Existential Slang

The gang made forays into the gardens of old maids or went down to the castle and fought a battle on the shaggy weed grown rocks coming home after it weary stragglers with the stale ours of the foreshore in their nostrils and the rank oils of the seawrack upon their hands and in their hair.” From, A portrait of an Artist as a Young Man, James Joyce

Seawrack- Material cast ashore, especially seaweed.

I think that if we where all able to remember our childhoods honestly we would remember them as Joyce remembers his.

I have many early memories of visiting my grandparents when I was a little girl. They lived on the beach. Some very detailed memories and some a more vague. I remember my grandmother knitting, and her clock on the kitchen wall that had birds in the place of numbers. They where all different colors, and they would cocoo and tweet and twitter on the hour each hour.

There was a collection of bird figurines on top of the book case next to the radio, and the radio was always playing opera because my grandmother used to sing opera and she loved it very much. The bookshelf was not very tall, but I remember pulling a chair over so that I could stand on it and see the little birds on the top. I liked it when you where close to the radio because the music was loud and dramatic.

Once my grandpa saw me looking a book that I had taken from the book case and he told me that I should keep it so I did.

It was an 1912 hardcover edition of treasure island and I still have it.

He used to call me rabbit, he called all of us kids rabbit.

When I was older my grandma was tiered and spent most of her time in her chair

She would look out on puget sound, and the deck, and the bird feeders there

Which sounds nice I suppose, but there was never opera then. Because no one liked it but her, and she was to weak to walk to the radio. I remember turning it on once because I missed the sound. My aunt came by as soon as I walked away and turned it off again. I think my grandma missed the sound too. The next time I turned it on the station had been changed, it was just static.

The sound of the opera and the smell of the beach are my most vivid memories. It was a rocky beach at my grandparents so there was always all kinds of crabs, and shells, and flotsam, and jetsam to sort through, which is a fascinating thing for a child and should be.

My dad read me treasure Island as a kid, before my grandpa gave me the book. Years later I fell in love with a boy and I read treasure island out lout to him while we where driving cross country and living in the car. He loved the book but he got impatient with all the time I spent looking at the tide pools on the beach. I never want to read to the story again, because I don’t know if it is possible to be as happy as you are when you are a child, or when you are in love. I think Treasure Island might just make me sad now, but I still like tide pools.

A couple of years ago a woman walked into my work and she was wearing the same perfume that my grandmother used to wear. I wanted to ask her what it was, but by the time I gathered the courage she was gone. I never forgave myself for that.

There was a laundry shoot in my grandparents the bathroom that went to the basement and I always used to throw things down it so that gather them from the basket downstairs. That was before I was told not to go down the stairs because they where too steep and I always did what I was told as a little girl. I used to lock myself in the bathroom. I would try on my grandmothers lipstick and clip on earrings that hung from a plastic rack there. I never told anyone because I didn’t want to be told not to do that too, I knew grandma wouldn’t mind. There was a little box shaped like a shell where she kept her wedding ring. I would try that on too and push my fingers tight together to keep it from sliding off. Then I would pose in front of the mirror with my hand sitting under my chin and my pink lips. I tried to put it on again as a teenager. The ring was too small for me then.

Long after she was gone, I bought a box just like it I had found in the jewelry case at Value Village. In it I keep a puzzle ring that I got during our family trip to Yellowstone, and a pair of peridot earrings an old boyfriend bought me for my birthday. There is also a pair of vintage pearl earrings my aunt Rebecca gave to me before she married my uncle Bill, she used to be an opera singer just like grandma only she was in New York at the time, and someday I will go to New York too and be a writer. These odds and ends are invariably intertwined with dreams and memories, its funny the ways in which your stuff defines you. The memories might be gone without the stuff, just like I can’t remember the smell of my grandmas perfume now. Then the stuff and memories and dreams turn up again in the most bizarre and improbable places, like the jewelry case at value village. Tangible material cast ashore into this reality by a sea of impalpable, cognitive knowing. The seawrak of reality.

