THE DECIMATOR is a speaker / writer of the English Language (USA-Canadian-UK) who believes that the word DECIMATION means “complete and total utter destruction”. He or she will say / write:

“The Hulk really DECIMATED Loki in that first Avengers film…”

or

“Those 300 Spartan sons of bitches fought like hell, but hunchback dude ratted out Leonidas, and the Persians DECIMATED them…”

or

“Hiroshima and Nagasaki were both DECIMATED by atomic bombs…”

or

“My heart was DECIMATED when my boyfriend broke up with me.”

Stop right there, DECIMATOR!

The worst thing about you, villain, is that you have become sanctified by continuous use, and now seem to be accepted as a pillar of the community of the Word. I find you in the most unlikely places, DECIMATOR. I can understand your misuse by beginning writers, but now you’re appearing out of context in books written by professionals. You’d think best-selling authors would have paid copyeditors who are brave enough to say: “Sorry, Big Time Writer, but this isn’t a misspelling or glitch; you have chosen the wrong word in this context.” You’d think their PUBLISHERS would notice, and gently explain:

“Many people misuse the word DECIMATE now, but we’d rather our authors didn’t. Now about that 3-book deal…”

THE DECIMATING TRUTH:

“To decimate”, from the Latin, comes to us via the ancient Romans, who used DECIMATION to enforce discipline in their military. A group of Legionnaires who had shown cowardice or otherwise besmirched Roman honour would be rounded up at sword point and put at attention before their commander, who would bark:

“Decimate them!”

No, arrows didn’t rain down from the parapets, killing everyone with extra-gory eye and throat shots. Boiling oil was not poured all over them. They were not all beheaded or even crucified. For that day and time, they were shown what passed for great mercy…

Let’s say we’re decimating 100 soldiers, a Legion. They’re standing in ten rows, with ten men in each row. Our executioners pass among them, forcing one random man in each line to his knees, where a downward sword thrust instantly pierces his heart, causing (we can hope) almost immediate death.

First, 100 men are alive. Now 10 of them (a “decade”) are not. There are 90 soldiers left, all shaking and soiling their togas, promising to fight harder in the future for the glory of Rome.

They have been DECIMATED. They got off EASY…

The Lost Chord here, the missing word, the word that so many writers are unconsciously reaching for when they want to tell us that something or someone has been almost completely destroyed is:

***DEVASTATED***.

No one’s heart has ever been DECIMATED. How would you measure one-tenth of a broken heart? Could you even feel enough angst to write a poem about it? Next time, try DEVASTATED. (Actually, DON’T apply that to your heart in a poem, because it’s a shopworn cliché. Surprise us with something better.)

The Hulk DEVASTATED Loki. If he had only slammed the God of Mischief on the concrete hard enough to DECIMATE him, then Loki would still have had enough hit points left to beat the Avengers.

Xerxes didn’t DECIMATE the Spartans. If his forces had only killed 30 out of the 300 by the time the Battle of Thermopylae was done, Leonidas and his remaining 269 Spartans would probably have gone on to lay waste to all Persia instead of dying heroically on slo-cam.

As for Hiroshima and Nagasaki, their citizens would have been incredibly happy to have merely been DECIMATED. Instead, their centers of population were more than DEVASTATED; they were EXTINGUISHED by being VAPORISED.

So, next time you’re tempted to use DECIMATION in any of its forms, make sure you don’t mean DEVASTATION. Or else I’ll DEFENESTRATE you…

Look it up!

--The Grammar Vigilante

Check it out--Mark Twain writes an anti-racist, anti-slavery book (you might have heard of it, ‘Tom Sawyer’), which many consider THE seminal American novel, and it gets banned from libraries by BOTH Left and Right for stupid reasons. Now “New South Publishing” has come out with a bowlderized edition which exchanges every instance of the word ‘nigger’ for ‘slave’, as in “Slave Jim and I were going down the river.”

