Do you ever think about them? I do. I don’t mean i
n sentences, grouped together with their friends. I mean standing alone, pure and potent. Oh, the power they have flowing from the pen or leaping from the tongue without warning, yes, no. Each with a life of it’s own. Explaining what cannot be explained, creativity, Creator. Conveying what we cannot comprehend, infinity. Bringing into being what we have never experienced, eternity. Not living passively, but challenging our beliefs, God. How did that word spring to life? Was a truth revealed millenniums ago when it was first uttered? Can man create from nothngness? millenniums ago when it was first uttered?
But sadly, at times, we are impertinent. They are after all our daily companions casually sent forth to do our bidding. We feel free to pervert them when it serves our purpose, spin. No accountability required to these miscellaneous groupings of letters as we force them to speak in sentences without verbs, fragments. However, they are at their core virtuous and quite deliberately will keep their intrinsic meaning hidden from those not worthy of them, soul, sense, spirit, truth. Perhaps that is why we covet their friendship.
Yet they can be pretentious peers, engaging our minds in silent, perplexing games of nyms and phones. “Job’s job? Herb’s herbs?” Capitonym. “Heyelled fore at tee four?” Homophone, heteronym.
Oh, these helpmates, promising to color, shade and express our creativity. Posing as agents of our thoughts, yet, at times refusing to give them voice. At times spilling out so quickly they run ahead of us, independent and haughty, leaving us to scramble for pen and paper—then vanishing without a trace.
We will forever endure their idiosyncrasies, esoteric and profound. For as we labor to birth that idea that floats in our subconscious, partially formed, not quite a speech sound yet, we find they are the DNA of our thoughts.
Words, sometimes taking us beyond ourselves, mercy, grace, hope, joy. Sometimes shaming us with their very existence, Nigger, Retard, Fatso. But never forsaking us, forgiveness, redemption.
Words, both a blessing and a curse to the devoted adherent–those of us who love them—those of us who have fallen under their spell. They can lift us up or destroy us, salvation, secularism. They have the power of life and death.
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