Words

[pegkerr]

Ordinarily, I use words to convey information, to tell stories, to entertain, to think out loud.

I have tried several times to write a LiveJournal entry tonight, without success, and finally realized that the problem was that I was using words to obscure, to veil, to hide.

So I won't use them at all.

Comments

From Mary Oliver's west wind, verse 3 of "Three Songs"

[gamps-garret.livejournal.com]

There is so much communication and understanding beneath and apart from the substantiations of language spoken out or written down that language is almost no more than compression, or elaboration -- an exactitude, declared emphasis, emotion-in-syntax -- not at all essential to the message. And therefore, as an elegance, as something almost superfluous, it is likely (because it is free to be so used) to be carefully shaped, to take risks, to begin and even prolong adventures that may turn out poorly after all -- and in the case of the crisp flight and the buzzing bliss of the words, as well as their directive -- to make, of the body-bright commitment to life, and its passions, including (of course!) the passion of meditation, an exact celebration, or inquiry, employing grammar, mirth, and wit in a precise and intelligent way. Language is, in other words, not necessary, but voluntary. If it were necessary, it would have stayed simple; it would not agitate our hearts with ever-present loveliness and ever-cresting ambiguity; it would not dream, on it's long white bones, of turning into song.