Today's word

From the most recent Dictionary Devil:

aepyornis /ˌē-pē-ˈȯr-nəs/ - elephant bird

A word coined in 1851 for a bird that has been extinct since 1000-ish. 

Sometimes . . .

. . . there can be conflict between accepting who we are and becoming who God is calling us to be. 

Come to think of it, I'd venture to say that it's way closer to "always" than merely "sometimes."

For instance - and this is only one example that I happen to have encountered recently that happens to be relevant to me - there's a lot of scientific discussion to be had yet on the degree to which gay, lesbian, bi, and trans people are "just born this way." And I don't believe that God makes mistakes in assigning our physical and emotional, and even spiritual, sexuality.

But even if it turns out that some people are, there's no question that one way we're all "born this way" is that we're all touched with sin. 

There has to be a way to balance how we are by nature with our call to holiness that doesn't reject the idea that living God's revealed plan for our sexuality is a key component of the holy lives to which we are called. I accept people however they are, but I don't believe any of us are called to remain as we are, no matter how far along the path to holiness we may be. 

As a person who definitely tends to think of himself in terms of one of the categories in the third paragraph, it is dangerous for me to fall into the trap that I should just embrace being a can of carrots when my outside label says peas. I am called to holiness, and to lay down my life for my bride; to embrace being any one of those categories instead of simply being the holy husband I am called to be interferes with God's plan for my life. 

For all that my dad . . .

. . .  despised me for my weakness, I must have been a damned strong kid to have survived all the horrors of my childhood.

God's grace at work.

i feel . . .

. . . adrift

What haunts me

It isn't the boarded-over windows in the front door, nor the fogged up enclosure in what used to be our open-air side porch, both of which provide a creepy feeling that I suspect is really more about the personal stuff that haunts me.

It's the house where my dad continued his desperate efforts to remake me in his own image, always trying to make me more athletic.

It's the house where he spent countless drunken nights stumbling around and swearing at his personal ghosts, for whom mom and Karen and I were sometimes stand-ins.

It's the house where he and mom fought over his drinking.

It's the house where I once accidentally landed on my sister's head in the swimming pool when I was trying to jump over her and slipped. (Thank God she wasn't hurt.)

It's the house where I overheard him arguing with my grandmom over whether my mom had ever given him "plenty of sex."

It's the house where I first remember being sexually abused by someone: my dad. I've been told that it had happened once before, when I was younger, but I don't remember that.

It's the house where I chose my side, rooting with mom for Notre Dame over dad's Alabama preference in the 1973 Sugar Bowl, even though I didn't know squat. 

It's the house where we stayed with my aunt while mom tended to dad in the hospital after his accident in PA.

It's the house where he finally shot himself while the rest of us were off on vacation. Mom told us he died of a "cerebral hemorrhage."

It's the house where my uncle told me, "You're the man of the house, now."

It's the house where mom finally told me, maybe as much as two years later, that he'd killed himself, and how. 

It's the house where she also finally told me he wasn't my biological father.

It's the house where mom first introduced us to the man who would become (far and away) my worst sexual abuser and, much later, due to the silence about that into which he manipulated me for so long, my stepfather.

It's the house where my wife and I first made love.

It's just a house. But what a freak show my childhood in it was.

Today's word

From the Dictionary Devil: 

ritornello /ˌri-tər-ˈne-(ˌ)lō, ˌri-ˌtȯr-/ - 1a. a short recurrent instrumental passage in a vocal composition   b. an instrumental interlude in early opera  2. a tutti passage in a concerto or rondo refrain

Driving past my haunted house

. . . or maybe it just haunts me.

Had to drive past it four times this weekend.

It still hurts. 

More on that later.

Today's words

carminative /kär-ˈmi-nə-tiv, ˈkär-mə-ˌnā-/ - expelling gas from the stomach or intestines so as to relieve flatulence or abdominal pain or distension

Courtesy of a Words at Play blog entry that's a fun read.

i am clearly neither the man nor the friend i imagined myself to be. 

Love is

the willingness to hurt.

