What is your favourite word? I’ll tell you mine. I like words. Actually I love them. Catch me when we’re talking in person forgetting what you said because I was watching your mouth do its thing. If you think about it, your lips are the LAST check on your thoughts. The final governor before you put your voice out there. Thats why cowards love the internet. They can clickety-clack stupid things on the keyboard without saying them and the likelihood of getting knocked out drops exponentially. Once I was working at some bar and this nice young lady barked at me that she had “VIP” privileges. I furrowed my brow and politely asked, “What does VIP stand for?” Half way through the word ‘IMPORTANT’ her eyes sort of died. Like a light went out when she realized how dumb she sounded.

So do this: IF YOU CAN BREATHE right now, shove air up and out your chest. Let it bounce around and scratch past your vocal cords. You are opening and shutting your throat like a valve, and your lips are working with your tongue against your teeth, and the roof of your mouth to regulate the delivery. All these tools and muscles work together to ensure what comes out of your mouth isn’t just a scream. Unless you want to scream. You say what you want to say. I mean obviously the brain is involved here but if we get into that we’re gonna get into the disconnection between the two and that is not what this is about. So air, throat, tongue lips. A real team effort that we don’t often think about. Words are like this puzzle for me, written or spoken. I tried to explain to my 8 year old the other day, how I ‘see’ words when I close my eyes. “BULLSHIT” she bellowed. She looked at me quizzically and I told her that I see words spin around when I close my eyes or when I’m half asleep. You might see them too. These words, they couple and uncouple and drift apart and around and back together on axis like double DNA helices in space. Letters drift apart on Scrabble tiles, then come back together to form words or phrases that make no sense lain out. In my mind they form fully coherent sentences, conversations and delightful little turns-of-phrase that I see myself speaking in a big hall or at an event and everyone there just understands. When I see this storm of characters, I know just what to do. I know how to arrange them. It is not something I’ve ever told anyone but her. I’m forty-eight. She’s just now learned about this thing I’ve had all my life and both of us are equally unclear on how it all works. She then asks me, like a kid should, “What’s your favourite word?” I told her that I like “infected”, when the stress is on the ‘FEC’. You hear that and you’re like, “EEEEW! PUS!” “Subterfuge” is another one that I love. It is just so a rich a word. Its hard to fit into your day-to-day. If you don’t know it, subterfuge is like, okay its 1940’s Germany. A girl from the village walks past the colonel’s window every day to and from picking flowers. She sees him and smiles. He smiles back. Weeks and months pass, and, after a hundred or so nights in his bed, she’s gathered all the info she can. He trusts her. She is a part of his life. Not fully, but one he looks forward to. One he would rather not be without. While he is snoring his fucking nazi snores she puts a letter opener in his fucking nazi throat, slips out of his nazi bed down his nazi stairs and out the cellar door off into the night. The flowers. The smile. The walk and the weeks and the months, that’s subterfuge. My favourite word, though, by far, is “Rebellion”.

You should say it out loud right now. If you’re gonna shout it, then spit the ‘B’ when you shout it. If you whisper it (I know the kids are sleeping) leave some saliva on your bottom lip. Rebellion. Doesn’t it make your heart sing? It’s like the peal of a great bell in the centre of town. If the word gives you pause, or even frightens you, well you MAY be on the wrong side of all of this. If you’re in the middle, you gotta pick a side, here. C’mon. It’s time. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t need you on my team for this one. I’ve come this far without you. YOU need you. Rebellion. I could look it up on the internet dot com but I don’t need to. The word ‘rebellion’ is an African word. It is an Algonquin and an Arapahoe word. It is Russian. It’s a Jewish and its a Polish word. A Somali word. Rebellion is a Canadian word, too. It is, and make no mistake about it and never, ever let them tell you otherwise, “rebellion” is an American word. I’m not sure what your news or your social media feeds or your LIFE is full of right now, but mine are full of Rebellion, and it is glorious.