Words. Words. Words.
I got a comment on my rant yesterday. It was from a nice lady in Australia who said (I paraphrase) “Don’t stop fighting the uphill battle–we people in other countries need to see that there is dissent in America.” Which got me thinking.
Yeah, I know. Always a chancy proposition, that.
I work with words every day. I live and breathe them. The majority of my time is spent writing or reading. I literally eat, sleep, and breathe words. Most of my breakfasts and lunches are taken at the keyboard. I dream of typing sometimes, and many stories come from a vivid non-dream that happens just as I am waking. Plot holes get filled in while I sleep. And when I talk, that’s what I’m doing–breathing words.
And yet, I sometimes forget how powerful words are. They can be hurled in anger or whispered in love, they are the workhorses of revolution and literature, they are communication at a distance.
For example, I can read Propertius or Shakespeare–people who have long since turned to dust–and I can be affected by their words, with a lump in the throat or a leap in the heart. I can be provoked to laughter by Boccaccio or Dumas. Sarah Dessen can make me cry, and Stephen King can scare the pudding out of me–without ever meeting me, knowing my name, or even being in the same state as me.
It’s all done with words.
I’ve also had stinging words hurled at me on the playground. When I got my first divorce my attorney spoke for me in court. (May every god bless her.) My sisters and I are all highly verbal, language taking the place of the umbilical cord of connection between us.
Words, words, words. Speeches delivered in public ignited the American, French, and Russian revolutions, with all their good and their bad. A one-word refusal to surrender (NUTS!) was delivered during the Battle of the Bulge. Do you watch C-Span? Those words being delivered are shaping the lives of everyone in America, no matter how boring it seems to the rest of us. State legislatures argue and decide how deep we’re buried, who can handle food, what’s an acceptable level of arsenic in our water.
I am always amazed by people who don’t love words. Words are powerful. They can hurt or heal, ignite or dampen a flame. When we write, we are sitting in one of the great engines of creation. Working with them every day, one sometimes forgets what explosive power they are capable of until reminded.
Words. Fun to play with. Forget firecrackers and explosives, give me words any day. I will keep speaking as long as I have breath. And, gods willing, after.
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