Recombinant Semantics


Playing with words and sentences is good exercise for the mind. Besides, it’s fun. Recently BBear (a Jumbles enthusiast) explained his version of a semantic game: take a passage (any passage you choose) and, using only the inventory of the words in the passage, rearrange the words to make a new passage.  Thanks to BBear for providing the following illustration in which he reworked a Craigslist personal ad from a few years back. Enjoy! 🙂

Original Passage

i want to meet people who laugh a lot, who have something to say, who force me to throw my notions of social convention out the window of our beat up chevrolet as we fly down the highway at 90 mph. people who find inspiration in a flower creeping thru the crack’d concrete, regardless of how corny it may seem; who are unsatisfied with the banal colours of ordinary dreams or living, who are more interested in Life than longevity, who may go on & on & on & still know the soul of wit is brevity, who are unafraid of their kinks, or to use their capacity to feel, fall, or think, who seek not mere compatability, but the fit of a glove, as well as beauty, truth, freedom, and (above all) Love!

i want storytellers and scientists, shapeshifters and starshooters, and cool complicated confident, beautiful imaginative intelligent, freaky funky sexy people all around (over, under, in & on) me!!!

wanna get to know me? show me. send me a picture and your AIM.

Transformed Passage (BBear’s)

Longevity may go on and on
And force me to beat up scientists,
Throw a fit or laugh a lot.

The banal shapeshifters down
On the crack’d concrete of the highway
Who all have something corny to say,
Who are creeping unafraid
Thru your ordinary dreams
With the soul of a glove,
Who use their capacity to fall
Out the window and not in love.

Storytellers want sexy people around,
Starshooters want flower colours,
I find inspiration in our Chevrolet
And complicated notions of compatibility.
My Life is unsatisfied
Regardless of people who fly over me
At 90 mph but seek mere beauty.

I wanna get freedom as well,
And beautiful imaginative kinks,
Meet people who know me,
Who show me their funky brevity,
And who are more interested in
A picture of me than social convention.

Are we still confident
Of living the truth, to wit,
(As it may seem intelligent),
To know how or who
To send on and under?
Or who, all freaky
And of cool aim,
Think and feel
as above?

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