Tag: words

Words you never publish might change the world

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing4 Comments

Those words that might change the world: perhaps you don’t know you’ve written them. You wrote them in a letter that changed another person’s life, and then others and countless others, and you never knew.

cloud2Those words that might change the world: perhaps you wrote them in your diary. You didn’t know what they meant until you wrote them and when you knew, you were changed and the ways you changed impacted what you wrote and published after that.

Those words that might change the world: perhaps they’re within a poem, a short story or a novel that never found a publisher. Even if none of your heirs find and publish those words and change the world long after you’re gone, they exist now and are part of your life, a life that would have gone down different roads without those words hidden away in a drawer.

You draw strength from the words you write because every word you write changes you into a person who is different than the one who sat down to write. Your strengths ripple outward and impact people who never see the words that served as a catalyst. Who you are now is always partly determined by the growth you achieved through writing words you may never publish.

The words you write are never wasted even if you throw them away. They are never quite gone from you even if your conscious mind cannot recall them. They are like a continuing breath, unseen but life altering and life giving.

You have cast a spell on yourself, enchanted yourself, discovered heretofore unknown dimensions of yourself, and from such things, there’s no return.

Since you cannot return, you will write other words that are impacted by your older words, you will say something wondrous to a stranger that you meet because the you who wrote those words walks down different streets with influences you may never see, you will wave to a man or woman on the street who will be changed, perhaps ever so slightly, by that wave or the smile behind it even though s/he will never know of the long lost words that brought about that moment.

This is the power of words that exist but remain hidden while their energy turns the world on its axis and casts devils into the sea.

–Malcolm

Catty Definitions

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn satire2 Comments
    Catacomb – Grooming implement used to remove prospective fur balls from the exterior of a cat before they find their way inside the cat where they become yucky prior to being left on the rug while important guests are over for dinner.
    Catafalque – Actor Peter Falk’s pet.
    Catalog – Any unattended pencil left on any unattended surface in a room with one or more unattended cats.
    Catalyst – Position of a cat just before it tips over.
    Catamaran – A maran chicken running from your cat.
    Cat and Fiddle – Gossiping while playing the violin.
    Catastrophe – Any dead animal left on the doorstep by your cat which you are expected to bring inside and proudly display with the other wonders in the trophy case.
    Catapult – Means by which the cat got the remainder of a dangling piece of thread out of the sewing basket.
    Catbird – Your canary inside your cat.
    Catboat – Any vessel free of rats and canaries.
    Cat box – Sport involving one or more mail cats, often in an alley.
    Cat-call – Any of various silly sounds cat owners make while trying (usually in vain) to coax their cats back inside.
    Categorize – Method through which your cat sorts the contents just spilled out of a purse.
    Catgut – Processing area for Cat o’mountains.
    Cathode – Poem written by a lisping cat.
    Catnip – Love bite from your pet.
    Cat-ice – The round things that glow in the dark when tabby is near.
    Cat o’mountain – What you find in the litter box if you forget to clean it out for a couple of weeks.
    Cat o’ nine tails – Tom cat with his harem.
    Catsup – Ketchup thrown up by a cat.
    Cat’s Cradle – What unattended thread or string turns into while the cats are playing with it.
    Cat’s Pajamas – Any shawl or lap blanket draped over a human in a living room chair, usually during a TV show on a cold night.
    Cat’s Paw – Tabby’s daddy.
    Catwalk – Shortest possible route between the food bowl and the litter box.

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–Author of the satire Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire, Malcolm R. Campbell lives in a house with four cats.