a wordy week

Unfortunately, and slightly unpleasantly at times, during my commitment to expand my vocabulary, I found myself rather tongue-tied. This phenomenon is not new to me-when my employer, the mother of the children I look after, used me as an example to her daughters of well spoken english, devoid of the inane use of 'like'-I found myself in a similar position. Simple conversation, requiring little mental energy, suddenly weighed down on me like a burden.

By committing, or being induced to, a conscious awareness of speech, the naturalness and directness by which thoughts become verbalised, is lost. This dissolution of communication as that which relates, insofar as is possible, our mind's processes to others, meant that through trying to express myself more coherently, the flow was lost. Whilst intending to find a more effective way of conveying and realising my thoughts, avoiding the Pinteresque disjunction of much conversation, the outcome was almost the opposite.

I still want to improve my spoken vocabulary and use all the words which have made their way from the pages of books into my head but no further, however I'm not sure telling myself to do so is the way. This week, unintentionally, seemed to necessitate the use of the old proverb to 'Think before you speak'; although perhaps wise, I found it constricting, more fitting to an age in which repressing much of one's thoughts was necessary in much social discourse and exchange. The phrase's origins are French; 'Il faut tourner sa langue sept fois dans sa bouche avant de parler' which translates as 'One must turn the tongue in the mouth seven times before speaking'. The time it takes to follow this practically, which I would estimate at over 30 seconds, renders the original thought most probably changed, diverted, mingled with other thoughts and thus inauthentic as an expression of what was originally meant.

Before I become too tangled in language and the way it works and what it really conveys, I will end. Suffice to say that this week I have stumbled upon a bit of a paradox and I hope to find another way to use more words but not lose the relation between word and thought, that which I was trying to develop in the first place.

Suggestions?

This week I am going to use more words.

(expand my spoken English so that it reaches the broadest, most dormant constituents of my neglected vocabulary)

Phone Freedom?

Perhaps the first thing I ought to do is explain why I thought cutting (some) ties with my phone was something that I must attempt for a week. This notion may have conjured up a misrepresentative image of myself; I do not have a blackberry/iphone constantly stuck to my palm. In fact I own the cheapest Nokia available, whose most exciting function is a speaking clock and a flashlight whose light I am yet to see lighting anything up.

So why did I feel that this small, rather harmless device was to blame for anything undesirable in my life? May need some distancing?
Following a week of less unnecessary, frivolous texting and the diminished importance attributed to having my phone a hand's grab away, I am not entirely sure. The truth is it did not feel all that different.

I guess the idea came from my general aversion to technology-despite the lengthy existence of the mobile telephone, and its appearance as commonplace fairly early on in my life, I can still be heard to bemoan the pre-phone days on occasion. Whilst I accept that for some people being connected all the time is rather more integral, for example to their job than me, I have always felt that the need for constant contact is a BAD THING, failure of modern society. Technology has bred this fear, and removed the need, to ever be alone.

Whilst asking myself what it was I was trying to achieve this week I realised that what I was getting at; the freedom, within a busy, hectic world, to devote myself entirely to what I was doing, without distraction, is less about the phone, but about myself. By placing the blame, through habit, on my innocent phone, I suppose I have displaced the fact that perhaps it is simply my busy mind, for which the phone is simply another outlet. Certainly, technology-less (and especially, rather paradoxically to the moment, computerless) I would have less distractions, however, on the other ideal end, being connected to what's going on here, now, in the moment takes a lot, lot more than a phone..

I have learnt that I do not belong amongst the amish, as has been suggested to me a few times in the past, and would not want to either, which is progress. Aside from this realisation, I don't think this change really changed much. Whilst attempting this meagre task this week I have been reading 'Spiritually Enlightened: The Damnedest Thing'-an explanation of how it feels, what it means and what it is, to exist in a state which massively amplifies the essence of what I thought I was trying to achieve this week. In fact, the author's distance and disassociation from the here and now, and its complete unimportance to him, scares me.. For the moment, for me, attributing less to the little things (for example not informing quite so many people of the often trivial events of my life via text) is enough.