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In search of a word as good as 'lunch'I wrote this when I was on staff at Impact between 1993 and 1995, looking through editorial submissions. There are an awful lot of words, when you think of it. I can hardly see my desk for them. Words scribbled on scraps of paper; filed away in drawers, piling up in the litter bin, scattered like biscuit crumbs on the floor. Most don't deserve the longevity that being written down -- and filed or printed -- brings. On my desk I have words cemented together in monster monologues like East German apartment blocks, flat and impenetrable, not for humans. I have English words dressed in Chinese grammar forms, inappropriate like tourists. I have ugly words (maximised) and phrases that should never have been born (first and foremost) crawling out of my piled-up papers like cockroaches. It's grim. I never seem to meet the subtle, the pert, the playful, the resonant-with-life, words. (Lunch. Hug. Paste. Pastel. Wry. Fragrant. Squidgy.) Instead, alarmingly, the banal presses in, all around. "To me," writes one earnest contributor, "Life is a journey." Perhaps this will be helpful to your readers. Oh, God. Sometimes I run away and sit on the beach at East Coast Park. It's usually mine to enjoy alone, if I ignore all the Australians, splashing like porpoises in the melanomic U-V. There are no words here: luscious palms, bright water, rusty ships remote like clouds, flat green islands wobbling on the horizon in the tropical heat; Creation showering in the sunlight. Eloquence. The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Day after day they pour forth speech, night after night they display knowledge (Psalm 19:1-2). Back Previous Next |