What it is, dear reader.  I’m four whiskey’s in, scribbling this on a napkin in a bar that smells like regret and motor oil.  So let’s get to it.

Abecedarium is a word both pretentious enough to elevate your cocktail party small talk right past the threshold of the tolerable and yet charming enough to avoid being immediately escorted to the patio to smoke alone.  Using it won’t make you friends, but it will make your friends feel stupid, which, frankly, is its own reward.

An “abecedarium” is an alphabetically ordered list, typically used for teaching purposes.  Think kindergarten flashcards but set in Latin, so they’re basically the literary equivalent of drinking scotch in a leather chair.

Or – less commonly – a person who is just learning; in other words, a novice, the kind  of wide-eyed rookie who trips over their own ambition and thinks its progress.  Yes, you can call someone an abecedarium if they still need the training wheels on their intellectual bicycle.  Try it next time your friend can’t find the “any” key on their keyboard.  If someone accuses you of being an “abecedarium,” they’re either pointing out your obsession with ABCs or trying to start an elaborate bar fight in the guise of a Scrabble challenge.

The word comes to us from Latin, obviously – abecedarium comes from “ABCD,” the sound you make when you lose your train of thought mid-sentence and try to fake confidence.  The Romans, masters of turning fleeting brain farts into academic formality, slapped on the suffix
“-arium,” because everything sounds fancier with a suffix that implies archives, libraries, or conspiracy rooms.

So I’m in this shithole cantina in Tijuana, 2017, my liver screaming for mercy and my notebook a graveyard of half-baked poems.  The bartender, a grizzled idiot named Rico with a scar like a topographic map of hell, is pouring mezcal so cheap it could strip paint.  I’m dealing with this kid – call him Diego, a virgin if there ever was one, fresh off the bus from some nowhere pueblo, clutching a dog-eared copy of On The Road like it’s the goddamn Bible.  Diego’s got that novice glow, all earnestness and bad tattoos, yammering about how he’s gonna write the Great American Novel despite never finishing high school.  I’m half-drunk, half-amused, and I say, “Kid, you’re so green you make limes jealous. You don’t write the Great Anything till life kicks your teeth in…don’t worry…it’ll happen.”  He blinks, all doe-eyed, and orders us another round of this piss, thinking he can outdrink me.  Mistake.  Two hours later, he’s reciting his “poetry” – some godawful drivel about cacti and freedom – while I’m carving limericks into the bar with a switchblade.  Diego pukes on his shoes, passes out, and I’m left with his book, now sticky with mezcal and moronic verse.  I flip it open, write “Learn to live first, you dumbass” on the title page, sign it, and leave it next to his face.  Rico laughs, says I’m cruel.  I say I’m honest.  That abecedarium’s got a long road ahead, and I ain’t his Sherpa. 

Now go read, write, or burn something, you literary reprobates, or I’ll personally spike your coffee with iambic pentameter.

N.P.: “Uptown Funk” – Saints of Sin