Today's words

tergiversation /'ter-jiv-er-SAY-shun/ - 1. evasion of straightforward action or clear-cut statement : equivocation 2 : desertion of a cause, position, party, or faith

I usually only put words I didn't know here. I made an exception because of one aspect or another of the related words in this WOTD column.

tergiversate /TER-jəv-er-'sayt, 'ter-JIV-er-'sayt, GIV, 'ter-jə-VER-'sayt/ - to engage in tergiversation

Okay, so it's not common as a verb as it is as a noun, although most people could clearly determine the meaning of this one from the previous one. I just think they should have come up with one alternate pronunciation with the emphaSIS on the last syllaBLE. I don't understand why the glottal (or "hard") "g" isn't an option for the noun.

tergum /TER-gəm/ -  the dorsal part or plate of a segment of an arthropod
tergal /TER-gəl/ - dorsal

Now, these are new words for me.

Today's word

phoebe /FEE-bee/ - any of a genus (Sayornis) of the tyrant flycatcher family; especially : a flycatcher (S. phoebe) of the eastern U.S. that has a slight crest and is plain grayish brown above and yellowish white below

From today's Dictionary Devil. It took me a minute, too, to realize that a flycatcher is a bird. 

i don't know . . .

. . . why i bother with this blog. i'm just screaming into the fucking void.

i don't think you know how. 
but thank you for trying. 
you have been such a bright spot in my life.

not like i do.

let the reader beware . . .

. . . that I don't lend pieces of my heart.

I should probably warn people about that sooner.

Today's word

peripeteia /'pair-uh-puh-TEE-uh/ - a sudden or unexpected reversal of circumstances or situation especially in a literary work

A word from my distant past, from either a classics or theater class in my first college (i.e., partying) career. Then there's this new addition to a fun post I've seen lately:

I before E, except (in an entertaining peripeteia) when your foreign neighbor Keith receives eight beige counterfeit sleighs from feisty caffeinated weightlifters. Weird. 

i am a zombie 😫💤

Today's word

intestine /in-TESS-tin / - internal; specifically : of or relating to the internal affairs of a state or country

Wow. This makes perfect sense.

Today's words

weltschmerz /VELT-shmairts/ - 1. often capitalized Weltschmerz : mental depression or apathy caused by comparison of the actual state of the world with an ideal state  2. often capitalized Weltschmerz : a mood of sentimental sadness

I really can't believe I haven't entered this word in my blog before. I own this word.

coeval /koh-EE-vul/ - of the same or equal age, antiquity, or duration

An older WOTD I missed, somehow. I've heard it before, but couldn't place it. 

Is there anybody . . . out there?

I wish you could tell me you don't give up on me.

Today's word

anastrophe /ə-ˈnas-trə-(ˌ)fē/ - inversion of the usual syntactical order of words for rhetorical effect

Was sure I'd entered this word somewhere in this blog before. Didn't find it on a search though, so here it is, from today's Dictionary Devil puzzle. New to me, the related:

hysteron proteron /ˌhi-stə-ˌrän-ˈprä-tə-ˌrän, -tə-rən-ˈprä-tə-rən, -ˈprȯ-/ - a figure of speech consisting of the reversal of a natural or rational order (as in "then came the thunder and the lightning")

I love the etymology: Late Latin, from Greek, literally, (the) later earlier, (the) latter first

The Wall

When I was in my first college career (i.e., my partying career), I misinterpreted the meaning of Pink Floyd's tour de force in multiple ways. For instance, I thought Goodbye, Cruel World was a song about suicide. It wasn't until I read more about the album a couple decades later that I understood what they were actually conveying there.

Sometimes it's all I can do to not put the final brick in.

And sometimes I wonder if I haven't already.

Just the refrain

I can't connect at all with the rest of the song at this stage and status of my life, but the refrain really resonates with me:

And I don't want the world to see me
'Cause I don't think that they'd understand
When everything's meant to be broken
I just want you to know who I am
                                         - Goo Goo Dolls

Tangentially related: I'm a little worried about this reunion. Some blissfully ignorant classmate is going to bloviate about how Dr. Ford has forgotten who freakin' assaulted her, and I'm just not going to be able to keep my mouth shut. (How it's related: I don't want the world to see me . . . It isn't my job to make myself vulnerable to them just to fix their ignorance, as if I could.)