Loose Leaf Notes

Loose Leaf – ADJECTIVE: Related to, having, or being leaves that can be easily removed, rearranged, or replaced: a loose-leaf notebook; loose-leaf paper. The American Heritage Dictionary.

If you type “loose leaf” into a search engine, you’ll get a multitude of pages having to do with tea or paper. As a writer who fills notebooks full of words and who loves good tea, that suits me just fine. But tea and notebooks aren’t the only images I had in mind when I named my blog “Loose Leaf.”

I like the word “loose.” To me it implies cutting loose from what binds you. By “bind,” I mean that which is imposed on you, rather than “bond” (only one vowel away from “bind”), that which you chose to bind yourself to.

Sometimes the word “loose” has a negative connotation, as with “a loose woman” or “loose cannon.” That’s okay; I prefer to be associated with looseness rather than with restriction and uptightness.

I’m not very happy that within the word “loose” I see “lose,” but the fact that phonosematics and esoteric studies into the meaning of letters suggests that the letter L connotes “love of learning,” I can handle it (or prefer to read it as “losing what binds me”). The letter L practically sings (or springs) itself into being…la la la la, as opposed to other letters, such as a D, which is thought to represent “descent.”

Leaves that can be easily removed from the tree…or the crowd?
I love trees and leaves…and people, but I work and think best alone and so, require large amounts of time alone. It took me most of my life to realize that I wasn’t a leader…or a follower. Our culture seems to imply that you must be one or the other. I’m a party of one; a leaf on the loose who’s taking notes and language seriously.

More on how our names are our assignments in future posts.