WORDY THURSDAY

I have hated words and I have loved them, and I hope I have made them right. I spent my life folded between the pages of books. I lived love and loss through stories threaded in history; I experienced adolescence by association. My world is one interwoven web of words, stringing limb to limb, bone to sinew, thoughts and images all together. I am a being comprised of letters, a character created by sentences, a figment of imagination formed through fiction.

Words are pale shadows of forgotten names. As names have power, words have power. Words can light fires in the minds of men. Words can wring tears from the hardest hearts. There is something about words. In expert hands, manipulated deftly, they take you prisoner. Wind themselves around your limbs like spider silk, and when you are so enthralled you cannot move, they pierce your skin, enter your blood, numb your thoughts. Inside you they work their magic.

Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say infinitely when you mean very; otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite. But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. Words used carelessly, as if they did not matter in any serious way, often allowed otherwise well-guarded truths to seep through. If you could say it in words, there would be no reason to paint.

It doesn't matter if you and everyone else in the world are thinking it. You don't say the words. Words are weapons. They blast big bloody holes in the world. And words are bricks. Say something out loud and it starts turning solid. Say it loud enough and it becomes a wall you can't get through. A picture can tell a thousand words, but a few words can change it’s story. But words are more powerful than anything.