I have always had trouble with the sub-categorizations of things. For example, I know that furry four-legged things that pant and enjoy human company can usually be correctly referred to as 'dogs'; the problem I have is that when I see a dog I'm usually lost w/r/t its kind, or breed or whatever. Poodles I can usually successfully identify. The same goes with Dalmatians (I'm not shape-blind), Labradors (had them growing-up) and Siberian Huskies (at least those with the mismatched-eye thing going). So I'm like 4 for what, 500? 1000? 10000? How many breeds can there be? And should we count cross-breeds? Are they their own breed or a subcategory of a subcategory - like a super-subcategory? I don't know. And the same goes with most other basic noun groups. Take trees, e.g. I've got birch trees down (clearly) and maple trees (at least when there's a sugar-line tapped into them or when they're peacockery is on display). But the difference between a pine and a spruce (I'm pretty sure it's a spruce that we use for trimming, but not positive), or an oak and whatever other tree has oak-like properties? Lost. They're simply trees to me - trees whose colors and other obvious physical properties I might be able to identify when in their presence but whose names completely escape me. I suppose I shouldn't even say that, cause it's not like their names were once known to me and have now slunk away like those of my middle school girlfriends. I never knew them; they were never members of my all-too-exclusive mind-aviary. Here's how I can and do refer to trees: 'big tree', 'green tree', 'foliaged tree', 'healthy tree', etc. I could go on of course... The point of all this is that it is this deficiency or inability of mine that makes reading say Updike or, god forbid, Nabokov so terrifying. It isn't simply that these guys are well-versed in the sub-categorizations of things. It's that you know they're just itching to footnote each arcane noun they employ with its Latin tag and, perhaps, full etymology. (This itchy feeling becomes humiliatingly actualized in the work of D. F. Wallace.)
Right now my orange cat is attempting to climb out the window in order to have a look at a city that really can't appear all that different to him than it does to me. The city is big. It has a dark-blueish river cut through it. The buildings in the city vary from small to tall. There are churches of differing shades of gray. Some of these churches appear to have been built before some of the other churches. Where there are no buildings the city looks green. These green areas no doubt hold trees. The thickness of the trunks of these trees also varies. I am assuming the height and other properties of these trees vary too. I am assuming therefore the green areas hold different kinds of trees. I just don't know what these are. I suppose I could google trees in my city and get some answers. But I'm lazy and indolent and not too interested in studying these things. Which is why said authors bother me: they're just so seemingly interested in stuff. Curious, like my cat who keeps trying to claw his way out the window. At the moment my interest lies in discourse particles and interjections. Nouns are hard. But like grunting is something I'm pretty good at.