We KNOW that racist people back then never said ‘slave’ when they *meant* ‘nigger’. The word is very ugly, and that’s why Twain chose to use it--he WANTED an ugly word to illustrate the ideology of an ugly society-- as in the scene where Huck tells the Widder that a steamship blew up, and she asks “Oh Lordy! Was anyone injured?” Huck replies: “No ma’am; killed a nigger.” The Widder, with relief, says “Well, that’s good, because you know, sometimes people do get hurt.”

RIGHT THERE you have their whole society in a nutshell; they don’t even see Blacks as humans to be counted. Yet Huck, a pig-ignorant racist to begin with, ends up holding Jim in high esteem before it’s all done, and if we were ignorant about racism before we read 'Huck Finn', we are no longer.

Watering great books down (and pissing on the author thereby), or making them unavailable, because they don’t fit comfortably into your political world view, is (how shall I say it?) FUCKED.

The focus for this week's Proser Showcase had an exceedingly high demand for interview. A number of community members expressed an interest in finding out more about her, who she is, and what brought her to this community.

Without further ado, then, here are the highlights from our recent correspondence with writer, poet, singer, and philosopher Diane Castiglioni--known here as @nonzerospin.

Diane says that she travels a lot, but she generally "alights longer either in San Francisco or Santa Fe."

When she isn't writing poetry and prose, her job is to work with "an amazing team of kick-ass people who live all over the world and come together to help community groups/organizations solve complex problems, or at least get their arms further around them. (Problems like poverty, racism, sharing resources - you know, bleeding heart kind of stuff)."

P: What is your relationship with writing and how has it evolved?

D: Having been a kidnapped Russian princess as an infant and abandoned in a small town where drinking, shooting, and spitting tobacco were the crown jewels of daily activity, I escaped into the freakish sports of reading and writing. Voraciously.

Somewhere in the archives are poems I wrote as a little kid - they all rhyme and are lousy with devotion or despair. Moving to more formal styles as a young teenage working stiff, I was ‘corrected’ for writing Elizabethan couplets and sonnets as customer service responses. I fared better in college when profs accepted my short stories as term papers.

I brooded in my off time, filling notebooks and disks with unearthed musings, never intended to see light of day. Eventually I was pushed by a couple of very good writers into sharing my work, knuckling up for readings and even hosting poetry events. Since then, I’ve contributed to a publication in France, edited a collection of essays for ATWG, and have a few poems published by small presses.

P: Briefly discuss the value that reading adds to both your personal and professional life.

D: Outside of traveling to foreign terrains (even the ones right next door), reading is the best way to discover new worlds. Good writing can sometimes satisfy my hunger to inhabit personas, places, and perspectives outside my own.

In my work, we use metaphor as a way to help people drop out of their habitual patterns of perceiving and interacting with the world, even shift their attitudes. Bringing diverse books and articles, we embed time for syntopical reading. More often than not I hear people still talking about what they read days later and using it to turn their situation in a way they never dreamed of. Reading is powerful stuff. Reading (or writing) a true thing is a transformative tonic.

P: How would you describe your current literary ventures and what can we look forward to in future posts?

D: Honing my craft and taking more risks here on Prose. is a main focus. I’ve also recently started submitting poems to a few literary journals; have a couple acceptances, a couple rejections, and waiting to hear back from others. Rumbling in the subterranean caves of my psyche is a magical realism / sci-fi novel which would be fun to post on Prose. but I have a few projects to finish before getting started on that. Otherwise, I still interview writers, edit essays by foreign scientists, and MC poetry events (wouldn’t it be cool to have one for the writers of Prose.?!). Prose.Fest15!

P: What does Prose. mean to you? What brought you here and what keeps you coming back?

D: Prose. is a font of inspiration! I used to perform music; feeling the applause or dismay of an audience is a life giving thing. Writing is a more solitary endeavor unless one actively seeks community for it (and often the writing personality is diametrically opposed to that). Magic happens in the implicit conversation between the offering and the receiving of a creative act, even without words. Prose. allows that conversation to take place between writers - I’m hooked.

I was recruited to check out Prose. and immediately liked it. I had been invited to a few other writing apps and found them either too tedious to be useful or didn’t click with the community. The simplicity and elegance of the format here is perfect. I have a wishlist for future versions but overall it has all the right ingredients. The collection of authors is exceptional – a treasure in a variety of styles and voices, and generous engagement.

