t o t

You know that expression?  Tip of my tongue.  I think it's still in common use because of Alzheimer's.  Early onset, anyway.  We all have elusive memories, one way and another.  Early days, when someone is trying to remember a name or a word, it's almost in reach, just hiding momentarily, or dangling out of sight, or - yes - on the tip of the tongue.  Spit it out!  If only one could.  For a while one can.  

I was fascinated with "Still Alice", the novel by Lisa Genova that has just been made into a movie starring Julianne Moore.  Alice is a very educated woman and the first warning sign she gets of her future problems comes with her brief inability to recall a word she wants to use in a lecture.  She recovers it but her confidence is shaken.  I won't go into it any more. You can read the book or see the movie soon.  I understand that the more learned one is, the easier it is to cover one's slips. Synonyms or paraphrases can mask the original blank.  I had a friend who called the Welland Canal "that manmade ditch" when he couldn't think of the name.  

It must be frightening, though. I can imagine two voices, one inside one's head  with the right words and one outside saying surprising or simplified expressions of one's actual thoughts. Several years ago I participated in LibLab, an intensive  workshop set up (annually) by Tapestry Opera in Toronto, bringing together 4 composers and 4 librettist-playwrights to create 5-minute operas.  I wrote a libretto for two voices, one tenor, one baritone, playing one man on the cusp of Alzheimer's.  The baritone voice sang his complete thoughts and the tenor sang what emerged, much simplified, a counterpoint to the original.  It was a challenge to the composer, to say the least. 

Alzheimer's is a challenge.

We go on, we go on.....

word(s)

gnomon |ˈnōmän|noun1 the projecting piece on a sundial that shows the time by the position of its shadow.  I found this word in a poem, a poem, obviously, about a sundial. 

I never heard that word. I love it. I love words.

I know that the stiffened ends of shoe laces are called aglets.  And I know that the wire shape around a light bulb under a lamp shade is called a harp. And I know that lagniappe is an unexpected extra thrown in, like the extra doughnut in a baker's dozen. Oh, and what's that lovely word for an oyster treat that late-drinking husbands in  New Orleans used to bring their annoyed wives to soothe them?  I can't think of it right now and I've made it.  I know the recipe.; I think it's in one of my cookbooks.   It will come to me about three a.m. 

I can remember the medieval word for a toothbrush -  for what was  used as a toothbrush - a scurryfunge. I like that one.  Gwyneth Paltrow used one in "Shakespeare in Love."  

A few years ago I came across a page-a-day calendar in which every day offered an obsolete, forgotten word.  I began to write poetry riffing on a word. Here's one of my favourites, the first word I had to play with: swarble

 How did we lose this one so necesssary

  to small boys

 John used to swarble

  all the time

  up a tree

  straight and smooth as bark can be

     no impediments no limbs no

      awkward branches just up

       in triumph

 We have a home movie of John

   scrambling

     or so I had thought

     but I know now he was swarbling

       up a stone pillar at the edge

      of the garden

       toeholds to be sure

         not much for a four-year-old

         It took a while but in the end

           he triiumphed

           he swarbled

            Now he is grown he climbs

            hills mountains cliffs and crags

            bluffs overhangs crevasses and chimneys

            rocks and ice

            never people

            You can´t swarble a person