Appositio (ap-po-sit’-i-o): Addition of an adjacent, coordinate, explanatory or descriptive element.
How many ways are there to skin a cat? What kind of crazy-ass question is that? “Choo Choo waa waa” is not the answer, that is, it is the sound a train makes being pulled by a steam-powered locomotive.
These seemingly random juxtapositions shed light on the jumble of thoughts constituting consciousness. You know, and you know that you know, ad infinitum. You may say “I know. I know.” when you’re trying to console somebody. You may even say “I know, I know, I know.” When you’re commiserating. When you’re singing a song you may say “I know” ten or fifteen times. I know, I know this seems like it’s going nowhere.
Just think of the jumble of words slopping around in your head, and all the work you have to do to frame a thought—a paranoid thought, a joyous thought, a confused thought. In addition to words, there’s grammar and syntax.
By what power do we choose what to say, or what we say spontaneously without reflection. And what the hell is reflection, contemplation, consideration, meditation, that is, how the hell does it all work? I don’t know.
I used to think there is a hand in my head, dipping into the sea of words, pulling up the right one and dropping it into a sentence. But of course, this image is flawed in so many ways that I gave it up when I was 11 and pretty much stopped caring abut the whole thing. Instead, I started collecting baseball cards.
But then, I met this guy in a bar who told me that “words are beads of desire that we string on necklaces of hope.” That was two weeks ago and I still don’t get it, but I like it. I don’t know why I like it. I guess, despite any particular meaning we conjure, I guess the bead-thing aptly catches the underlying motive of all talk: hope and desire. Whether it is two scientists arguing over the composition of Mars’s surface, or a teen mother talking her baby’s father about what they’re going to do next. Hope and desire.
I went back to the bar to find the guy who had told the saying to me. I wanted more.
I asked the bartender if he knew where the guy was I was talking to a couple of weeks ago. The bartender said he was sitting right where I was sitting drinking a beer last night when he vanished. The bartender thought he had gone crazy, had his head examined that morning and assured me he was not crazy, that it had actually happened. I believed him. I didn’t know what to say, so I didn’t say anything. I went home.
Definition courtesy of “Silva Rhetoricae” (rhetoric.byu.edu).
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