My Personal Thesaurus

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Initially I saw it as a color wheel for words. No doubt versions of it exist both online and on paper. Standard stuff, I imagine, in creative writing courses. Specific guides for writers and poets. A quick glance at Google reveals reams of candidates divided by age, discipline, audience and intent. But there is this problem. When you look at a classic color wheel for example, they all look the same: red across from green, yellow across from purple, blue across from orange. The whole Roy G Biv dominated world that tells us what colors “should” maintain “proper” relationships with other colors. Now go look at a sunset. Hmm. Seems nobody told the sunset about the color wheel. Every color on the wheel, and seemingly many that aren’t quite there, are slap bang up against each other and somehow it just comes out awesome.

I suspect that we would find the same phenomenon at work in the world of writing. The truly creepy world of AI that mimics literary greats or discerns an author from a few pithy snippets notwithstanding, I cling to the belief that the miracle of words on a page mystically link author and reader; that subtext, the heartbeat felt between the lines equals, and sometimes exceeds, exchanges born in the here and now.

To step sideways for a moment, I am currently composing what will be my last syllabus for a communication course at NC State University, where I have taught since 1981. The course is an online course, and in the syllabus I break several rules that have slipped into being for the online environment. Primary among them is the notion that videos should be brief and should not substitute for lectures. Not only are my online videos long - often over an hour - but they blatantly are the lectures. Even more egregious, they are sometimes lectures pulled from previous semesters - a few from years ago. Which brings us back to the motivation for My Personal Thesaurus.

Doing a live lecture to a large class is clearly live theater. Being an undergraduate theater major myself that never bothered me, except for the fact that you carried all those “live theater” anxieties with you when you went off stage. “Damn. I have done that bit on the influence of the Western on early film better.” “Did I make the distinction between Edison and Tesla clear enough?” One of the real benefits of online teaching is that I can, and shamelessly do, go back and pull what I hope were the days I hit a lecture just right, and paste that lecture into the current syllabus. And yes, I do warn the students that they will be seeing a number of “golden oldies,” during the course and that guy with varying haircuts etc., is really just different versions of me.

Back to the Personal Thesaurus; I have been doing what passed, for me, as creative writing for more than 60 years. The earliest publication, as I have mentioned here on the Wall before, was a poem in the school newspaper when I was in either 5th or 6th grade in The American International School in Vienna, Austria circa 1960 or '61. Thing is, I hope I have gotten better since then. But nowadays often when I finish a piece, prose or poetry, and think about sharing it with you here on the Wall I am often beset by those “live theater” anxieties: "I think I said that better before!" "What was that word?"

Ah, yes. "What was that word?” And hence my personal thesaurus. It is not as if I want to go back and steal a “better line” from a previous post - but a better word? Sure! Why not? So, I start this personal thesaurus. The current organizational structure is random. And that is a good thing. Something more structured may evolve, but I think I will resist it. After all I’m not really after a color wheel here - rather, more a sunset.

Harmony

Whippoorwill 

Dappled

Serenity 

Moonlight

Tranquility 

Enlightenment 

Intimacy 

Transcendence 

Gentility

Gentle

Silky

Silken

Enfolded

Thunder

Transfixed

Starlight

Shaded

Soft

Animation

Animated

Drowsy

Dozing

Dream

Dreaming

Dreamy

Smooth
Suspended 

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