I love words. Apparently I love them so much that I collect them with over-zealous greed.

I spent some time this weekend going through my old files, re-organizing and discarding much of what I had been lugging around for years. I still had returned check stubs from 10 years ago and bill statements from the late 90’s. But I also have scraps of paper with jokes, songs, stories or poems that I’ve written since about the age of 8. I still have notes from my high school Shakespeare class and almost every essay or paper I’ve ever written from 9th grade clear through graduate school. (Of course at one point I thought I might end up as a college professor and these missives would come in handy…don’t say it, I know it’s still crazy.)

I also have many letters, cards and even some emails that friends have sent me over the years. Sometimes it’s fun to dig into them and take that trip down memory lane.

As many of you know, ‘rangutan and I have been friends for about 15 years. Now one would think/hope that two people would grow and change in that amount of time. NOT US! As anyone who has ever consumed libations with us can attest, we are prone to lengthy, sometime heated, debates. Most frequently we devolve into completely inane exchanges.

As evidence I provide to you this exchange we had about 7 years ago.

[R] Did you know your last name is a comparative adjective?

[H] Yes, and as such it expresses a greater degree of the quality of turbulence and lawlessness than what is expressed in the merely positive ‘wild’.

It is the ‘greatness’ that is most accurately descriptive of my nature.

[R] There’s a strange consequence to adjectives. The context in which they are used is most important to their meaning. Consider the adjective ‘wild’. When applied to a person it means someone extremely crazy. To say a person is ‘wilder’ requests an interrogatory such as ‘compared to what, or whom’. One cannot, or should not use the term ‘wild’ in an attempt to define the meaning of ‘wilder’ in the context of describing a person. Since it is impossible for a person to be described as ‘wilder’ than a ‘wild’ person means ‘wild’ is the extent of the range of meaning for the word. Therefore, we must conclude that either ‘wilder’ doesn’t exist or is unnecessary.

But I’m glad she does and she isn’t.

[H] If ‘wild’ were the extent of the range of the meaning of the word, then the English language would have no use for the ‘comparative adjective’. When the collective unconscious of a community of individuals agrees on what is ‘merely wild’ then again as a collective whole it is understood that when one describes someone or something as ‘wilder’ the word expresses a greater degree of the quality of what is collectively understood as ‘merely wild’. Hence, we see the comparative aspect. So it is not actually using ‘wild’ to define ‘wilder’, it is comparing the degree of the quality of the essence of one word to the other, both falling back on the primary definitions, i.e., the quality of lawlessness, turbulence, or craziness. (One is ‘more crazy’ than the collectively agreed upon ‘merely crazy’ person.) Therefore, ‘wilder’ not only exits due to the limitlessness of the human imagination and consciousness, but it is also supremely necessary for the continuous ‘pushing’ of common boundaries, i.e., to always go one greater than what is commonly accepted, yet never going so far as to say ‘wildest’, whereupon one would limit the growth of humanity as a whole by suggesting a maximum.

Nominally, I represent a catalyst for the ever-expanding universe!

Ever humble,
- hauself