My hiking partner likes to make up expressions that transform language. He has done this since childhood. The alteration requires some familiarity with the sound of the expression, rather than with the proper expression. A suburb of Portland that seemed less open and friendly than the city became Gression. An expression ends most meals along the trail: “Tomato and Lettuce go!” I transform this, “Lettuce tomato and go,” which confounds him. Friends add to his repertoire. So now we hear new expressions. Some of them come to us as messages from the bumpers of cars we follow: Envision Whirled Peas. Other’s spill out of our mouth when the wrong word gets spoken: Tab a craxi. Some times a cliché reforms itself: That’s just water over a spilled bridge. When we attend to spoken language we alter perception. We can play with expressions.
Transformation Exercise: #2 First Words
Try using your own first words again and see what impact they have. Write a story to go along with your first words and re-speaking them. Supposedly I said, “ Up and Down.” I chose to write them on a triangular scrap of wood. I was charmed that the bit of wood could be rocked back and forth, lifting the words I had written on each side: Up and Down.
Try out a misquoted cliché, or language substitution in everyday speech. If someone laughs or asks about it, find out what examples they remember. Collect a set of verbal transformations. Savor them.
A friend delivers aphorisms with authority as though spoken correctly. He has the uncanny ability of a retired high school English teacher to make us think he speaks correctly.
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