Category Archives: A words

Azure

Azure: (adj) bright blue in color, like a cloudless sky.

Upon looking at today’s word, I immediately knew it had something to do with blue.dictionary with letter A

I knew this because I took two years of high school Spanish. During those lessons, I discovered that “azul” is the Spanish word for” blue.”

I suppose I should feel grateful; gratitude should pour from me because I have some understanding of the terminology of another language.

And the truth is, if I landed in Mexico City, I could share a Spanish greeting of “good day, good afternoon or good evening,” ask them where the local library was or how many pencils they possessed. I also could count from 1 to 30.

If I listened in on a conversation, I could probably identify every forty-third word.

I suppose if I were to decide to pick up the Spanish language for real, my basic rudimentary training might stir some memory cells which have escaped behind my mental burrito.

But aside from that, possessing a little bit of knowledge truly is a dangerous thing. It’s similar to individuals who, when asked if they speak Spanish, hold up their thumb and index finger about an inch apart and reply, with a lame accent, “Poco.”

Which, by the way, means “a little.”

There you go.

I speak a little Spanish … which truly is the definition of a little bit of nothing.

 

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Aye

Aye: (exclam) an exclamation said to express assent; yes.

It often baffles me.dictionary with letter A

Why do some people like to find the most difficult way to do things?

Maybe it’s my natural lazy nature. but I think taking just a few extra minutes to decide on the easiest and most logical way to accomplish your deeds is well worth the time.

I have no allegiance to any form of religion or politics. In both cases, I pursue common sense.

So when I find myself, on rare occasions, in meetings where Parliamentary Procedure is being honored as the correct way to conduct business, I am initially amused but ultimately aggravated.

As you well know, in the process of trying to follow this archaic system, arguments often break out over points of order. Soon it becomes more important whether Jim or Sally have chosen the right moment to begin discussion than the actual topic on which the vote is being taken.

So when I see the word “aye” it reminds me of that stuffy question posed: All those in favor say “aye.” All those opposed, “nay.”

  • I never say “aye” in my regular life.
  • I am also unaccustomed to “nay.”

So call me unconventional, or perhaps a renegade–but I do not like to do things, even for ten minutes, that have absolutely nothing to do with my functioning life. I find them them silly and annoying. So these are the three phrases that I avoid religiously:

  • “Please repeat after me.”
  • “Is there a second to that motion?”
  • Point of order.”

Perhaps, at the root of my soul, is an anarchist or a revolutionary.

I’m not sure.

But Parliamentary Procedure belongs in Parliament, which is part of those nasty English that we fought so hard to get away from.

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Ayatollah

Ayatollah: (n) a Shiite religious leader in Iran.

I would like to broaden the definition of “asshole.”dictionary with letter A

It’s not that I want to use the word more. You can feel free to change the term if you so desire.

I believe an asshole is anyone who promotes his or her peculiarity as making them better than other people.

Whenever I see pictures of clerics of all religions, wearing their costumes and establishing their dominance through facial hair, robes and funny hats, the first thought that comes to my mind is “asshole”–especially when they begin to espouse that their particular garb and gab is supreme.

Here’s what I think: if you need a costume to promote your ideas and it’s not Halloween, you are officially an asshole.

Because my understanding is that the great men of history, who truly had something important to say, were very careful to blend in with the masses, using a common head and a common thread instead of standing afar off and yelling extreme disapproval at the top of their lungs.

So to all the priests, preachers, mullahs, ayatollahs and dollies who apparently breed llamas, I pronounce you irrelevant.

You will remain irrelevant as long as you insist that you have come to save the world, which generally speaking … you choose to condemn.

 

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Axle

Axle: (n) a rod or spindle (either fixed or rotating) passing through the center of a wheel or group of wheels.dictionary with letter A

If I weren’t stupid, I would have no stories to tell. Smart people have a list of accomplishments instead of tales of mayhem.

