Handyman

All my life I have been fascinated by words. I can’t really explain it but one of my earliest memories was the day I got my first big box of crayons and I came across Burnt Sienna and Alizarian Crimson. I was more attracted to the beautiful words than the colors themselves. As a young man I joined a book club, not because I wanted a continuing stream of new novels or regular access to great non- fiction. I joined because the incentive to join was a copy of the OED in two volumes that was so condensed that it came with its own magnifying glass to effect access to the wonder of words. Humorist Steven Wright once quipped, “I was reading the dictionary. I thought it was a poem about everything.”

Yes, indeed.

Then – about 50 years ago – I started doing crossword puzzles with a religious fervor and I was lucky to encounter a gifted cruciverbalist who advised me in my quest. He said, “never do a puzzle in pencil…always use arrogant ink.” This fellow traveller encouraged me and as time went on others came along to mark the trail. A writing instructor who was often published, a minor celebrity, told me he became a writer because the thing he was good at was WORDS. He had tried out in the Yankee farm system, started his own business and became an academic but his real talent was stringing perspicuous words together.

In my days I have written advertising copy, menus, magazine articles, poetry, fiction, diverse brochures, obituaries, grants, white papers and more but I have enough of a right-sized ego to know that I am not god’s gift to the world of letters. What I am is a verbal handyman that has a pick-up truck full of tools. I use words the way my luthier friend uses finger planes to make a perfect scroll work. The other day a good friend of mine came by to build some shelves. As I watched him measure, mitre and choose appropriate hardware, I realized that I was doing the same sort of thing with the building elements that you can find in the OED.

Many of my productions are prosaic and marked by small failures. When it is tough to find le mot juste – the perfect word – I press on measuring and cutting until I have clapped together a thing that looks like a functional birdhouse. I love the process. I agree with Emily Dickinson: ” I know nothing that has as much power as a word. Sometimes, I write one and I look at it until it begins to shine.” When it goes well I get the same satisfaction a builder gets from a nicely completed project. To me there is no higher compliment than being called a “wordsmith”… a builder of word structures.

If you bump into a big word or an esoteric one in my ramblings, chalk up your displeasure to the fact that not every product will fit your needs. Whether the product is minimalist or Roccoco the work will go on.

You have my word on it.