@Valerie, @rh and @Lsu11 were instrumental from the very beginning to make me feel welcome, encouraged, and inspired to keep participating. They are excellent stewards and examples of what we can all be to grow this platform, broader and deeper, and guide/push each other to be even better writers. I am grateful to them and plenty of others who inspire me with their brave voices and provide thoughtful commentary on my writing, especially @Alchemyst, @rioramireznovel, @Romae, @ME-solushospes, @alyptik, @another-proser, @Clburdett and so many others.

P: Where else can we find you and your writing?

D: I’ll share links and info when publishing happens. Otherwise, she says you can find here on Twitter @dcastiglioni and "in the crowd cheering you all on."

__________________________

This #FridayFeature blog series is designed to help you get to know your fellow community members better. Would you like to nominate someone for interview? Have a question you’re dying to ask of someone on the platform? Send us a private message here or visit our contact page to get in touch: theprose.com/p/contact.

Let's discover a land where kisses are anchors. Where grown-ups live in forts made out of bedsheets with rocket ships on them. And flashlights are fireplaces, because cold hearts don't exist. Where children's hearts are never broken. A place where our minds are cracked wide open. Where health food tastes like pie. Or Doritos. Or maybe even Cheetos. Where we are ALL in the business of hope, and everyone says "Rad" and "Dope." A place filled with balloons and super-balls. Where soulmates actually work out because there are no brick walls.

Two and a half years old, basking in her new found authority, my baby cousin squealed in her loudest voice, "MARCH! Ants go marching!"

This was my cue to sing her favorite song along with her, as loud as I possibly could, and march around the house.

Not again, I thought to myself. I mean, don't get me wrong, the whole thing is so adorably cute, but it gets tiring after the hundredth time in a single day.

I wasn't going to give up that easily.

...

Stay tuned for this article in its entirety later today on The Official Prose. Blog at: blog.theprose.com/blog.

The new star

the temporary star

glowing in the day

and night

The star was large

I heard

before it burst

in full spectra

Its light reaching

my eyes.

Eyes made of stars

that died

They burst too

millions and billions

of years ago

from across the galaxy

Their dust and energy

spewing out

across space

the non-empty void

Some dust falls

toward singularities

E = m (c * c) and

their escape is radiation

Some dust spirals away

showing a hidden remnant

of a vast

mystery

But my eyes

are made from dust that

cleared interstellar obstacles

and landed here

And now this dust

sees as more dust

flies out, and will perhaps

create eyes like mine.

“Perhaps being a writer is a bit like having… a neurological disorder… what psychologists call “intrusive thoughts”: unwanted and disturbing ideas and images that suddenly attack us unbidden. A need to speak the unspeakable thing. The very thing you most do not want to say, even to yourself.”

-David Gordon

The essay from which this quotation comes was written by a man that has experienced the fear of writing.

(Source: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/08/11/writing-is-a-risky-humiliating-endeavor/)

What will other people think?

What will they say?

How will it affect those that I care about?

The truth is, these are not the questions to ask when it comes to your work.

Writing is the manifestation of reality through words. It is distinct from any other realm of perception, emotion, or countenance. It’s a living, breathing life form all its own.

...

Stay tuned for the full article today on The Official Prose. Blog: blog.theprose.com/blog.

They say it is cool; because they say color has a temperature.

But what do I know? I am not a painter. I am not moved by the palette or the brush. The picture, I am stirred by that; though I could not say

if the stroke was made hot or cold where color is concerned.

The way the colors mix when they pair, when they sit side by side

or crossing lines, blushing together-

the anguished red against the screaming yellow

the pitying brown like rotting leaves in clear streams

that's the sound, there, water against rock.

I can tell you about the blue with words and maybe texture,

the feel of it, like that water against hot skin,

against cool skin, though

warm, greeting like a friend,

like to like

blue like the sky, the air, the wind

reaching into and beyond.

It is hopeful somehow. You know that feeling.

Remember?