I was a mere 24 years old and driving along in an airport limousine that looked like it should have been used in a 1940 Clark Gable movie. It had six seats in it, dual air conditioning units, and even had a metal cage in the rear to protect the luggage.

It was the most unpredictable vehicle I have ever driven.

First and foremost, you could not drive over 55 miles per hour because of some sort of “governor” they had placed on the engine.

But I was grateful to have it so that my singing group could travel across the country and annoy people with our increasing prowess.

One night as we were leaving Jacksonville, Florida, we noticed that the back passenger-side wheel was wobbling a bit. These are things a normal adult would be concerned about, but not a 24-year-old vagabond.

To counteract the wobbly wheel, I tried to drive faster. Suddenly I looked in my rear-view mirror and noticed that the back of the limousine was lighting up.

This seemed unusual.

So I pulled over and discovered that the rear of the vehicle was on fire.

I did have enough mechanical understanding to recognize that this fire was very near the gas tank, so I got the members of the group out, and we ran about a hundred yards away and watched it burn.

I thought about doing something brave, like taking off my shirt and beating out the flames, or trying to acquire some water from a nearby ditch to extinguish the blaze–but I didn’t.

We watched it like it was the latest release from Hollywood.

“Hmmm,” I thought. “The axle of my limousine is on fire…”

This was the end of my reasoning.

Fortunately for us, a truck driver arrived with a fire extinguisher and put out the flames as we gradually, but bravely, inched forward.

He was also kind enough to take his “breaker-breaker” radio and get us a tow truck.

The whole back axle was destroyed.

I guess someone felt sorry for us, and the man who worked on the vehicle replaced the whole axle, put on a new tire and only charged us $150. We even found a family to stay with while it was being repaired.

It was a remarkable event.

But still, every time I hear the word “axle,” I have the instinct to run like a little schoolgirl.

 

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Axis

Axis: (n) a line about which a body rotates.

What makes the world go ’round?dictionary with letter A

I’ve heard rumor that it’s love. Some people like to say that. It’s a safe statement, since nobody really has an adequate definition for love.

I can tell you what has made my life roll better and revolve as it evolves: finally coming to a conclusion that the axis of purity is, “no one is better than anyone else.”

And my God, I am tempted to be prejudiced.

But it leads to all sorts of evil. I believe we had a president who even referred to it as the “axis of evil.”

For instance, we have politicians who argue that raising the minimum wage might enable some people to make a living from their present job, but it would cause suffering to their bosses, and threaten the bottom line.

Whether we like it or not, or whatever your political persuasion is, that thinking places you in the “axis of evil.”

You have decided that this group of people over here–because they’re employees–are not as good as this group of people over there–because they are employers.

We should be looking for a compromise. How can we make sure the employee gets his or her due and still guarantee a decent profit for the employer? But we aren’t going to do that.

So we develop another axis of evil: “Those people are not as good because they don’t have enough education. If they had education, they could be employers instead of employees” (even though there is nobody who can employ without finding people who are employable.)

At the core–or at the axis–of the truth, is the notion that we need each other.

If the employer and the employee found themselves stranded on a desert island, such relegation would become irrelevant. The one who found the water and brought it to camp would be no better than the individual who collected the coconuts.

If they developed any kind of caste system, they would either die of starvation and thirst, or kill one another.

Such foolishness is only permitted in a society which has been granted the blessing of plenty.

As there are no atheists in the foxhole…there are no bigots in the breadline.

 

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Axiom

Axiom: (n) a statement or proposition that is regarded as being established, accepted, or self-evidently true.dictionary with letter A

Sometimes I just sit and listen to the conversation of the social mob. It is the general attitude of the status quo, containing the axioms or the ideas which are spoken aloud, which are universally accepted.

I think there are four of them dinging around the posts of our social media:

  1. We’re all different.

This particular thought is uttered almost like a prayer.

