A Blog About a Blog

I realize that WheresMyRumball is supposed to be a pseudo travel blog, however if you will indulge me one more post I would like to continue to write about writing. I swear there is a word for that – a word that describes the instance of a verb applying its action to itself, i.e. writing about writing – but I cannot for the life of me or Merriam-Webster figure out what it is.

Reflexive?

Sort of.

The opposite of an oxymoron?

Kind of a stretch, and multiple words.

Titillating?

What? Sorry, I just like that word. It sounds so dirty but it’s not! But then it sort of is, just because you thought about it.

Anyway, whatever the word is, there are only a few activities for which this concept can be applied. A few examples that come not-instantly to mind:

Talking about conversation

Thinking about thought

Writing a blog about the process of blog writing

That last one may just sound silly (try to ignore the sinking feeling in your stomach about what the next several paragraphs of your life may entail, namely great patience) but I am going to pursue it nonetheless. Blog writing is after all what got us here, we may as well explore it in greater depth in order to better understand the blog and thereby formulate an escape plan (that is for you, I am stuck here).

Take tonight. Once again, I arrived home intent on blog writing. I thought I had a topic picked out (it was sooo much more interesting than this, too) but then in crafting sentence number two I stalled out trying to remember a word. A long forgotten, rarely used, possibly non-existent word.

(Don’t you already feel like this entry would be so much better if I could just remember that damn word?)

So I did what I always do when I don’t know something – I turned to the Google. And in case you didn’t believe it was possible, I proceeded to stump the Google. My well-defined query of “what’s the word for when you do something about that same thing” returned zero relevant results. The number one result, in fact, was an article titled “What Men Want in a Relationship” about how women think men want the exact opposite of what they really do want. Clearly my muddled search terms indicated to the Google that I am post-breakup, likely drunk, and possibly thinking about cutting myself hence they directed me to the “Sex & Love” section of powertochange.com.

(The number three result is titled “6 Reasons Why You Might Be Feeling Bad Right Now.” And this is why I have pre-designated a trusted friend who, should I ever meet a sudden end, will immediately delete my browser history.)

When I accepted that I would probably need to refine my search terms slightly in order for the Google to actually help me, I went a different route and typed in “reverse dictionary.” The Google helpfully and immediately pointed me toward the OneLook Reverse Dictionary, which allows users to describe a concept and receive back a list of words and phrases related to that concept. This time, my entry of “a thing that describes itself” returned hundreds of results, a few of the more interesting of which were connotation, self-identity, hermaphrodite, fundamentalist Christianity, and reformed Egyptian.

Perhaps the most accurate on the list was pest.

I was intrigued, however, by another word on the list: paradox. That’s an interesting word. I knew it wasn’t the word I was looking for – quite the opposite in fact. So I pulled up dictionary.com and entered it with the intention of scanning for antonyms. Dictionary.com does not offer any antonyms for paradox.

(Seriously, if you guys could just think of this bloody word and text me, we could be done…)

In scrolling through the dictionary entry for paradox, I lingered for a moment in the section for famous quotations featuring the word. In doing so, I came to a few more realizations. First, I was struck by how much smarter than me old dead famous people are. Thomas Mann, for example, had the following quote: “Paradox is the poisonous flower of quietism, the iridescent surface of the rotting mind, the greatest depravity of all.” Thomas Mann clearly did not have a problem thinking of the word he wanted when he wanted it. I wish he were still with us.

But the quote that I would like to end with is from James Clavell. James, who FYI was an Australian born, British (later naturalized American) novelist, screenwriter, director and World War II veteran and prisoner of war, was quoted as saying “The more I know, the more sure I am I know so little. The eternal paradox.”

To James, I would say this:

Be glad you never met the Google.