Homage to a Thesaurus

My thesaurus has a wine-colored leather cover with gold lettering. Published in 1977, it has weathered the years remarkably well. The only page which bears the mark of age refers to "similarity" and "dissimilarity." The dread of the middle school "compare and contrast" paper comes flooding back to me. Perhaps this page registers not only use, but also frustration on its delicate, but crumpled and torn, page.

I wish to honor this thesaurus today; it has served me well in writing reports, poetry, seminar papers, and now the dissertation. As a younger, fresher-faced writer, I searched this tome for lively words. My tender seventh grade reports twinkled with glittery words like: perspicacity, auroral, or temerarious.

Now, the thesaurus has become a clever way to repair tired dissertation prose. That is, when I can't bear to edit my current project, I turn to my trusted thesaurus for aid. I go through my work looking for words of little interest. (My thesaurus suggests that these words might be wearying, humdrum, dusty, or stuporific.) With the help of my thesaurus I turn soporific prose into much more vivacious and nuanced writing. Ultimately, this has been fun way to return to my dissertation when I almost can't endure it (perservere, keep the pot boiling, hammer away, brazen it out, hang on like a leech).

writer's haze

Wednesday October 25, 2006


When I woke up this morning, I knew it was a morning to leave the house; I felt the writer’s block coming on. I have always imagined writer’s block as a large, stone wall with writers wringing their hands at the base of it, not knowing what is on the other side. This wall is a materialization of a void where no words or ideas exist. My writer’s block, were it a wall, would be built with bricks of frustration, inferiority, and largely of boredom. It would have a chink in it though, through which I could peer into a life beyond the dissertation. But, this is not my experience. For me, writer’s block is a gauzy haze which, since it seems to exist on its own, desires contact with the material world – hence, I often clean instead of working. I feel like I am doing something, and I am rewarded by a clean apartment at the end of it.

I think part of what’s missing at this stage is a ritual. Like most people, I require the comfort of a daily ritual. I don’t have a place that I like working for starters. At home, I feel too isolated. At school, I am too distracted. But perhaps these excuses are only a ruse for the real issue: the overwhelm of producing an original manuscript on something I feel I only know very little about. I think of all the French primary sources that are surely out there and which I have never examined. I think of all the translations I need to do, and the French I need to study. These feelings, in the end, bore me, and I just want to lay in my bed and watch TV instead.

So, today, I went to the coffee shop where I spent most of my Special Fields Exam crafting musical analyses. I made it through most of my proposal, tightening up ideas and syntax. I then tried to read, but the dangerous foreboding set in. I thought a glance at People magazine might free me from this miasma. I felt much better for it, but the fog soon clouded my head again. I decided to return to my apartment where it only got worse. I opted for a nap, and here I am - dressed in jeans and a UCLA hooded jacket – putting these fears on the page next to a steaming cup of green tea.