  • Our differences have never really helped us.
  • Our differences are not as evident as we make them out to be.
  • And the fear of being similar to other human beings is the seed of arrogance.
  1. All that matter is that you do your best.

Really? Somewhere along the line, a job or mission needs to be accomplished. Having 30 people fall short of the goal does not put us any closer to completion.

Actually, the axiom should be, “The best thing you can do for others is to know what your best is, and warn them.”

  1. Men and women don’t get along very well.

It’s a simple matter of mathematics that if 50% of the population is at war with the other 50%, then the planet will be in total disarray.

The truth is, men and women have gotten along for tens of thousands of years, and every time we’ve tried to separate them into different species, we’ve created confusion, not revelation.

  1. Our lives have a plan and we are learning our destiny.

It reminds me of the guy who sat in a cubicle thinking he was at a bus stop waiting for transportation. He stayed there for three hours. Finally someone asked hin what he was doing.

“I’m waiting for a bus.”

The passerby responded, “Well, you won’t catch it here. This is just an old abandoned coffee shop.”

Life is meant to be lived at your pace, with your ideas and your passion. Nobody is sitting in heaven planning your future and nobody on earth really cares that much.

As you can see, if the axiom is inaccurate, the end result is always frustration.

 

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Axe

Axe: (n) a hand tool with one side of its head forged and sharpened to a cutting edge

It has been my discovery that trying to tell stories about my physical prowess always leaves the hearers a little suspicious.dictionary with letter A

Even though this tends to offend me, I have to be honest and say that when I hear others explain to me how strong they are or how powerful they perceive themselves to be, I am torn between laughing out loud and finding a quick way to exit.

Such was my experience with the axe.

When I was a kid, my dad grew some pine trees which we eventually used as Christmas trees for our house, since there weren’t enough of them to ever constitute a good cord of wood.

So it fell my lot one season to go out and chop down the Christmas tree and bring it back to the house.

I was thrilled (as most fools are on the way to the errand).

I had never wielded an axe. Matter of fact, I was quite pleased that I knew using an axe involved wielding.

So when I arrived next to the pine I had selected, I looked at it and noticed that the trunk was really only about five or six inches across. How hard could this be?

Now, I do not know whether the bottom of my pine was made of steel, or if my axe was not made of actual metal–but I must have hacked at that thing for a good twenty-five minutes, never succeeding in hitting the same place twice.

So when it finally tumbled over (glory be to God) the trunk looked like a pencil that a beaver had chewed up.

I carried it back to the car and into the house, found some way to get it into the tree stand, feeling a great sense of accomplishment.

But I can tell you–for the next week and a half, I could not move my arm nor my shoulder, to such an extent that I missed a day of school, to lay in my bed commiserating over my axe fiasco.

So looking for an adequate summary for this tale, I will borrow a bit of wisdom from my African-American brothers and sisters:

I will never again “axe” for an axe.

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Awry

Awry: (adj & adv) away from the planned or expected course; amiss.

What we all are trying to avoid in our journey is the sensation of disappointment.dictionary with letter A

We can survive tragedy, mayhem, struggle, poverty and anything that falls from the sky as long as we did not have great expectation that it would ever happen.

Even though I know it is popular to have big dreams, huge goals, and make presumptuous statements about the success of our lives, nothing could be any more detrimental to us than to look at what has happened to us, assume that everything went totally awry, and for us to sit in a huge puddle of muddy disappointment.

So what’s the key? How can we avoid disappointment, which cripples our faith?

  1. Don’t have a goal–have a direction.

As you head off in that direction, goals will pop up which you can pursue. But when you assume that your goal has to be achieved, Mother Nature will be more than happy to pour water on your fire.

  1. Have at least three plans.

In other words, if this works, I can do this. But if I get this opportunity, then I can achieve this level. And if it all comes in, by the grace of God, we get the whole enchilada with cheese sauce.

