On deconstructing words and reading them

Dear Void,

Please know that I have scrutinised 13 of 27 sections of TitC. An explanation of what that means can be found in yesterday’s post, in this one on Tuesday, and in this one called Holes in the Fabric of Time from 9 Feb.  And it still rains.

McElhone: On commute to campus, 2021

My methodology involves scrutinising text (a sort of radical reading: an overview of what that involves can be found in this post from 10 Feb). I started today all apace but I’ve hit my limit so I thought I’d write you, Void, a little earlier than on previous days.

In my early 30s, I decided to teach myself Latin, in the hope that it would help in not only writing but also in learning other languages, most particularly French. The hope was also to relieve a sense of disquiet that I’d lived with since not having paid attention enough in French class in high school to become the fluent French-speaker I imagined I could be.

It wasn’t classes I turned to but books. I’d picked up a little entertaining book called The Power of Verbal Intelligence: 10 ways to tap into your verbal genius by Tony Buzan. (I’d been working as a book packing drone at the HarperCollins Distribution Centre in the Southern Highlands of NSW and every so often they’d let us at the damaged books. I got that and a copy of Fermat's Last Theorem by Simon Singh. I still have both books).

It was after reading about the etymology of words and how to recognise Greek and Latin suffixes and prefixes that I started to see the possibilities of words. It wasn’t a great a-ha! moment but a turn in how I read and looked at words. The way they can be deconstructed and viewed in their component parts. I’m a natural tinkerer and have, in the past, rehabilitated such household items as video players (still have one), light fittings, computers, printers. Most often things being thrown out on hard rubbish day probably just need a good clean.

Where was I ? oh, yes. Latin words. Tinkering. 

So, when I see a word with the Latin prefix ad- I always think ‘towards, to.’ And I understand the word to be directional, that it somehow indicates an orientation, a movement or a development. So, the word ‘advise,’ to me, has a sense of positioning someone in a certain direction in order for them to see from that perspective (rather than telling them what to do). I’m not sure why I’m telling you about the way the Latin prefix ‘ad-‘ has connotations in me. I suppose I’m just chatting. Things reveal themselves later, as you look back on them. This will too.

O, wait! There’s some news! I do believe I feel the glorious brush of conditioned air on the back of my neck. Is it? Could it be? The air-conditioner in the HDR Studio is officially back on, Void. Hoo. Ray.

* * * *

Some advice on reading for today (as influenced by my microscopic reading of TitC): submit to the pledge that you’ve already performed by being with a text. Involve yourself. Let go of expectations for what you will find there, allow its, and your own, flow and divagations to direct you. Reading is an act taken by a person and text (impersonal speech) to make a scene together. Whatever thoughts go on as you read, they beat out an inner place (Arendt).  Start to become aware of the ideas or feelings that the words invoke in you in addition to their literal or primary meanings. Play with the text. Write through it.

If you will, Void, I will.

Jx