Seriously. Procrastinate. The feeling of flipping urgency and deadlines the bird is friggen fantastic.
Anyway. I'm here because I have a boner.
No, not THAT kind, geez.
A word boner. It's the term that I use when I hear a word/phrase/chapter/song/line/whatever that is particularly awesome. For example, in that little music player at the bottom of the page there's a song called Werewolf. It's a weird ass song, which is pretty much why I adore it.
Anyway. This song gave birth to the term. I was sitting cruising Youtube when I came across the song. I was all, "Whatevs let's listen to the weird song". And the song started and I was all
And then, as I was listening to the song, I heard the line, "Weeping willow, won't you wallow louder?"
And I immediately yelled the first thing that came to mind, which happened to be, "WORD BONER!"
Which naturally scared the crap out of my mom, but really, it doesn't take much to do that. But thus, the word boner term was born. It'll be added to the dictionary soon. Webster and I are tight. He's my brotha from anotha motha, you know how it is.
Anyway. So, I'm finally getting around to that close reading of a passage from the novel Life Of Pi.
Side note: Effed up book. Naturally, I love it.
So, my passage that I chose is from chapter 56, and it's a word boner of cataclysmic proportions. And because I'm awesome, I have the chapter right here. Ready for the word boner?
"I must say a word about fear. It is life’s only true opponent. Only fear can defeat life. It is a clever, treacherous adversary, how well I know. It has no decency, respects no law or convention, shows no mercy. It goes for your weakest spot, which it finds with unerring ease. It begins in your mind, always. One moment you are feeling calm, self-possessed, happy. Then fear, disguised in the garb of mild-mannered doubt, slips into your mind like a spy. Doubt meets disbelief and disbelief tries to push it out. But disbelief is a poorly armed foot soldier. Doubt does away with it with little trouble. You become anxious. Reason comes to do battle for you. You are reassured. Reason is fully equipped with the latest weapons technology. But, to your amazement, despite superior tactics and a number of undeniable victories, reason is laid low. You feel yourself weakening, wavering. Your anxiety becomes dread.
Fear next turns fully to your body, which is already aware that something terribly wrong is going on. Already your lungs have flown away like a bird and your guts have slithered away like a snake. Now your tongue drops dead like an opossum, while your jaw begins to gallop on the spot. Your ears go deaf. Your muscles begin to shiver as if they had malaria and your knees to shake as though they were dancing. Your heart strains too hard, while your sphincter relaxes too much. And so with the rest of your body. Every part of you, in the manner most suited to it, falls apart. Only your eyes work well. They always pay proper attention to fear.
Quickly you make rash decisions. You dismiss your last allies: hope and trust. There, you’ve defeated yourself. Fear, which is but an impression, has triumphed over you.
The matter is difficult to put into words. For fear, real fear, such as shakes you to your foundation, such as you feel when you are brought face to face with your mortal end, nestles in your memory like a gangrene: it seeks to rot everything, even the words with which to speak of it. So you must fight hard to express it. You must fight hard to shine the light of words upon it. Because if you don’t, if your fear becomes a wordless darkness that you avoid, perhaps even manage to forget, you open yourself to further attacks of fear because you never truly fought the opponent who defeated you" (Martel 178-179).
I KNOW. Your head is aflame with awesome.
Anyway. I need to go read closely.
Love,
Megan
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