On Words and Means

Lately I have found myself thinking about words.  About how words have this intrinsic and enigmatic property that make them mean what it is that they mean.  About how words come by what they mean truly.  About how we need them.  Lately I have found myself thinking about words.  And about what it is to mean.

I found myself early this morning over Denver, pressing words into my forehead through a crystallized window pane.  Wishing I was better at giving my words to people.  Paper has been a long time friend of mine.  Paper understands.  Paper unconditionally accepts whatever ink or charcoal shapes we give to it.  And the things we can proove with paper are boundless.  I found myself dreaming of equations: mathematical and physical laws of the universe.  About how they bring order and comfort to us.  How they allow us to discourse about phenomena which would be otherwise impossible to explain.

I found myself daydreaming, shivering in the memory of those nights in June.  They were glorious nights wrapped in scientific discussion.  They were beautiful nights--times of being held closer than I have been held in many years. Nights of surrounding myself in those words and equations that scrawled themselves out as a kiss to the forehead, then the nose, then the cheek--

And now I find myself acutely aware of the limitations of our words.  Wondering about how much may be lost or added in well-meaning text.  About how words are everything to me and have been since my infancy.  About how words are not enough.

Yet I want more words.  I need more words.  I find myself at night, soaking the words into my skin.  Thinking that maybe if the compress is closer or if the steam is hotter I will be able to force the words out, through my pores rather than my mouth.

In the same thought-breath, I think about love.  About what it is that makes a person fall in love with someone or something.  About how different this may be from what prompts a person to love.  I know inside of me that falling in love is not the same as living a life of love and this calms some of the thought storms in my mind.

I find myself thinking about how I have much to learn in this life.  But I also find myself, knowing, now: the human soul can excel in bringing love to the world it lives in.  Its thoughts are beautiful and rugged, like wildflowers.  Its words mean.  And it means simply because it exists.

I find myself thinking about how lucky we are that other souls are here with us.  To share in our world, our words.  How wonderful it is that we do not have to be lonely even in times of being left alone.  I have always been curious about the way these souls, our friends, have a way of flitting in and out of our lives at just the right moment.  Somehow they manage to be perfectly on cue in the production that I call my life.  I find myself feeling thankful for those friends who have fallen back into my life, like pretty little snowflakes.  Calm and cool on my eyelashes.  I find myself praying for safety and deeper meaning for those who are somewhere else now.

I find myself thinking that I cherish you and that I want to tell you so.  But just look how words are not enough!  They will never be enough.  But if you find this insufficient prose, know you are cherished.  Let these words mean what it is they are meant to mean for you.

Mahalo for reading these midnight ramblings,

E.