Let me begin by saying, that I am an absolute snob when it comes to reading. I make an effort to spend time with classics and avoid pop fiction like the plague. There are a few reasons why. First of all, reading is a lot of work! I love storytelling, I love literature, I love journalism, but I am a slow slow reader, and I don’t have any special affection for reading. Reading is a necessary medium for a special kind of storytelling, nothing more. Loving a painting, does not mean also loving paint. Who has the time or patience to be reading for mindless entertainment value, when they could be reading pieces that challenge, move, and expand ones worldview. If you should crave the superficial drama of a soap opera, you don’t need to read Game of Thrones. Just watch a soap opera and it will take way less of your time. 

Second, I don’t need to read anything that I don’t already know will be good before I read it. Just walk into a bookstore and you will be overwhelmed by the amount of published writing available. There is no way that a slow reader like me can read all of it. So why settle for average stories when you can have quality. Not to say that there is not an abundance of quality writing by modern or obscure authors, but the classics are classics for a reason, and there IS an abundance of exceptionally mediocre writing by modern and obscure authors.  

Third, not every classic has to read like Moby Dick. 

I have been trying to get into this 15,00 page thing by a Japanese author that I borrowed from a friend (who never read it). About 200 pages into it the most interesting thing it has to offer are some literary references to 1984. I wanted a break from it so today I stopped by Henderson’s and bought myself a Used copy of Slaughter House Five, which I have never read before, for $2.50. I do know that this book is an easy read because it is on just about every high school reading list in America, its a pretty accessible piece of literature. Probably the same reading level as the Japanese novel I mentioned. In any case Slaughter House Five came with me to the coffee shop today, here is an excerpt from the first chapter.

“I looked through the Gideon Bible in my motel room for tales of great destruction. The sun was risen upon the earth when the lot entered Zo-ar, I read. Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of Heaven; and overthrew those cities and all the plain, and all the inhabitants of these cities, and that which grew upon the ground. 

So it goes. 

Those where vial people in both those cities, as is well known. The world was better off without them. 

And Lot’s wife, of course, was told not to look back where all those people and their homes had been. But she did look back, and I love her for that, because it was so human.

So she was turned into a pillar of salt, so it goes

People aren’t supposed to look back. Im certainly not going to do it anymore.

I have finished my war book now, the next one I write is going to be fun

This one is a failure, and had to be, since it was written by a pillar of salt.”

WOW.

 Basically Vonnegut calls himself out for living in the past, sums up every personal conflict I have ever had with the bible, and pulls a massive metaphor out of the bedside drawer of his motel room, all this and more within a few tiny sentences, and all by the end of the first chapter. And he renders it in such a way that you want to read it over and over and over and over again, even if you never get past chapter one, because it is oh so real, and oh so refreshing. Best of all, he doesn’t need 1,500 pages of adjectives and a fancy book cover to say it. Its just there. For anyone to pick up and read.

This brings me to the word I have chosen, Brimstone.

Brimstone

1. Sulfur 

Oh is that all? 

I always thought the connotation of brimstone to be a painful and horrifying of the fire and brimstone and eternal burn in hell variety. Sulfur just sounds like an eggy smell. Maybe all along they just meant that hell is not a preferable place to go simply for the fact that it smells like farts. I suppose sulfur also burns. Hell sounds like such a terrible place, I would rather keep the description light with the fart jokes. 

I wonder if Lot’s wife died when she turned into a pillar of salt. I mean did she die so her soul could go to heaven or hell? Or was her soul crystalized inside the pillar, in two hundred billion tiny molecular granules of salt? Perhaps Lot’s wife and her salt soul are still there, playing the part of a tourist photo op. Or she may have been misplaced at some point. She may have been chipped apart and harvested as a commodity and bleached and distributed onto a gazillion different golden burger king french fires, upon which she is being frozen for an undefined period. Until she enters the real hell of the burning deep fat frier, and is eaten little by little, by some unknowing Philosophy professor on the way to his kids soccer game, and a million other JudeaChristian descendants, that love french fries too.

I think that if there is anyone in the bible that I could identify with, its probably her. Or maybe I just feel that because Vonnegut feels that, and that is why he is a wonderful storyteller. 

