OH THOSE 'E' WORDS

THE ‘E’ WORDS

In a recent blog comment, Carina author, Julie Moffett, quoted Winston Churchill’s, “Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm.”  That struck a chord, reminding me of a recent conversation with six close friends.  About a dozen years ago, we formed a discussion group to talk about issues relating to women.  Girl talk with a purpose.  Or so we like to think.

At the meeting I have in mind, we decided to talk about sex.  All of us are married and collectively have given birth to 18 children (I contributed 2 of the 18.), so we felt pretty well armed for the discussion.  With a lot of laughter in between comments, we agreed that we understood sex’s importance to men, but what about women?  What is their pleasure?

As we probed deeper into the subject (comma!), Eleni, who is from Athens, brought up the Greek roots of two key words she said are part of any good sexual experience--whether one is male or female--ecstasy and enthusiasm.

Here goes:  ecstasy combines “ex” meaning out of with “stasis” meaning body.  During sex, the body is left behind—presumably in a tangle of bedclothes—while the spirit soars free.  “Got that?” Eleni asked. 

Enthusiasm is a parallel emotion.  “En” means in; “thus” is a version of theos or god and “asm” is breath.  So broken into pieces and put back together, enthusiasm is the breath of the spirit within us.  And, as Eleni claims, you ain’t got ecstasy if you ain’t got enthusiasm.

While our discussion didn’t solve the topic question, it was a lot of fun and left me with a deeper appreciation of two wonderful words.  For a kind of out-of-body experience does occur when a writer soars on a passage that’s coming together flawlessly.  From time to time, we’ve all felt that fleeting presence of the muse, haven’t we?  And when we’re stone-walled, without a single idea of how to move the plot forward, isn’t enthusiasm for our craft what keeps us going even after we’ve gone from failure to failure and had to hit the delete button again and again?

Anyway, I’m going to pour myself a glass of wine and talk all this over with Deva Dunne.  She’s been very busy in Killer Kitchens, what with her day job as an interior designer and also amateur sleuthing for Lieutenant Rossi—whether he wants her to or not. But until the book comes out on April 15^th she has time to relax a little and listen to some “e” words.

BTW, to see what Deva’s up to lately, visit her at www.jeanharrington.com and read the opening chapter of Killer Kitchens.  There’s a brief bio of Jean posted there too, but personally I find Deva far more interesting.