They come so easily to the drunk, and at times, so haltingly to the writer. Ok, here’s a corny joke: I know what is in every book in every library in the world! Words.
We have many, but, it may be hard to count just how many we have to use. There’s the common small ones we use everyday and some less often. Some have many meanings, so do we count them as two or one? There’s “going to the store” phrases coupled with gestures and a variety often personal or favorite words when we express ourselves like when we’re angry or to others when expressing love. There’re are poem words and engineering words. Google produced more thoughts to mull.
Some words can be used in many ways such as “flower” the blossom and “flower” describing to grow and develop. Words like “blue”, means one thing to you and may mean something different to me. There are very specific words like “ten” or iffy and only somewhat specific words, as “now”. When a reader reads or when you listen, once you know which meaning, you know. Perhaps a gesture, or within the story there is context to indicate. It happens pretty easily unless concepts are unfamiliar.
It may be that we have far less than a million distinct words we use. Likely about a quarter million. Two hundred and fifty thousand. So, with a selection and array so brimming, you’d think we could work something out to make meanings more clear. In some situations, clarity is critical. Meaning needs to be not just clear, but, pristinely pruned from any thorny or feathery doubts. Possible? Nope. Just ask ikea.
Words are ideas and those ideas would be fragile if they had substance. at all. They only take form with speech, writing, or making something from a nearly endless list including things that are seen like a drawing or house, and, unseen like the internet and bitcoin. The medium of communication contributes to how well we are understood. Then, there’s “the pause”. A great or small silence. The non word word.
Watching the testimony of Judge Luttig within the Jan 6 hearings, I fell under the hypnotic effect of the cadence of his words. The man brought weight and depth of meaning to his thoughts by visibly collecting himself and formally addressing his audience if not by name, in tone. After observing him answer, the movements were the same. Push the chair slightly back, moving forward, adjusting the mic, it was ceremony. The repetitive movements were perhaps random, but, yet the same each time. He prepared himself and us.
There was space between his words allowing not just for understanding but for internal pondering for us each to find the meaning he sought. If I were he, there would be a big pause “now”.
There was a deeper meaning assigned to the everyday words he used. Liberal silence equally within the words gave gravity and seriousness of the moment. There were small, pin drop worthy, silences in the room today and grave understanding in our hearts. The words were important.
The partial alphabet pictured is a work in progress by the writer.