Sylvan

1. Of or charicteristic of the woods
2. living or found in the woods 
3. wooded 

“Forty five years ago the city of Ballarat was a sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely.” from Following the Equator, Mark Twain 

Words mimic and create new realities. This is the thing about reading that moves me. “A sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden and as lovely.” I have visited this place before. This string of words slips though my minds eye like thread through the eye of needle, and I am taken there again. To a long lost memory stored in some bundle of neurons, in forgotten wrinkle of my brain. Its on the edge of an alpine lake, in the sylvan mountainous wilderness. The water is true blue, as pure and as true as the eyes of a newborn, as the silk garb of a Dauphin, as the honest and humble Forget Me Not. Tiny mountain trout slip beneath the glass surface like shadows. I am weightless. Bare feet trading over the velvet pine needles of five thousand uninhabitable winter seasons. Tall evergreens bend overhead, and a lone ray of yellow sunshine bends over the summit of a glacier. I see a single bird dash though the golden bath. It holds the a corona of light in its feathers for a fleeting second, and everything is illuminated. In this moment I am Adam. Before woman. Before sin. Before knowledge. There is only god, and me, and the beauty of the world. In a sylvan solitude as quiet as Eden, and as lovely.  

The sentence in the quote is a retrospective description of the mining town Ballarat in Australia. Twain later goes on to depict the atrocities brought upon the little town by a gold rush.

“That grassy and leafy paradise at Ballarat was soon ripped open, and lacerated and scarified and gutted, in the feverish search for its hidden riches. There is nothing like surface mining to snatch the graces and beauties and benignities out of a paradise and make and odious and repulsive spectacle out of it.”

He had seen the two ends of a great wheat operation—a battle between Bear and Bull. The stories (subesquently published in the city’s press) of Truslow’s countermove in selling Hornung his own wheat, supplied the unseen section. The farmer—he who raised the wheat—was ruined upon one hand; the working man—he who consumed it—was ruined upon the other. But between the two, the great operators, who never saw the wheat they traded in, bought and sold the world’s food, gambled in the nourishment of entire nations, practiced their tricks, their chicanery and oblique shift “deals,” were reconciled in their differences, and went on through their appointed way, jovial, contented, enthroned, and unassailable.

From the short story ‘A Deal in Wheat’ by Frank Norris 

Chicanery 

1. Deception by trickery
2. A trick: subterfuge 

Subterfuge 

1. A deceptive stratagem or device 
2. Deception by artifice so as to conceal, evade, or escape

Artifice 

1. An artful device or stratagem 
2. Subtle but base deception: Trickery 
3. Cleverness: Ingenuity 

Stratagem 

1. A military move intended to deceive or surprise an enemy 
2. A deception 

I used to care a lot about the news but have taken less and less interest of late. I am tiered of hearing on the news about how I am being tricked, or worse, being tricked by the news itself. Couple this with the obnoxious fact that reporting is ever sensationalized for the shock values that accompanies good ratings. There is an election happening and I haven’t been so disinterested and uninformed since 1996 when I was 8 years old. I feel pretty guilty, but whats the point in fretting? I have as much say in this election as a farmer does about the stock exchange. I already know how I am voting,  and it unlikely that I will sway the vote of any person that I come in contact with. Even if was more well versed in the electoral stratagem, my options wouldn’t expand. Might as well check out and enjoy my life in the spite of all the chicanery going on in the news and the election.  

It is not an unrealistic observation that many people in this world think acts of chicanery beyond them. The common man assumes himself to be an upstanding and respectful man, a man that does not like to be cheated, and who never cheats his fellow man for personal gain. Furthermore it is easy for this man to accept immense volumes of chicanery in others. In ‘A Deal in Wheat’ the chicanery is immoral, intentional and blatant. It spans several social classes during a prolonged period in time. I think that chicanery is a more innate and prevalent quality, its based on instinct and may happen consciously or subconsciously in  long term elaborate plans or simple day to day living. Every time you do something nice for someone, its chicanery. You aren’t doing it for them, you are doing it because it makes you feel good about you. Its a trick, a stratagem, to make people like you, because you have emotional and love needs that must be met at any cost. It does not do me any good to criticize the shortcomings of political candidates or my fellow man. If I was born into the same life at the same time, would I not do the same? We are each human, even the most pious and hardworking of us all, even the wheat farmer. 

Definitions courtesy of Webster’s II New Riverside University Dictionary 

Cappuccino 

Pronounced Kahp-poot-chee-naw.

Two thousand years ago, a profit was born that changed all of human history. Maybe you heard of him, his name was Jesus. By and by, an organization based on his teachings came to be the most powerful group on the earth, the Roman Catholic Church. 

