Well, here we are. I recommit to a new blog every few years and then invariably abandon it, only to start anew with a different URL and an enthusiastic exclamation of "This time is different!"
And yet.
It's been the better part of a year since I created my last post. But hey, at least I am adding to this blog instead of generating yet another piece of online real estate. Progress? This post is important, so I'm happy to be back.
It might sound strange, but I am often (usually in retrospect, I admit) incredibly grateful for the things that make me angry. Like, really angry. You know, fist on a table, curse-inducing, flush-faced angry. The kind you can feel long after the person has left the room. These things reveal, once I spend a few days explicating them and letting the dust settle, what really matters to me.
Like Words. Yeah, capital "W."
I recently found myself fuming, just embarrassingly angry, really, over someone else being censored for a piece she wrote in defense of language. That's right, I wasn't really directly involved in the situation, but I almost ran Kool-Aid man style through a wall in a fit of rage. Now, said censors don't hate language, but they didn't appreciate the writer's defense of language as a pure art. They didn't understand her profound arguments in favor of language unencumbered by the rules of the Internet, nor her unbridled appreciation for sentences strung together with nary a thought of Google. They would have prefered something that championed content written for search bots.
Which is fine.
Except.
Reading and writing are a big. Fucking. Deal. These skills translate to power. Period. So I would appreciate it (though I recognize it's unrealistic) if people wouldn't mess with a writer's defense of the craft she breathes. Or, at the very least, understand the gravity of their request that she somehow defend it less.
My great-grandmother signed her name with an "X." No, she wasn't a treasure hunting enthusiast, she just couldn't read and write. Growing up in Yugoslavia, she didn't need an education. She was a girl. Furthermore, she was needed at home to chase and tackle the sheep--but that's a story for another time.
Lacking knowledge of the written word puts one in perhaps the most vulnerable of positions. Yes, some men are illiterate, but more often than not school deprivation is used as a device to disenfranchise women. Lacking the ability to read and write impacts the ability to drive, conduct banking business, and just plain navigate the world. Job opportunities are scarce to say the least. In corners of the world today, women still fight for the right just to go to school, to learn to read, to delight in the ability to pen their thoughts. So, language is a big deal. Especially on paper.
Writing isn't just my job, it's not a mere hobby. It's a value. A very, very big part of who I am. It's a nod to my great-grandmother, to other female relatives who were lucky if they were put through the 8th grade, to my own power and autonomy.
So, yeah, I take it pretty seriously.
You can take my Swedish fish (from my clutching, white-knuckled hands), and you can even take my merlot. But you will take my love of the Oxford comma and alleged affinity for alliteration over my cold dead body. They're mine, and I will defend them always.
If it took this situation and its resulting anger to remind me just how damn much I love words... thanks for the metaphorical ammo, guys.
