A Personal Dictionary

Life:
Word dictionaries came about a longggg time ago. One uses it to look up meanings of unfamiliar words and those scary looking sesquipedalians such as this one. But despite the effort of the institutions such as "Oxford", "Merriam-Webster", or even "UrbanDictionary's" attempt to standardize the definitions, we all carry a personal dictionary that is unique and intimate to us.

How does something so arbitrary, like a certain sound with certain frequency, or certain lines and dots arranged in a certain way communicate an idea originated in an arbitrary mind that is physically nonexistent?

It is our personal dictionary which gives us meanings to all the happenings around us, to us. We live through the definitions we define, we define the definitions through the lives we live.

In this sense, life is just a long journey in which we fill in the pages of our dictionary. How does one define home? How does one define mom, dad, family, happiness? How does one define love? Oh the ever so inconsistencies...

After a lifetime of editions and renditions we made, the thickness of our dictionaries proportions to the completeness of us.


This, is the last entry of the word "life" in my personal dictionary

- defined at Toronto Union Train Station,
On Valentines' Day after Loran '10 selections
For XXXXXXX

Withstanding Time

Weak bridges fall apart
Useless

hm..
Some 'ships are like bridges.

Life as a Game of Chess

You begin with your king and queen, accompany them with bishops of two dioceses, summon the knights, call the rooks on-guard.
You line up your pawns in the front row, creating an ultimate wall of defense.
Everything is still, calm, and ready... All is peace,
until someone moves to break the perfect symmetry. Then it's war time...

The game of life is fair, all begin with the same setup

The battle for the center of the board begins. Soldiers, maneuvering through no-man's land. He looks to his left, his right, but he charges straight ahead; he knows he is covered by his comrades, temporarily.

Some brave soldiers, dodging enemy lines of sight,
creeping towards enemy base, until he can advance no further.
He stops to dig his trench, set up his gun-post, await for his command.

How far you go in life, is set by how much you prepare; sometimes you travel in packs, sometimes you travel alone

All is well, all is well. The scattered pieces repositioned, concentrated in the middle. The King grew alert, burdened by the ponderous responsibility to call the moment of attack; he analyzes the map... he could do so, because he is safely ensconced behind several lines of defense...for now.

It is important to carefully think through each decision; it's also important to remain alert

That moment came, one breaks the stale-mate.
First kill on the battlefield, drew a quick enemy response.
The sacrifice of the pawn lost, became a trap set for the dark knight.
The great vision of the Queen, open a hole in enemy defense.
The rapid calls to the rook, oversees bishop and knight

As you thought you have your men covered, enemy takes one by surprise. Although you revenge the captain's death, funeral changes the whole landscape. Spots of weak appear, making soldiers fear.

One is at his most vulnerable when one feels most secure

The chase has soon began, to capture that devious bishop.
Showing no mercy, the knight sent bishop to meet God
At the eve of the battle day, those loyal and brave stay
Just as the final battle is about to begin, good King go-over his plans, while bad King could only hope for opponent's mistake. As the enemy force drew close, ending the war in moments. One notices backdoor unguard, he goes in, and forces the King.

In the most hopeless situation, there is hope. Hopeless is an illusion. Hopeless itself is an opportunity

Regardless of prior victories,
all is too late,

Check-mate.

The Art of Profanity -Part Two: The Roots of Sexuality in Profanity

Where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I shall continue.

So as far as we know, there's a cross-cultural trait of sexuality built into the language of profanity, but the question is, where is root of this phenomenon? As usual, I have a hypothesis: the "Holy" Bible.

As dirty as the "Holy" Bible could get, it recorded a large number of events of
1. "using physical force to have sexual intercourse" AKA rape
2. "sexual intercourse between closely related persons" AKA incest
3. "sexual activities between people of the same sex" AKA homosexuality

These incidences have creeped into our modern language (including, but not limited to, English)
I'll give a few English examples here:
1. "Fuck you!" could simply be translated to "I'm going to 'invade' you whether you like it your not". (Rape is the most badass thing one can do, of which could never be justified in front of law. This makes "Fuck you" the most badass personal insult).
2. "You motherfucker."....clearly incest.
3. "You're gay!" ... oh them teenagers' favourite insult.

So what's with all the "sex" in our profanity? Follow this logic:

IF to "insult" is to rob away, as much as possible, the dignity and freedom of another individual
Some sexual activities mentioned above completely robs away the dignity and freedom of another individual
THEN there's not a more insulting way to insult a person by using profanity derived from some of the sexual acts mentioned above.

In hypothesizing that the roots of sexuality in profanity come from Religion, one may notice a certain contradiction. You could challenge "But no Peter, the French culture is highly influenced by Catholicism, and we all know the Catholic church condemns the sexual acts listed above, how could profanity in the French culture be so sexual?"

At first the highly-sexual French culture that's 'very Catholic' seems counter-intuitive, but on a further level of analysis, there is no contradiction; the explanation is found in history. The Reformation in the 16th century Europe gave rise to new institutions such as the Lutheran, Calvinist, and Protestant church. There has been some tolerance of the religions other than Catholicism as mandated by Henri IV through the Edict of Nantes in 1598. However, this edict, or proclamation was revoked by Louis XIV, le roi du solei, who, a devoted Catholic himself, made Catholicism the official religion of France less than a century later. Because the Catholic Church extremely frown upon some of the sexual acts, insulting someone using sexual-related remarks bring an externality of condemnation from the all-power church, and furtherly, the Almighty God.

We examined the roots of sexuality in profanity in this blog, but could the same principle be applied to other cultures? We shall see in the next and last part of this series... The Oriental Perspective.