Reading the ingredient list

Well I got bad news and really shitty news. Which one would you like to hear?

Well… shitty news it is!

You know how I said I still got 6 more hours to knock of the 9039 word list? Well I didn’t finish it. Tada! I still tried to get past my initial fear and let Mom quiz me at the end of the day. She asked me five words, and I was blank.

The words were: lais, souma/summa, can’t remember, decan and Agamae. I remember reading about Deccan and the other meaning of the zodiac counterpart, yet when someone tested you – endgame- that is when I was caught frozen.

To be fair, it was a probability game, and out of 9000 or so words pick any page at random you are bound to not know the word especially if you haven’t clocked in any time.

After watching some videos on goal-setting and procrastination (and looking up the etymology of procrastination) it seemed that I wasn’t enjoying the process and repeating the same offense that I tried doing two days ago of trying to learn to tie 40 knots all in a single day. My goal was too linear, too ‘get-comfortable-doing-the-uncomfortable’ and although minimalistic, devoting an entire day, albeit for a grandiose scheme, drains the energy and attrites you.

Oh…as far as procrastination? Apparently, Merriam-Webster mentions:

…English speakers borrowed the word in the 16th century from Latin procrastinatus, which itself evolved from the prefix pro-, meaning “forward,” and crastinus, meaning “of tomorrow”…

Yeah I tried the wandering-mind method and tried to relish each word as I go after trying in vain to cross out the pages of “Hobbs”…you know try to get in alpha state and hoping against hope somehow magically you will soak and absorb all the words.

But the mystic lore only lasts so long. I did become fascinated with words like “tol” which is a word for Sanskrit school especially making the connection after reading bat-tola in Bangla which roughly means under the shade of banyan tree and presuming there was the tradition of lyceum in ancient India… I learned about the meaning behind my family name “Mir” where other than the Arabic title for chief, “mir” can also refer to Russian village…not to mention the spaceship.

I learned how “niggered” means “divided a log by burning” as well as the term “nigger” may refer to a “steamoperated capstan for warping river steamboats over snags and shallows; any of several darkcolored insect larvae…” Looking up the meaning behind the highly derogatory term, it seemed that in the past it was used liberally for almost anything and not just the nautical or entomological usage.

Another word of offense was “Chamar.” I myself heard this term in Bangladesh which refers to a “member of low Indian caste whose occupation is leather working” and how often many of my own family members have insulted others sotto voce behind someone’s back. I couldn’t help but realize as much as humans made leaps ‘n bound strides in evolution the intellect has managed ten-fold to collapse the neocortical fold over itself to highly nuanced and sensitive ways, almost to the insidious level of dark psychological mastery, to hurt someone where it really means, that special Achilles’ heel untouched by Styx… I mean why not call someone stupid or idiot or bovine-looking? Instead…one realizes that subtle insults like this will hurt someone where it really will and will disintegrate his ego to smithereens.  Ah! Humans! Or rather the human folly! You never cease to amaze me.

I learned how “veronica” the famous character characterized immemorially by Archie can either mean a plant or a cloth with Jesus’s face. I spied “hui”, and how there is a specific term for falconer’s summon called “wo” and how often we overlook the other meaning behind “down” judging by the term “swan’s-down”. There was the word “cit” that I mistakenly thought would refer to the consciousness after all my brush with Eastern religion, but actually it refers to a city inhabitant. And of course some more undefined terms as “hartebeest”, “chalcedony” (gem? but be more specific), “pee-wee” (first I heard from a gangster in Santa Ana and inadvertently he might have not known that it also refers to a “North American tyrant flycatcher with dark olive-gray plumage”), “watchwork”, “do” (simple but laden with double meanings), “dom”, “cimax”, “unPolish” (a rare time a capital letter inserted inside), “nani” (Hawaiian word for beauty) and on and on.

So the bad news is since I kinda set myself for a failure with an overkill and unrealistic goal to gun down 9000 words in a day, I decided to learn 100 words the next day (today) slowly picking up the ante for the next 30, 60 or 90 days. My Mom even promised me $50 if I can memorize the list in a week, but I want to make sure I don’t jip her off and give her more than she bargained for.

So today I woke up all groggy, tired and irritated since it was a wintry, cloudy morning in California after raining last night and at dawn. I decide on morning ritual of ikigai, or what is the purpose of life? And quickly find myself answering: to be God. I give gratitude for my parents being alive, food, shelter, and warmth in such cold. I wake up and find myself extremely groggy and in irritated mood to do any rigorous cardio, so after making bed I do simple 10 push-ups and 10 up-down thingies and as a substitute for exercise I, out of whim, decide that it would be an excellent thing to take cold shower.

Many times I found myself entering a mini-flow state after ice-cold shower and right after the shower, I head to 7-11 to eat a protein snack pack of egg, crackers, cheese, grapes and apples as well as energy drink. I was too tired to walk a mile to 99 Cents Only Store to buy flashcards as planned, let alone Target, which was farther, but as soon as the energy drink kicked in I thought: why fuckin’ bother? Might as well just kill it in online flash cards.

