You notice things. When you read and when you travel, you notice things.
Sometimes you even notice very specific words. The word twanged, for instance, recently caught you eye while you were on a land tour in Greece. That word makes you think of the strange sounds that a screen door can make. And that screen door came to mind as you were walking down one of those white bleached streets that are so familiar to any one who has dreamed of traveling to the ancient islands. Mostly, you think of the screen door at your grandmother’s house, when you hear that twang of a screen door opens, but now that you have completed one of the greatest vacation packages ever, you will add that street in Greece to your memories as well. Now there is one more place that will create a list of the many things that you will notice.
In your furtherest memory, the screen door twanging open announced your grandmother coming to the backyard when you, your sister, and your cousins were rehearsing a performance on the storm cellar door. That “twangy” door also ripped up the back of your heels if I let it slam shut on the back of your foot, but it is still a great memory.
Castle Vacation Tours Are Bucket List Items for Many
sometimes you also notice words because they sound like poems. “He lobbed him a lollipop and the runt got lucky and poled it.” You love the combination of lobbed and lollipop. So much so that it makes you want to be more poetic when you pontificate. You want to every now and then try to use assonance, when a writer intentionally used words with syllables that sound similar. In the lollipop sentence, the author could have simply said, “threw him the ball,” but he did not. He provided a near poem in a four-word phrase. You want to write like that! Not all of the time, but occasionally so the reader really notices.
Perhaps this love of how words sound is one of the reasons that you wanted to convince your family to tour Ireland. You have been reading the verse of Beckett and Years for years, and you wanted to tour the lands that they so often wrote of. Fortunately, your family is up for adventure and it is easy to convince them to allow you to select a few of your family vacation destinations. They seem to have noticed themselves that you are a noticed of interesting things.
You recently noticed the following sentence in one of your favorite young adult books by Jerry Spinelli: “The phantom Samaritan stuck the book between his teeth, crouched down, hoisted Arnold Jones’s limp carcass over his shoulder.” This might be the most powerful word that you have read in the latest books that you have enjoyed. When you read the word Samaritan you think of a story you have read or heard many times at church. From the town of Samaria, in the story you know there was only one good person who was brave enough to stop and help someone who was in a dangerous place. You also like how Spinelli used the word phantom, instead of legend or kid, in this particular sentence. Maniac really is a phantom. He moves so quickly people are not really sure that they saw him or not.
That phantom feeling is one you experienced many times when you were traveling through Ireland. Catholicism remains the dominant religion in Ireland at 84%, so you know that these people an ocean away from your home also know about the Samaritan, and they also likely know of phantoms. The phantoms that are featured on Ireland castle tours. The tour guides explain that there is a possibility that there are too many medieval Irish Castles to count. In fact, some guides put the number at more than 30,000 castles and castle ruins dotting the Irish landscape.
Dotting. That is another noticeable word. A word that helps you recall the sheep on the hillside, the castles in the distance, and your daughters running walking along a field of lavender. Yes, you really do notice words. Even when you travel.
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