Cacographie

My father, English, juggled French very loosely. In spite of himself, his sentences and expressions turned into surreal objects of language. Where three words would have done for us, he took the scenic route — and often forgot where he'd started. Cacography is the art of losing yourself in language until it turns almost estranged. Not seriously, of course — it's a game. Playful semantic slippages — like lifting the onomatopoeia out of comic-book bubbles to strip them of their urgency and drop them into a daily life made of softness and food.