My downfall is my
mistress, my mistress my distress, my distress is my language. Human
speech and writing evolved for convenience, to facilitate
communication, but my brain views them instead as a gateway to the
imagination. The sindiscretions that English elicits from
me have grown to levels that are no longer acceptable in my social
and professional circles, and I fear that the sphere of my knowledge
is diminishing. My crypticness crept along at first, slowly
building a foundation that, unbeknownst to me, became me. I used
to be like you, just an average man whose mode was to mean what he
said without crossing the enigmatic median. Recently, however, my
inventing of words and their resulting reactions have become
seri-issues in my life. Many linguistic concepts are involved, with
the most prevalent and relevant involving the assemblage of
adjacent words. When a similar syllable occurs at the end and
beginning of two consecutive respective words, I indulge in the
prefix-suffix dance and am forced to forge the grouping of letters.
The unification complete, my mind finds a peaceful state, one
pleasant enough to have made me begincreasing the use of these new
words into my vocabulary. I can recall the exact moment my
addictionary started, when, standing alone in a mutual friend's
kitchen, I overheard a conversation between strangers and the man on
the left referred to the record that was playing as an original
album. Unconsciously, I glanced in his direction and said
"originalbum". He chuckled and commended my new word, and
he even recommended I write it down, but if he could foresee the
destruction that would lead from his instruction, I can only
assume that he would have said and done nothing. I enjoyed too much
witnessing the happiness that can stem from my word play, but it has
turned into work, and I'm an aholic.
Soon after
the chance encounter at the end of the counter, I discovered that the
term for such combining of words is "portmanteau". Even
typing those eleven letters consecutively causes in me a tingling
sensation, the mingling sophistication of morphemes pronouncing
itself with such subtle beauty. Etymologically, it comes from the
French for "door coat", which is not only illogical but is
also incorrect. It actually originates from "carry" and
"coat", both of which are still irrelevant to the
term. Conversationally, I laud and applaud the use
of portmanteaus, not only as logical time-savers but also for
aesthetic appeal. As they blend in my head, I delete
and add letters as I deem necessary, expecting the resulting term
will be the one that manoeuvres its way into a prominent
dictionary. Many words were developed as such, and my goal is to
supplement this list. It's
not the money I desire; it's the immortality that coining brings,
if only in anonymity. The terms cabinthusiast,
thickquid, and pretty-it or pr-idiot, depending on the dominant
trait, are self-explanatory and deserve a place in the lives of
others. And I believe drunkle, which refers to any family's token
inebriated uncle, is my pen's ultimate chance to inject itself
into the vocabulary of the every man. If I could limit my habit
to expressions of that calibre, it would not have become the problem
that it has, having crescendoed into a disease, ceasing the normal
life I once lived. As it stands, I wish readily for a pharmacist
assistant to become a pharmacistant, even though the occupation may
be confused with that of a farmhand, and I am compelled to
support the use of terms like asparapistachio, which can easily be
deciphered by the right mind. I scour our land for the rare
two-shared-syllable portmanteaux, and although cucumbersome and
hungoverwhelmed are near-ideal merged words, the elaboratory of my
right brain is always looking for more and it may never be satiated
or sated.
Unfortunately, the
relevantage point of my eccentricities, which began at the
extent of the tri-city boundary line with the portmantua, has
spiraled into other aspects of my language. I now obsess over
homonyms, synonyms, cinnamon, and singing hymns. I love
mondegreens, all of my degrees only reinforcing my decision to
include them in my life, but sometimes I fear that others don't
appreciate that it is always time to rhyme, especially with how often
I verbify. I too often peruse reading material for contronyms,
with both attentiveness and leisure, and I petition for repetition in
both sounds and ideas. I have become bored with unequivocal words,
and I crave multiple entendres through secondary and thirdiary
definitions. With regards to free
will, of course I want the ability to choose, but I also want to get
him out of jail while I avoid paying for the notation of my
post-mortem wishes. Also,
lingual blunders fascinate and excite me, and I have come to
relish my role as a malaprop comic, even though I must herd these
errors away from conversations so that others may catch up. I have
been derided for my adoration of eggcorns,
and for some reason I am the only one who sees their pervasiveness in
my life as a mute point, especially now that I have reached the age
of maturity. I suppose it is not the inclusion of all
of these words that has led to the demise of my social life, but the
sheer percentage of my vocabulary that they include.
I
am in a figurative tower overlooking the city in which I live, as I
am viewed by those who have difficulty with the comprehension of my
emitted thoughts as pretentious or even ostentatious. But
condescensionly
applies when there is malicious intent, and so my perpetual game
should not be viewed as such. I
consider myself to be a cunning linguist, and I want my skills
to be appreciated, not confused with arrogance or ignorance.
My neologism should not be seen as patronizing, or even as
matronizing when speaking to a woman. When I answer a question with a
different connotation than it intended, my only goal is not
to convey sarcasm; I want them all to gauge the language so it
can evoke thought, maybe even inspire creativity. I want to
give my audience credit, but even in the cases where it is deserved,
I push the boundaries until it I am too many cuils away from where
they want me to be. Even
those who used to understand my quirks began confusing my
incessant correction of their grammatical mistakes as demeaning, but
I only exact
the exact words on my peers because I wish for them to learn, in
support of our collective intelligence.