In 1181 a wealthy merchant gave birth to a son. As an adult, the son sought a more spiritual life. After a life changing pilgrimage to Rome, the man renounced all of his worldly possessions and became a monk. He founded three religious orders based on his spiritual insights. (One of these was The Order of St. Clair, of The Sound of Music fame). Later in life the man became the first person to bear stigmata, the mark of the passion of Jesus Christ. In 1228, two years after his death, the Catholic Church declared him the patron St. Francis of Assisi.

Three hundred years later, there was friar named Matteo de Bascio that was a follower of the St. Francis order. Bascio recognized the luxury that he was afforded as a monk, and knew that was drastically removed from St. Francis’ chosen life of poverty. Bascio left the order with a group of followers that sought to reform their spiritual practice by lending it to a more minimal lifestyle. At that time in italy, the practice of wearing a hood, or cappuccio, was common amongst hermits and beggars. Members of the order adopted the practice and thus the name, Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. 

Another 381 years go by. In 1901, one Luigi Bezzera became the first to patent a new machine that performed high pressure coffee brewing process in Italy. The beverage gained popularity when the patent was bought by another party that had the money and marketing resources to back up its production. By the 1940s, the drink was gaining popularity world wide, including some variations that included combinations of sugar and milk. Heating of the milk with steam at such intense pressure causes it to foam and the sugars in the milk to metabolize, giving it a sweet flavor and light silky texture. Some Italian culinary master and poetic genius of the 1940s, noted the brown color these two elements made when combined and its semblance to the hoods of the Order of Friars Minor Capuchin, thereby dubbing it ‘Cappuccino’. 

Sixty years later, an executive walks into a shop on a busy street corner, on the bottom floor of a sixty story building, in a city a whole hemisphere away from Italy. He is wearing a black suit and carries an expensive leather case of documents. The case crafted by hand, in the fashion of a traditional Florentine bag, the genuine likes of which he has never seen or heard of before. He is greeted by a bleached smile with a green apron. She is plain, and unsure, and she is not old, but neither is she young. She takes the bus to work, and spends her afternoons and evenings doing costuming for the ballet company. 

He orders, a Cappuccino. And in the time between leaving his lips, and reaching her ears, the vibration of the sound waves in the air, string an invisible thread through time and space. In that sliver of a moment it weaves a tapestry of cumulative existence between them all. They are all connected. And they are all the same, Jesus, and St. Francis, and Matteo de Bascio, and the beggar in his brown hood, and the sisters of St. Clair, and the Von Trap Family Singers, and Luigi Bezzera, and his modern steam powered machine, and the anonymous Italian barista of 1948, and the executive in the black suit, and man in India that made the leather bag, and the farmer in Wisconsin that calved the dairy cow, and the worker that harvested the coffee in Guatemala, and the ballet company dancers and musicians, and patrons at the Starbucks on the corner. And as the opera house fills with applause, and the principle dancer takes her final bow, in her dazzling tutu, that the bleached smile made by hand, with lace from Italy, the curtain falls, while another unknown person, in another time zone, is stopping at an unknown cafe, on their way home from church, to greet a barista in another language. And order a cappuccino.

tran·sub·stan·ti·ate  

verb (used with object), tran·sub·stan·ti·at·ed, tran·sub·stan·ti·at·ing.

1.

to change from one substance into another; transmute.

2.

Theology . to change (the bread and wine) into the body and blood of Christ in the Eucharist.

 Barbara Kingsolver’s essay A fist in the Eye of God, speaks about the evils of bioengineering and the loss of genetic diversity in agriculture. ”I was trained as a biologist and I can appreciate the challenge and the technical mastery involved in isolating, understanding, and manipulating genes. I can think of fascinating things I’d like to do as a genetic engineer. But I only have to stand still for a minute and watch the outcome of thirty million years worth of hummingbird evolution transubstantiated before my eyes into a nest and egg to get knocked down to size. I have held in my hand the germ of a plant engineered to grow, yield its crop, and murder its embryos, and there I glimpsed the malevolence that can lie in the heart of a profiteering enterprise.” From, A Fist in the Eye of God, Barbara Kingsolver. 

