Word Moment

Today I had a "word moment of the first kind." That's a term coined by The Tensor for what happens when you see or hear a word repeatedly in a loose enough context to divorce it from it's symbolic power.

When the word isn't tied directly to a subject or object, it can take on a bit of glamour--in English, we like to do this with French words. "Educated" people will do such things with words from all sorts of languages, usually whatever their favourite teacher or academic idol had as a first language. This is how you get philosophers talking about "Différance" seriously, when anyone not so enthralled by the eloquent lunacy of the words inventor would probably dismiss it as meaningless...

When we go past that initial moment of exhilaration, though, we sometimes find ourselves at a further level of abstraction--a word moment of the first kind. The cereal is eaten, the package has arrived, the beanie is out of the box, and the batteries were not included. Excessive repetition removes all shelter and companionship from the world of the word, leaving it a naked bundle of letters, alone and quite embarrassed.

Mostly we ignore this aspect of words; it doesn't make much sense to invoke a word moment on purpose. That would be a bit like shaving your cats. The cats are quite happy to retain their fur, and you don't really need the headache of sweeping it all up. But, on occasion, it might happen that a cat loses its fur, and we might occasionally laugh at such a circumstance. Word moments are like that, except that we don't feel so much pity for the words as we do the cats.
[To prove my point, here is a video of a shaved cat.]


"So, what," you might ask, "was the word you shaved today?"

Squeak.
Squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak.

squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak squeak

See?