  1. Keep in mind, mankind is watching.

More opportunities will come your way if you’re a good loser. Even though we insist that we admire the winner, we spend a lot of time watching the “trailers,” and what they do next.

  1. And finally, be grateful.

I know it sounds silly to be grateful for a fiasco or when your plans go awry, but most of the things in our lives which we now possess did not come to us as a whole.

They arrived in pieces and we puzzled them together.

Life by its very purpose is intended to create a situation where “the greatest laid plans of mice and men” go awry.

Mice run and hide in embarrassment.

But intelligent humans look for a way to use the surprises to create new dreams.

 

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Awoke

Awoke: (v) past of awake.dictionary with letter A

Just like the next guy sittin’ around waiting for a bus, I love a good story, especially if it’s sprinkled with a little mysticism and the possibility that there might actually be a God somewhere who gives a damn.

Because to be quite blunt with you, I do get tired of believing in things that don’t occasionally offer a dividend. If God wants my life, my repentance and sometimes my money, every once in a while He ought to show up and do a little two-step, letting me know that He’s still involved in the choreography.

I know that to some people, this may sound irreverent, but true irreverence is to continue to worship the irrelevant and insist that it’s meaningful.

So as a writer, I have, on occasion, felt divinely inspired to pen some thoughts which I felt came from a genesis other than my own heart, soul, mind and strength.

Yes, there have been those opportunities when I awoke from a dead sleep with a clarity of mind that could only be described as celestial, to grab pen and paper and write down a thought, a poem, a lyric or a paragraph which was flowing out of me like heavenly milk and honey instead of reluctant glue.

Now I will be honest. Sometimes, when I awoke again in the morning to arise from my bed, and I looked at the scribblings, they had the sentence structure of the Rubik’s Cube.

But there are those precious moments when the original inspiration is still so fresh on the paper that I fear the ink might smear.

So if I find our there is no God, I still feel I am better off by believing that every once in a while, when I awaken in the middle of the night to scrawl a thought or two… it was because God had become my alarm clock.

 

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Awning

Awning: (n) material stretched on a frame and used to keep the sun or rain off a storefront, window, doorway, or deck.

Years ago I bought a very large house.dictionary with letter A

I did so because I could–probably the worst reason for becoming a land baron.

The home I purchased was a gorgeous castle sitting high on a hill, snubbing its doorway to its lesser-constructed neighbors.

One of the features on the outside, above the windows were awnings–colorful, contrasting, and made of canvas.

The first time I saw them I thought they were a little bizarre. But the realtor convinced me they were quite the conversation piece and would someday assist in the resale of the house.

About a year after my purchase, these awnings became dreary and dull in color from the heat of the sun and elements pounding on them. It became obvious to everyone that they needed to be replaced.

I didn’t even question it.

I felt that my great revelation in the matter was that this time I would buy material for the awnings that matched the coloration of the house instead of contrasting.

God, I thought I was smart. Matter of fact, for a full two weeks I walked around bragging about my wisdom.

In pursuing these new awnings, I discovered they were very expensive. It didn’t matter–I was going to enact my interpretation of great awning display.

So after many weeks, many delays and many overages in cost, the new awnings were on my home.

As the man was fitting the last awning onto the final window, he explained that this particular material would only last about three years.

I nodded my head, portraying myself to be well-versed in the lifespan of the typical awning.

He said to me, “At that point, you can get new awnings and I will guarantee you the same price.”

I interrupted him by expressing my appreciation for his generosity.

And then he concluded: “Of course, the truth is, this house doesn’t really need awnings on it, does it?”

At this point I looked at my house with new eyes.

As it turns out, I had followed the wishes of the previous owner–to place awnings on the house for decoration–only feeling superior because my choice of color was more insightful.

I could have saved thousands of dollars if I had gone with an “awningless” home.

For after all, the only thing those awnings ever did was add a little bit of spruce… while they taunted me with their ever-evident depreciation.

 

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