I’ve feared loss of verbal connection/meaning ever since I sustained a severe concussion as a child, falling off the back of my sister’s bike in the 1960s. (I was seven!)
Though quite gregarious (if not overly garrulous), I am at heart, a lobo – lone wolf. I write mostly in solitude, up in my small studio/cubicle. My primary strength, truth be told, is my mind — and its concomitant singleness of purpose. Since ‘rounding the bend’ of my 60-year commemoration. I have found crossword puzzles and the televised “Jeopardy!” game are proven brain savers.
With my beloved cheering me on, and tossing in occasional gems such as ‘Baja’ California, or RBI (“a baseball stat”), we steamroller thru the less challenging “olios” of words — mostly but not entirely in English. (Alternate example “Heidelberg host: HERR.”) I use certain chains of mnemonic phrases to prod my conscious mini-buttons into digging up a name or neologism just out of reach.
This arduous (but ultimately rewarding) process reminds me of yet another mnemonic trope: Jeff Fahey as Jobe Smith, “The Lawnmower Man,” in the long-neglected Stephen King knock-off film. (King sued because the movie was marketed as being adapted from his writing, but there were few similarities.) In the movie, possessed with new-found cerebral circuitry, Jobe surfs a vast honeycomb screen of tempting possibility, again and again the demonic red buzzer flashes “access denied” ‘til finally, in a woosh, he gains the precious “access granted” button, key to all limitless wisdom!
Happily, despite a few lesser head blows, I have not sustained any appreciable loss.
