Have you ever seen the movie, “West Side Story?”
There is a scene when Tony is singing about a girl named Maria and he is so entranced with her he has to inexplicably brake into song. Well, I know how Tony feels because I found a word to write about today that was so powerful I made myself declutter before I used up all my energy lusting after a…. word. I know it sounds strange.
Here I was investigating cures for writer’s block when I was hit by a words so strongly it nearly knocked me off my feet. Insert “Sibylline” for Maria and you’ll get how I feel. And after the clip are the words I wrote after a garage decluttering session.
Your tip? Be open to a word that will make YOU want to sing. And then sing. Or borrow this tune from West Side Story and sing along.
I’m investigating Wrier’s Block today: its causes and more importantly its cures.
I was all tangled up in other stuff rather than writing when this new word flew off twitter and dove headlong into my heart: sibylline. It means mysterious.
I saw the word and it was instant lust. Originally I called it love, but no. To be truthful it was all about lust for who I wish I could be and never was.
The guilty pleasure wished for word: sibylline.
I was under its spell. Oh, to be mysterious. How I would love to be mystery personified.
I closest I could claim is when a suitor (does anyone use that word anymore, even in 1983 when it happened) described me as an enigma.
The man in question happened to be 19 but if anyone was mysterious it was he. After all, he is the one who went on to be an internationally known business man. I’m the one who became a mother-of-three in Bakersfield listening to music that is supposed to keep her focused on writing and is now more than slightly mortified to be writing in the third person.
If you put this now internationally well-known business man’s Facebook photo and my Facebook photo side-by-side he would hands on get more votes for sibylline.
I’m not sure what adjective people would use by my smiley face selfie taken by the river last Sunday morning but certainly it wouldn’t be the longed for sibylline.
I’ve always been an “open book” and “heart on the sleeve” sort of person who could have won Girl Scout badges for Transparency if there was such a thing probably because I wanted people to engage me in deep conversation even as a middle-school-aged-child.
If I were more sibylline, people with glasses in really cool frames would speak to me and assume I had a wide vocabulary and varied interests and expertise in random subjects.
When I think about it a moment, I do have varied interests and expertise in random subjects and it sort of bothers me when people can’t recognize this immediately.
Sibylline: teach me how to express your presence in my life.
A very excited aspect of my life, probably a freshman in college me or a before-fifth-grade-me leaped to the forefront of my brain and quipped, “I know, a poem! Write a poem with the writer’s voice being named Sibylline!” she takes a pause, “or get a new cat and name her Sibylline, or write a character with a cat named Sibylline!”
The headset which is playing a binaural beats playlist in my mind gets to the part that sounds like the El in Chicago during the Risky Business sound track and I realize my timer has gone off and I have effectively used up the writing credit I earned while cleaning the clutter in my garage.
Time for me to go back to being perfectly ordinary and decidedly anti-sibylline. For now, anyway.
