A Letter About Words & Rain

I stayed up late on Monday night because I wrote this...it was pretty fun. I submitted it to the Upper School Lit Mag...fingers crossed it gets in! But if it doesn't, the fun I had writing is an achievement all its own.

FROM:

Someone

Page 1,876

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

Rainy, Big Fat World

A Rainy Day

TO:

                  Whomever

    Page Whichever

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary

Rainy, Big Fat World

A Rainy Day

To Whomever May Be Interested in Some Words and Rain,

I hope the puzzle pieces fit together.

Whoever thought up the idea of writing a dictionary deserves daily kudos for their ingenuity. The dictionary is like a mother or a soft bed or hot chocolate – it’s what you turn to when the puzzle pieces just don’t fit. Or when you’re lazy: “disliking physical or mental exertion.”

But look at this… After the definition of lazy in Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, several phrases are listed in which it is commonly used: “lazy summer day,” “lazy weather,” “lazy chair.” Funny, that while reading the definition of such a motionless word, the tendrils of one’s mind begin to run out and away with the static recognition of familiar circumstances.

And then the puzzle pieces always fit, even if they fit in such a way that the history paper you were lost on suddenly makes sense and now you have to spend an hour changing your answer to reflect your newly acquired genius on the exact definition of some word like bureaucracy.

Dictionaries are the perfect supplement to a rainy day. On rainy days you often feel small, like all the clouds in the widening sky and the millions of raindrops and the sheer power of our planet’s weather could just swallow you up without anyone’s notice. J.D. Salinger says in Catcher in the Rye: “It was that kind of a crazy afternoon, terrifically cold, and no sun out or anything, and you felt like you were disappearing every time you crossed a road.” For someone who is often stopped short by the knowledge that there’s just so much knowledge and so many things in the world, those words express that sensation of insignificance when faced by the all-encompassing weather of the world.

Dictionaries are big, generally. You can have pocket dictionaries, or keychain dictionaries, but they generally have a “big” connotation in our minds. They’re big and fat, like the world, or like a “Love It” serving of ice cream from Coldstone Creamery. But unlike the world or ice cream, dictionaries are contained. They’re limited. They have a beginning and an end. They’re constant.

One of the definitions of rain that arises after the obvious ones is: “to occur in a multitudinous onset.” What a multitudinous (“existing in or consisting of innumerable forms, particles, elements, or aspects,” which in this case would be syllables) word multitudinous is, especially for a dictionary to use in a definition (“to determine, bring to an end, explain”). How, when I just looked up two words to comprehensively explain the meaning of another, can that bring the word rain “to an end?”

Anyway, back to rain: isn’t it true, though, that if this multitudinous onset is rain, that life equals rain? And maybe that’s why we feel so swallowed up every time it rains, because it’s like life is staring us in the eye saying, “You’re just another thing to be multitudinously onset upon?” Or is this multitudinous onset, as it exists in innumerable forms, another way of saying, “Wow, look at all the innumerable forms of things that can rain down on you? Isn’t this all so wonderful, this diversity of onsets?” Is there any way to really pin down what the multitudinous onset is and what it means for all of us, unless you were to look up every word in its definition…and still, would that bring you to an end? Eventually, maybe. But it would be more like bringing you back to a beginning.

Just like now, when all this looking up and interpreting and explaining  is leading me back to one, simply complicated conclusion: Life is a dictionary that eventually comes to an end by wandering off on courses affected by multitudinous onsets and invariably cycling back to the beginning.

I hope the puzzle pieces fit together to whomever may be interested in some words and rain.

Multitudinously yours,

Someone Who Is Interested in Some Words and Rain

P.S. Sometimes life gets complicated and doesn’t make sense; just like this wouldn’t have if I’d put it in one of the previous paragraphs. But this coincidence is just too awesome: one of the examples for the uses of multitudinous is, “urgent demand upon my attention made by the multitudinous world around me – Richard Church.” And another: “the long multitudinous rain – Carl Sandburg.” Just goes to show the interconnectedness of words.

P.P.S. As I am someone who is interested in some words and rain, and therefore am also a “whomever” who is interested in some words and rain, I hope just as much that the puzzle pieces fit together for me as well as for whomever else may be interested in some words and rain. Sometimes they don’t.

P.P.P.S. Thanks Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, you 2,662 page hunk of multitudinous-y life.

By Mollie G. Greenberg

Loss and a Place of Torture

Today...has been a strange day. About 35 minutes ago, I felt happy and content, then 30 minutes ago I felt like the stupidest person in the world.

First, I wake up at 6 a.m. after a dream about not being ready for school. I jumped out of bed the moment I realized that school was OVER, to find that a) I was sweating like a pig (I've never actually seen a pig sweat...do they really?), b) I really had to pee, and c) the rumbles of thunder were real, not in my dream (so that's why they didn't really fit the scene at all, I thought), which leads into d) I wasn't in a very deep sleep. I tried to go back to sleep, but never did completely, and for a couple hours afterward my bed became a place of torture and panic and indecision, which I was actually very glad to depart from when the time came. This meant that - and it's still true - my eyes have been simply slits in my head the whole day, slits that want to close and drift off to sleep any chance they get.

