Thursday, January 3, 2013

The Significance Of A Word

You know the feeling when a word begins to jut out more than it used to?  Phrases or meanings that might have fallen into the background previously suddenly prop themselves up with great aplomb and you're left to wonder if they'd been poking out the entire time or if it's only recently that they've been extended the power to stand tall over all the other vernacular that you hear in your day to day life?  I remember the first time it happened to me in middle school.  I'd gotten hooked on the after school special 'Degrassi' and all of a sudden wherever I turned somebody was talking about Canada or Toronto.  Never in my life had i cared about Canada before and yet after that show, the place became a primary focus. I couldn't stop noticing the words push themselves into the center of my periphery.  Maps in classrooms became wholly about the upper America, I found myself attempting to adopt a quasi-canadian accent (to this day I still say, 'sorry' as if I've tripped over the O) and I couldn't seem to turn anywhere without a big neon sign pointing me to all the incidents of words or phrases that had suddenly become central to my thought process.  From then on I've noticed it happens constantly.  Whatever big idea takes over my mind, I start to find out that it's always been all around me, permeating every measure of my existence to the point where I begin to wonder if my life is some big predetermined joke, with one or more existential forces content to fuck with me and my perception for their own amusement.  It can get infuriating sometimes, I'll kick and scream and just beg for every word I know to fall into the background, to never know true value and meaning again so that I can just get on with my life.  Other times I wonder, I've spent so much time paying attention to the big meaningful words that soak in my brain, what other words have I been missing?  What words almost took precedence in my mind before something else knocked them out of place?  Might I have found some solace in those words?  I'm not sure.  I'll never be sure.