And since in my limbo state after waking up I set myself a goal to memorize 100 words, I find it realized and manifested. I find the website more measurable, more decent and more reliable in testing. Music on, I find my deficiency after I brick-by-brick capture my own flashcards in the quiz.

When young at Scholastica, I used to often botch up fill in the blanks. So I used to go home… this was grade 5 or 6 and quiz myself by creating my own fill in the blanks akin to the following:

____ ____ ___ ___, I ____ to _____ _______ up ____ in the ____.

Pretty soon it turned to a formless:

____ ___  ___ __, _ _____ __ ____ _____ __ _____ in ___ _____

and I could murder it often tasting ambrosia of photographic memory after the scaffolding fell off.

Having gotten hold of my goal and as it turned out I scored 56 out of 100, I knew I had the motherfucker’ by the throat and so decided to go out to hunt for more words with mind to cool off.

Now people often stops me in the street and asks “Zeeshan, what site do you use for flashcards?” Well it is no secret, I use quizlet.com. *Turning to computer screen*  Quizlet.com your number 1, go to source for all the quizzes, flashcards, tests and matching games.

Now when I first started this endeavor last month, suddenly grocery started becoming fun again. I hated the chore to shop with Mom at Fresh Choice were things are dirt-cheap and everyone with cart bumps into another and the place is extremely crowded as well as damn-long lines. But not anymore. I kept my eyes open and chanced upon rutabagas, watercress, pennywort, kohlrabi, neep and when doing errands at Burlington Coat Factory browsing woman’s section of makeup would lead me to “argan” oil (as well as the all-too-familiar “shea”) or when visiting family friend at smoke store spying on “patchouli”, or at my stocking stint for two-weeks finding “adzuki” beans, “fennel” seeds and of course “quinoa”. Heck, I even started reading ingredient list because this gives more context, reference point and pegs. I mean you never know what word in OED might actually lurk there, and trust me, plenty do.

It was almost akin to a baby’s first love rekindled after she discovers the thirst and first love of reading and reads everything she gets hold of. I started reading the clothing tag, what acrylic meant, what rayon meant and the world does indeed get transparent…

For instance, I noted how one of my t-shirt read in French “Fabbrique” and I realized due to the error, despite the quality of the T-shirt it was for sale at a very reputable clothing store.

Attention to detail!

So I love fieldwork, as I call it. And just by stepping outside, I found “sesquicentennial” in license plate. Sure how often we saw this sesquipedalian word, but how many of us in California actually bothered to pause, stop and ponder about this word? Heck the plate even has the meaning etched on it: “Celebrating 150 years”.

You see but you do not observe.

This is like Slumdog Millionaire shit. “I know this because…”

Going out, on a plumbing van I find the word “backflow”. Pretty boring word, but important. I plod along and after I stand at bus-stop for twenty minutes, I see a U-Haul van with the “Did you know?”-type of facts highlighting the word “plesiosaurus“. You see birdwatchers have a term called “lifer” when one suddenly, as if, gains life, seeing a new, invited species. For me, it was nonetheless the same. Imbibed with vim and vigor, I marched forward to get he momentum rolling and then saw the bus coming to the next stop.

Even inside, the word “cord” and “coach” struck me. It was uncommon in lieu of “bus” the term “coach operator” was used and I flirted with “cordage” two days ago. Now I was trying too hard, but I saw in backwards, mirrored font, nearly invisible, in the corner the term “acrylic” written on window of the bus and it seems it may refer to the protective screen.

I zoomed past “Waterman” St. and an “apothecary” and after lunching marvelously like a boss in Boston Market, I decided to visit a jewelry supply store. There was a giant chart in front of it with explosion of gemology and mineralogy words and I tried to devour as much as I could after walking inside which was an entire new dimension.  Thousands and thousands of rocks, gems and minerals rocked the shelves and I could only remember few words as “ammonite”, “jasper”, “tiger’s eye”, “lapis lazuli” and while I read about “chalcedony” last night, I saw a “type of” it today. (There were even sandalwood and patchouli incense sticks.) I decided to take back a souvenir and for gratitude rock, I chose a “tumbling” black piece of “obsidian.”

I took the bus ride back home, and from the bus-stand spied an orange Lamborghini. Probably a Spyder, and the same bus that dropped me off, took me back home with a slight hitch in the middle where we had to disembark and board to a connecting bus technical reason.

I came home and blasted through the test. By now, the words have solidified and found myself constantly in 80s zone. Told you. I have this motherfucker by the collar. First the important thing is consistency, then quantity and quality will follow. If anything I learned from the process of failure last night.

Today, New Zealand playing Bangladesh a Test. And after watching 20 minutes of it, rain interrupted the match as, per commentator, a “hessian” mat had to be brought over to cover the pitch.

A lifer!

Words learnt: about 100