Funnily enough - though nothing about this is the slightest bit funny, and I'm totally not willing to even begin to think that way - the second horrible event of today also happened while I was on my bed. I had typed up a little piece of writing earlier, while I was sitting on the porch eating breakfast, on my iPhone. On the Notes app on my iPhone. It was a part of another something I'd started before, and I was inspired by the strange weather. So tonight, I was going to put it on my computer, possibly write some more and see where it would fit in. But instead of tapping the little envelope icon at the bottom of the Notes screen, I tapped the trash can instead.

I deleted my writing.

It felt like someone died. It felt like everyone had died, honestly, or like my own soul had departed and left a dry, crumpled, useless shell instead. It felt like the world was collapsing, like all the words and stories and memories of the world were gone forever.

I moaned, and I cried, I mourned, but I didn't forget what I had just deleted. I was completely panicked, but I forced my mind to work in hyper-drive to remember all of those words as best I could to re-write it. I wanted to collapse into my mother's arms. I wanted to eat a tub of ice cream. I wanted to tear my hair out, throw my iPhone (which is new, by the way - I got the updated version) into our creek, and beat the ground with my fists. I wanted to express my RAGE. But instead, I did what a writer must do, and I....wrote.

And what came out of it is, I think, pretty close to the original.

Fortunately, I solved a TV problem in less than a minute which my parents were getting frustrated about, right after I completed the rewriting. So that kind of made my night.

The strangest thing is that one of my first thoughts after I deleted it was, "It was meant to be." I never think things are meant to be! I'm not a believer in fate (which isn't to say that I'm a believer of free will either...but lets save that monologue for another time), and I never think about things that way. But even as I wrote, the thought kept racing through my head. "Meant to be, meant to be, meant to be..." And then I kept doing what I always do, defend the easy route, and defied that to say, "Yeah, but still, I DELETED MY WRITING!"...which would bring on another bout of tears. Why I thought this, and why I am so sure of it still, is a complete mystery, and one which I shall prevent myself from trying to solve right now...at all costs. No, I don't want to think about that right now.

At least I've blogged about it.

That's not even to mention the weird weird weird weather! There's more I could tell about today...more I will tell. But now, I need to leave this world. I need to go into the world of a book, disappear into it, into a place where people don't delete their writing, and if they do...you admire them afterward if they rewrite it. (So now, I suppose, I can admire myself. In the movie Little Women, the main character's sister burns a whole book of her writing because she's mad at the main character, who has to then rewrite the entire thing. I always thought, god, I would die, how would someone ever do that? I guess now I know.) I need to go to a place where there are no iPhones without a trash you can recover things from, no sleep deprivation, no places of torture that exist within your very own little "safe haven" of your own bed. I've gotta get OUT! And I'll be much more likable when I return.

Rain, The Alchemist, and Writing

Ah, today's just one of those wonderful rainy, satisfying days. Outside, it's dark and wet and still. I can hear the raindrops on the roof as they fall, and when the rain abates, the chirping of the birds peeps through the stillness as a calm reminder of spring. Even the air in my room smells fresh and alive.

I love rain... True, sometimes it's the devil, but we need rain. It washes over things and makes them new again. It clears my thoughts, too. Like chamomile tea for the brain. Rain makes me joyous, and incredibly appreciative of this earth we live on. I remember countless rainy days when I was little when I would go outside by myself to play. I'd make up grand stories of adventure and escape, and come back inside smiling and soaked. Sometimes my mom and I would do rain paintings together. This was never a planned activity - as it depended on a good rain - and a very cherished one. Those times were like the first bud of spring: rare, timeless, and priceless. And then there were the times, when I got a little older, when I'd stay inside and read the whole day. So peaceful.

Rain allows me to live in the present, take it as it comes. That's such a wonderful feeling, especially for someone who plans things out meticulously. I do that even unconsciously sometimes...always thinking of what's next.

I read The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho - the book we're reading in English class - for a while this morning. It really gets you thinking. It's a book about following our Personal Legend - the destiny set out for us, should we choose to follow it. It's an empowering book, and every time I read it, I'm filled with an overwhelming urge to go out and do something, along with the contrasting desire to just sit and read and absorb every single word of that book. That produces a strange conflict, which can sometimes get a little irritating. But eventually I'm able to resolve myself to reading the book, figuring that that's a step to achieving my Personal Legend.

But right now, I feel like I writing. I'm trying plan ahead too much on what exactly I'm going to write. The best things I write are spontaneous. All I know right now is that I'm perfectly comfortable and cozy and happy snuggled up here in my bed, with my windows open, hearing the birds, and looking out my window to see the yard gradually lightening as the sun comes out of hiding.