempestuous love story, my young mother culled the name Tara. She spoke loving words to her swelling stomach. "I love you, little Tara," she said, again and again.

And then there was my father, a boy from the wrong type of family, a "bad" boy who wasn't considered good enough for my mother. His name had been Wright.

Together, their supposed wrong, made me. Tara Wright.

Although I was adopted away and named something else--Jennifer Lauck--I never forgot. Because of my beginnings, it's makes sense I was born with a love of words and books. As soon as I could read, I was a goner. Dr. Suess, Mary Poppins, Oz, fairy tales from The Brother's Grimm, all the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, Maya Angelu too. I read love stories, epics, autobiographies, novels and even poems. The turn of a phrase, that perfect twist on words, could send me into a swoon and I transcribe those little pearls into a notebook in order to savor them again and again.

In college, I became a journalist trained to hone my words with deft precision. Who? What? Where? Why? And when? Word count mattered, time mattered and so word choice mattered too.

And now, here I am, some forty plus years into my love affair with the word and I see the advent of the death of language (with it, the death of the attention span). Technology now gives us the coded, to be decoded. What started as little dots and slashes, binary code, has evolved to be Twitter and Text.

L8r. OMG. Brb.

Later? Oh my God? Be right back?

These abbreviations, as part of a new world of speed and character count send my eyes into spasm and my mind into a form of tilt one might see on those old pinball machines. I cannot even try to decipher what these combinations of letters and numbers mean and the effort (which requires a primer for translation) takes far longer than it would have taken to simply use the language as it had been intended—in it's fullness.

The other day, I sent my husband a photo of a drawing I had done—one I spent hours crafting. While albeit, I am rusty with the charcoal, I was surprise to get an email of that read "LOL!"

Laugh out loud?

Had my fifty two year old scholar of ancient Chinese medicine actually typed LOL in response to my careful creation of art?

In my own home, it seemed I had become archaic, a relic, a toss back to perhaps a more romantic age where humans took the time to speak in compete sentences and considered what we said with care. Long ago (like about three years ago when this phenomenon of texting appeared), word choices came from the depths our heart and were made like little offerings to show our wisdom and potential.

As I squint at the letter combinations that people send to me now, I wonder if the ripe harvest of language been consumed? Has the sweetness of whole words departed for good? Are we left now with shredded cores and empty rinds like: "idk," "omw' and "rofl?" (I dont know, on my way and rolling on floor laughing).

What meal is this that we create as we talk to each other in code?

Who are we hiding from?

What is the point?

It feels to me like a language of fear. We are cutting it all down to nothing, in a hurry, rushing about, accepting these odd like contortions of ourselves that technology demands.

The philosopher Ram Dass once said it best: We bought science as our religion, we bought the intellect and materialism 
and the analytic mind 
with it's off-shoot technology as that which would save us. 
It's made life interesting but it hasn't freed us. 
It's tangled us in the addictions to things our minds produce.


I rebel.

My cellular phone was retired a year ago and I am now free of that miniature distraction. I look people in the eye when I speak to them. I don't have to search around when something is ringing. I am with the one I'm with, choosing my words carefully and saying what matters in my heart.

And, I am saving money.

And, I am being glad I don't profit AT & T.

And, I am free of the fear that my phone will give me brain cancer one day.

We are, each one of us, free. We are free to speak, in the language of our fathers and those who came before them. A full sentence is our birthright.