We as a species systematically deny other beings the right to a productive and bountiful existence, and in turn a productive and bountiful existence will be one day be unavailable to man kind. I have decided not to have any children, and often my conviction is met by others with skepticism and hopeful doubt. We eat crops that we have bred to kill their own embryos, so what makes a human embryo any more sacred? If this is the legacy of humanity, then my linage is bound to have little great or good to contribute, and even less great and good to behold. I am thankful for my life, but I live it in a world that leaves me perpetually hungry for a beauty that has been replaced by ad campaigns and wifi networks, and a hand-to minimum wage-to gm food-to mouth existence. I will not be responsible for a life that will be denied that beauty, or that may be so disconnected from it as to never know what they have lost. 

A long time ago my family had a salt water fish tank. As a kid I would sit in front of it for long periods of time and watch it like a TV. We would pick up all our supplies for it at the same pet store, and it was always a pleasure to go and look at the selection of fish. Most tropical fish in tanks are kidnapped from wild reefs. Those that aren’t, are bred in mass at fish farms. Sometimes you can tell that fish has come from a farm because of its inexplicable and erratic behavior. As a young girl I remember watching a school of clown fish at the store, one of which was repeatedly swimming full speed into the wall of the tank, his head battered into a gummy pulp. 

The day I had seen the clown fish I vowed to never own a fish tank again. How tragic, unnecessary, vein, and pathetic it seemed to condense thirty million years of evolution in a 75 gallon tank. The incident had instilled in me my first very deep seated doubt in humanity. I have sense been to the tropical reefs of West Australia and seen the beautiful biodynamic systems of gods ocean working in their wholesome glory. But the worlds oceans are dying, and someday, perhaps in the not so distant future, the coral reefs will have been completely transubstantiated into ocean dead zones and tourist baths. There will no longer be any reef to replicate in our living rooms, rather the fish tank will become an incomplete testament to the wonder of what once was.

Definitions courtesy of dictionary.com

Rec on dite

adj

1) Hidden from sight : concealed

This is a satisfying word to say, recondite! My first impulse would be to apply it to a rigid sort of context.The recondite details of politics can be confusing for voters. Ostensively the word sounds quite formal and unpoetic, but its connotation is much broader.

2) Difficult or impossible for one of ordinary understanding or knowledge to comprehend : Deep

 “An African native forest is a mysterious region. You ride into the depths of an old tapestry, in places faded and in others darkened with age, but marvelously rich in green shades. You cannot see the sky at all in there, but the sunlight plays in many strange ways, falling through the foliage. The grey fungus, like long drooping beards, on the trees, and the creepers hanging down everywhere, give a recondite air to the native forest.”- From Out of Africa, Isak Dinesen

3) Of, relating to, or dealing with something little known or obscure <recondite fact about the origin of the holiday>

The word in and of itself is recondite in this context. I don’t think I have ever heard someone use it before actually. I do however know a History major, who recently informed me that there is a real place called Hard Times, Mississippi, which had something to do with the battle of Vicksburg. People that poses historical knowledge in this kind of detail are obscure indeed. With a little more research I discovered that the place Hard Times is also mentioned in the opening line of a Steve Wonder song. My assumption would be that this piece of trivia is considerably less recondite than the former. 

Definitions courtesy of Merriam Webster 

vig·il

a noun

1. A period of keeping awake during the time usually spent asleep, esp. to keep watch or pray.

In the Moonless misty night, with my pipe alight,

I am sitting by the camp fire’s fading cheer;

Oh, the dew is falling chill on the dim, deer-haunted hill,

And the breakers in the bay are moaning drear. 

The toilful hours are sped, the boys are long abed

And I alone, a weary vigil keep

In the sightless, sullen sky can hear the night-hawk cry

And the frogs in frenzied chorus from the creek

-The Logger, by Robert Service.

Im not sure where the house is exactly, but some abode on my block is the meeting place for a band of medieval minstrels a few nights a week. They always sound like they are hosting a party for Robin Hood and his merry men. I lay velvet darkness of my tiny bed room with my window propped open. The smell of weed from the neighbors, and sound of flutes float in with the fresh air.

