This passage – from my autobiography.
I like people appreciating my writing and before I name names—before I list some of the authors who lit my way—I need to first confess something: one of my deepest loves is for the thing itself… the word. So, if you’ll allow me: here’s a word about words. This piece is a little unorthodox. It’s about me, but it’s also about 1) a word I can’t seem to like, 2) a story I abandoned, and 3) the lifelong, slightly ridiculous romance I have with language. It’s strange how a word can resist love. No matter how I dress it up or attempt to sweeten it stays scruffily foreign in my mouth.
Words: meaning, expression and reception;
each unique and intimate.
Mere units with which to communicate?
Lexical devices?
Verbal instruments?
Creative inventions?
Companions!
Mates that are with me,
ever ready to assist
with my curiosities
and relationships.
Words to think, murmur, sing and holler,
dimensions and features as distinct as colour,
as definite as stones yet ineffable brothers.
I taste them as I speak.
At times when I seek
for just the right word or phrase I tingle as when
selecting exactly the right dish for my palette.
To enrich and enhance my life and my mood
I choose from a beautifully described and bountiful menu;
and knowing that, ‘just right’ word or phrase is a feeling –
less to do with meaning;
it has somehow to chime with my inner being.
Words are friends.
so I respect them and they do well for me.
My best friends are, ‘Wonder’ and ‘Mystery’.
I can’t feel or use either, negatively
they are always good words,
as funny and interesting as people.
Wonder, is yellow and feels jazz red, it has a zingy, citrus taste
that always takes me to heaven.
Mystery, smells of sweet silver peppermint,
is a multi textured smooth and takes me alone
to places I rejoin my essence
I
don’t like
some words –
those that are fat, too soft, squishy
don’t like
some words –
those that are fat, too soft, squishy
‘Triumph’ is such a word.
I don’t trust it’s pomposity.
Let me tell you a story,
of a long abandoned story,
into which I’d committed some 18000 friends.
It told of a society of forest dwellers, the ‘Root-clingers’
whose hair went uncut and descended to the floor.
The females’ coiffure
grew from their head, like ours
but the fellers’ grew from their shoulders.
A feature of the story is that Root Clinger’s hair
displayed their emotions so the only
way to disguise passion of any nature
was to hold it in place with
substances, hair clips or a hat.
The girls did quite a lot of this,
the guys could rarely be arsed,
imagine the fun I had with that!
Meanwhile the hair that grew from legs, ankles and feet
they used to bind themselves to the roots of trees
because the forest wind blew so ferociously, hence
‘Root Clingers.’
The plot involved friends who became enemies
for some worshiped the wind, in thanks
for the bounty
it blew from the trees;
others regarded birds as their deities
believing birdsong carried the secrets of their being.
I’m so involved with words
to exorcise my grave dis – ease with some of them
I contrived this story for catharsis.
Accordingly, I called my hero “Umfant!”
There were times in the tale
when his friends urged him to try harder.
(“Try Umfant, you can do it!”) (Do you see what I did there?)
In the end he and his friends
(who believed in ‘Whooo’
the God of Wind;)
(yes – there were plenty of wind related witticisms too),
were to discover plotters,
win over doubters
and set out on a path to redeem their nature
and conquer the baddies who were less devout.
However, and this is my point, as the story progressed
I fell out of love with Umfant, my hero,
no longer wanting to bear the stress
of saying his name – even in my head!
I narrate this piece as a paradigm
of my relationship with words.
I started the story as an exercise
to encourage myself to like a word I’d cursed.
I failed.
However, I did realise this wild and joyful eternal affair.
So please, be aware,
I select all my words with love and care,
I am as precise in my meaning
as I intend and dare.
No mystery about what it was that you heard,
if I said it,
wonder not,
I mean every word!
The words of Peter Akinwunmi (Peter Ak'i) 