I think I might need whole new blog to accommodate this sort of a mixed-breed post.
People spent hours in school moaning on about the wretchedness of the Wren and Martin. I think that the age of the concept had seeped through the pages and was oozing out at 21st century students because it had no more place within the omniscient tome. So we rubbished it for three years straight.
And then some more in venomous retrospect for another five years.
For some, it was a toxin.
Fetid, rotting English was releasing lethal amounts of Grammar into their regulation diet of academic reading. And it was only because it was demanded that the academic reading happened at all.
For some, it was poison.
Crafted out of malicious intent to harm, Grammar was like mercury on a mirror. All they wanted to do was know what other world there was through the looking glass (of English) and they wound up ensnared in a reverse world of rules and conformity (assuming that they were free spirits, wont to incidental anarchy by just being).
For (so)me, it was a venom.
And I'm ever so prone to acidity too... It all makes sense now.
Like a necromancer who hasn't quite learned how the spirits want to be treated, I would go around blithely affronting English with my naïvete about voices and predicates.
And then I figured it all out.
My life had to be transformed before I could truly fathom the many leagues of wisdom contained in the beaten, weary text. Like some 20th century Cassandra, the Wren and Martin shone with a different splendour after just two days of being bathed in etymology.
Mr. P.C Wren and Mr. H. Martin must surely be chuckling, the plumes of smoke of their celebratory cigars swirling into grand marquees of 'I told you so's.
Mr. Wren and Mr. Martin, I take my hat off to you (though I think I would need to reach over and borrow yours for a spell) for putting in those thoroughly ignored pages of Greek and Latin roots right beside the verily over-analysed lists of Figures of Speech. And it is true: we all think that the wisdom of the past finds form in the shape of pearly spectres that we must shut our eyes, clecnch our fists and wish away with great moxie.
But we always return to the vision and find it has changed from the ghoulish to something rather more familiar: an acquaintance whom we must choose to make a friend.
People spent hours in school moaning on about the wretchedness of the Wren and Martin. I think that the age of the concept had seeped through the pages and was oozing out at 21st century students because it had no more place within the omniscient tome. So we rubbished it for three years straight.
And then some more in venomous retrospect for another five years.
For some, it was a toxin.
Fetid, rotting English was releasing lethal amounts of Grammar into their regulation diet of academic reading. And it was only because it was demanded that the academic reading happened at all.
For some, it was poison.
Crafted out of malicious intent to harm, Grammar was like mercury on a mirror. All they wanted to do was know what other world there was through the looking glass (of English) and they wound up ensnared in a reverse world of rules and conformity (assuming that they were free spirits, wont to incidental anarchy by just being).
For (so)me, it was a venom.
And I'm ever so prone to acidity too... It all makes sense now.
Like a necromancer who hasn't quite learned how the spirits want to be treated, I would go around blithely affronting English with my naïvete about voices and predicates.
And then I figured it all out.
My life had to be transformed before I could truly fathom the many leagues of wisdom contained in the beaten, weary text. Like some 20th century Cassandra, the Wren and Martin shone with a different splendour after just two days of being bathed in etymology.
Mr. P.C Wren and Mr. H. Martin must surely be chuckling, the plumes of smoke of their celebratory cigars swirling into grand marquees of 'I told you so's.
Mr. Wren and Mr. Martin, I take my hat off to you (though I think I would need to reach over and borrow yours for a spell) for putting in those thoroughly ignored pages of Greek and Latin roots right beside the verily over-analysed lists of Figures of Speech. And it is true: we all think that the wisdom of the past finds form in the shape of pearly spectres that we must shut our eyes, clecnch our fists and wish away with great moxie.
But we always return to the vision and find it has changed from the ghoulish to something rather more familiar: an acquaintance whom we must choose to make a friend.
