Rotten Bastards

It's a blog. It's a way of life. It's many things in between.


Thursday 11 January 2007

ad astra per aspera

When I was growing up I used to read the dictionary. I used to love the new words like crepuscular and inly. We had this old red paperback Webster's Dictionary that had this section in the back of foreign phrases. I used to pore over that section more than any other. My favourite was Ad Astra Per Aspera which means "To The Stars By Hard Ways" in Latin. I used to write it everywhere. I wrote it on the floor of my ex boyfriends attic bedroom. Initially I wrote Ad Astra then when things turned sour I added the Per Aspera. I wanted to get it tattooed. My Mum said that you had to be careful what you had written on your body. She said that I probably didn't want the words "By Hard Ways" on my body no matter how pretty they looked. What you write effects you She said. So I decided on Ad Astra. To the stars. However it happens, I'm going to get there.

2 comments:

tammy said...

I love words, too. Especially yours, here. enjoyed this very much.

Anonymous said...

My mother made me read the dictionary almost every day growing up, to impress her friends. I learned early on how to sound really impressive for no good reason. I learned how to throw out half a dozen syllables and gain instant approval.

I also learned that words meant nothing to me. Nothing whatsoever.

It took years to undo that. It stayed that way until I made up my first word, 'disconcertia ', at the age of seventeen.

I started recording my music under that name a week later.

That was almost ten years ago, and you can still find disconcertia here and there. That was almost a decade ago, and I'm more in love with words now than ever.Just like Tammy, I especially love yours, here.

Thanks for showing me how the other half grew up.

Joseph