Loquacious: A serendipitous word choice from Laurie Easter

Loquacious:  full of excessive talk : wordy (www.m-w.com)

Loquacious is a "wordy" series that revels in language.

This week, the lively Laurie Easter, writer and fellow VCFA graduate, searches for her favorite word and comes to a serendipitous conclusion. I asked Laurie to write this essay before I named this series. She sent it to me around the time that the first "Loquacious" post went live, but I was on vacation and missed her email. A few weeks later she emailed again to ask about her submission, and asked if her post had inspired the name of the series. I had no idea what she was talking about until I found her original email and read the essay below. Call it serendipity, synchronicity, coincidence, or kismet (all good words), or just two writers' minds dipping into the same word pool. Whatever you call it, it sounds good. Keep reading and you'll see what I mean. 

Loquacious

By Laurie Easter

In considering writing this guest post on my favorite word, I found myself a bit stymied choosing a word, or even several, that deserved such accolades. What do I consider a favorite word? I wondered. (Now, as I write this, stymied comes to mind as a word I rather enjoy.) But on the morning of my deadline, I woke amidst a half-dream of words floating through my consciousness. One of which was SLEEP, a word I love, but whether it is for the sound of the word itself or the act, I cannot say. My snoozing brain whispered, Sleeeeeeeep, as if the extended long vowel sound could sequester me in my lulling subconscious.

Another word floating through my brain was RELIEF because yesterday I experienced an immense amount of it when my twenty-two-year-old daughter called from the wrecking yard after retrieving her personal belongings from her totaled Toyota Camry, which she had crashed two nights prior on a dark and windy rural highway. She said that in the daylight the car looked to be in a lot worse shape than it did in the near full moonlight after the air bag erupted against her face and chest, effectively smacking her into shock. Yes, RELIEF. That is a very good word ― and a very good feeling. Much better than any word that would describe me if there hadn't been airbags in her car. My dream-brain went on to wonder about this word RELIEF. Is it anything like RE-LEAF? In experiencing relief does one metamorphose like the trees that lose their leaves in fall, withstand the stark cold of winter, and then cheerily burst forth new growth in spring?

In search of that one special word, other words floated from my left hemisphere: FAMILY, PEACE, SERENITY, HOPE. But are they words that I love because of the way they roll around my brain or sound in a sentence, or do they merely carry weight due to their representational nature? Are they words that are fun to say or listen to? Peeeaaaace, my dream-brain said. It's got a nice sound, with that long E like sleep. Serenityyyy soothes. But hope and family? These words carry their weight in symbolism more than syntax. My dream-brain reached: What is a word that stands singularly special?

And then it came. LOQUACIOUS. It sounds like an exotic fruit, like if you opened it up to taste it, your mouth would salivate in spurts of anticipation the way it does from the smell of an overripe lemon. Say it: Lo-quay-ciousssss. Do you feel it, the tanginess of plump seeds and juicy pulp tantalizing your tongue and filling your cheeks? LOQUACIOUS.

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Laurie Easter holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. She lives in Oregon with her husband and two daughters. But that will change in a few short weeks when her youngest daughter leaves for college three thousand miles away and everyone else has to move out of the house they've lived in for the last eight years. Laurie is the recipient of an Artist Grant from the Vermont Studio Center and will spend the beginning of her empty-nest life writing along the Gihon River in autumn.