It is nice to imagine that some ill manicured back yard in this neighborhood of single homes, is a magical gateway to sherwood forest. That somehow one of those picket fences contained an entire wilderness, like wardrobe might contain a kingdom. I perhaps some night would sleepwalk there to find the musicians round the fire in tights, drinking mead, playing their mandolins, and welcoming me with laughter. I would convince one of them to trade clothes with me so I could start wearing them when I run errands. Everyone would think I was some sort thespian freak but I wouldn’t care. I would bring the minstrels donuts, read them my favorite novels, show them the MLK speech on my smart phone. They would tell me stories, show me some medieval dancing, teach me to cook over an open fire. When they went to sleep I would stay awake to keep watch, and enjoy the peace of a simpler world. In the moonless misty night, with my pipe alight. 

I was sad tonight when the band stopped playing. The world started turning again and the music was replaced by the echos of the freeway. Exhaustion induces delirium. Its nice to forgetting to try to forget your troubles for a moment. Darkness is transcendent, the quiet of the night soaks over the soul and soothes like the salt water of a remote paradise. Awake in a time of sleeping with the lights off and the fresh air drifting in. And I alone, a troubled vigil keep.

You know this word, but sometimes its important to revisit what we think we know. Often you there is something new available for us in what we have learned already. Just as a warning, Im about to spray some self -involved estrogen up in here, so if that doesn’t interest you read no further. 

 sol·i·tar·y  

adj.

1. Existing, living, or going without others; alone: a solitary traveler.

2. Happening, done, or made alone: a solitary evening; solitary pursuits such as reading and sewing.

3. Remote from civilization; secluded: a solitary retreat.

4. Having no companions; lonesome or lonely.

5. Zoology Living alone or in pairs only: solitary wasps; solitary sparrows.

6. Single and set apart from others: a solitary instance of cowardice.

I am living alone for the first time. Maybe I will know how I like it when I look back on it a few years from now, but right now its a mystery. 

I am a woman in my mid-twenties, as are some of my closest friends. For women at this age, dating and marriage and babies and single-hood cumulate into this really dark threatening cloud that the master puppeteer of society is dangling over your head at all times. It just lets loose with the thundering downpour to ruin a good hair day, whenever the hormones get in gear, or so and so never calls, or whoever is gushing about their dream wedding/baby/husband/suburban home, to whatever ear is closest to their mouth. Whether you are championing your single-hood, just dating for a good time, or looking to settle down, somehow its always feels like you are going about it it all wrong. This problem in some form or other seems to be down-poring on a few really important people in my life. Before I can offer any advice of substance, I need to ask myself, if you where able to seal all those crazy expectations about relationships in a shoebox and bury them, what would be left over?  Frankly, sweep all that shit aside, who are you? 

I am solitary. I wake up at 6. I walk around my apartment naked. I play embarrassingly rudimentary versions of Camp-town ladies on my banjo. I listen to Radiohead songs on repeat. I spend hours alone in thrift stores. I watch surf movies and silent films, and I dress up to take myself to the cinema. I drink black coffee. I practice my cursive. I procrastinate about homework, and knit, and fantasize about exotic places, and stretch, and roller-skate, and stand on my head, and sing Cat Stevens songs in the shower, and constantly battle with myself to keep my room clean, and sometimes I think about men. And more and more often, I do not. And even on the days that I hate it, it is a good life. And it is clean, and it imperfect, and it is true to who and what I am at this point in eternity, in the deepest and most tangible sense that I, as a 20 something, confused, transient, ambitious and limitless and utterly mediocre nobody, can comprehend.   

Being solitary is being alone well: being alone luxuriously immersed in doings of your own choice, aware of the fullness of your won presence rather than of the absence of others. Because solitude is an achievement. - Alice Koller 

At some point each one of us has to be solitary. Even if you marry your first love, and live your whole life together, one person will die first and the other will be left alone. When it comes to relationships, most people have faced rejection and failure. Rejection and failure almost always result in a lot of chaos and pain. Solitude will never reject you. Solitude will never tell you to start your homework, to save your money, to put some clothes on, to shut up when you practice your banjo. It will patiently wait until you are ready to reveal the truth to yourself, and then it will amplify it to a capacity that you can’t ignore. It will unfailingly step aside and make room for the things that reflect truth in your world. Let the reflection blind you, or bask in the light. 

Recommended reading for further reflection: Solitude, From Walden. By Henry David Thoreau 

Definitions courtesy of thefreedictionary.com