I
am also literally and physically high above the ground, alone, in a
towerlooking my city. Most below me are under the impression I now
insist upon some of my poor man's toes, exhausting possibilities in
the hopes of finding a pinnacle, and they are being led to
understandable confusion. My brain wracking itself for the ideal
compression of clauses, it causes the conversation to flow to an
abruption and it usually leads the other party to correctly interpret
that I have little interest in what we were talking about, as my
response rarely relates to what they may or may not have
said. My portmanteauing is still clever, if it ever
was, but what began as a gentle ambiguity in my personality is
now my primary motivator in human interactions. Somewhere in me,
my nature must be searching out only those who hardly stand by
as they heartily comply with the precise length of my brain waves.
Before
this time, my solitareality wasn't always so. I once possessed and
caressed a girlfriend, one who initially found my
vernacular to be sweet and endearing, as I introduced her to concepts
like the cuzzle, bringing together the best aspects of both the
cuddle and the nuzzle. There was a time when I would
do anything to get her together with me, when I preferred
spooning over spoonering, caring more about her kissing me than
missing key linguistic opportunities. However,
it hit a point where I felt she could not contend, and at the same
time my word creation became unhandleable for her, with my anagram
fixation also leading to
boredom in the bedroom. When
she finally came to me crying, telling me I was "veering too far
from an acceptable social path", I succame to my other
love, choosing instead to attempt aloud the portmanteau-y
"sociopath", fully aware that the utterance would
constitute her view of me and also the denouement of our
relationboat.
Eventually,
friendboats dissipated as well, with the apparition of what
incorrectly comes across and down as a willful disregard for
tolerance. Papua New Guinea pigs is the supposedly racist
Oceanickname I give to people from that nation, and what the
Aboriginal association in my town is now known in and out of my head
is not acceptable. Maybe the cost of a hologram should not be
shortened for ease,
but I do not see a reason to alter my method, as others' perception
of me seems to be outweighed by the tons of potential language stuff.
My refusal to
ever explain my true intention, due to a known but unreliable
reason, is prossibly the most detrimental disorder of my
problem and is the main reason for the calm mutiny by the
community. I
have even tried drug therapy as a social aid, but the mushroom clouds
judgment more than I expected, and it may have driven me instead
towards the palindromic highway, where a symbolic racecar
became more and more appropriate as I rode the road.
I
used to hold a pretty, good job that I enjoyed and was not derevered
by society, but I was let go after a series of mistaken
happenings. The
megocentric approach I employed in my work as a marketing associate
was in my opinion necessary in finding my creativity, but my manager
mislabeled it as insubordination, as he beleft that conveying a
message to the philistines superceded ingenuity. There was also
a simple
misunderstanding at the office Christmas party, one in which, amidst
a bout of coitus with a co-worker in the CEO's office, she informed
me of her sexual affinity to feet. My eyes lighting up, I threw her
off the desk so I could find a paper sheet to record the new
expression "feetish" before it vanished from my mind. Super
silly is how I describe her decision to tell our boss about my
flinging of her during our fling, even though she was being haughtily
disdainful at the time. Unfortunately, she was not into forewordplay,
and it led directly to my current state of unemployment.
The
sportmanteau has even played its way into my life through the
seemingly mundanely unimportant. I feel as though I have no choice
but to use price-gouging Verizon as my cell phone provider, and for
the same reason, I find the music of Vertical Horizon quite
intolerable, so I choose to listen exclusively to bands like The
Brian Jonestown Massacre and Japandroids. And, although it makes
little to no sense for an illiterate grandmother to pronounce the p
in pneumonia, I still watch and re-watch reruns
of The Beverly Hillbillies, the first cultural phenomenon
conceptualized from a portmanteau. As I eat, I
canever decide if I want the soup or hero sandwich, if I want
a dressing
on my spaghettiesburger, if I should forgo a knife in favour of
the baguillotine, and cetera. I often find it difficult to
remember that taquito happiness is in avoiding indecision, not in
making the wrong one. As I have, also recently discovered my
intentional displacement and elimination of punctuation: in oration
as well as mental dictation is hard for anyone to accept except
me. Commaspire
to remainly as a coherent tool but I make them disappear even while
the sentence asks for a brief pause if only to give the other
participant a chance to separate ideas from themselves and each
other.
Even
with the deterioration of so many of my relationships and my place in
society, my mother's tongue remains my playground, as I replace
slides and swings with words and words, and I have never felt more in
of place. Its complication notwithstanding, English is the
international language, and many of the rules we have agreed upon
make sense only for those in my position, those who want to see
letters rearranged and words recreated. I reckoncise many terms are
more interesting when shortened in the appropriate manner, both by
reckoning and recognizing them to be concise, and I take it upon
myself to make them so. As such, I collide the scope of my knowledge
with my passion for adding diction, and I will continue to
search the ether for novel thoughts to include in my
eventual book. Until then, I remain alone, but not lonely, as
long as I have my words, my language, my portmanteaus.
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