By Holly BF Warren
Words have bodies that stretch our imagination. Their anatomy is fascinating. They describe the structure of thoughts, ideas and feeling as they weave learning and knowledge with curiosity and questions leaving loose strings of unaccomplished answers.
They jump, skip, swim, and float in our minds until something recalls them to order and most of the time they line up. Patterns and patterns of orderly words sound their rhythm and beat pausing at commas to take a breath and a rest at full stops. Words create our thinking patterns, string ideas, and connect information as they run though our minds and find serenity and flow. But there may always be a slight imbalance as when we walk on a line and momentarily lose our equilibrium. We adjust and as we do so we might discover the wonder of a different angle, a tilt, a perspective. We can fall off, we can fall out and fall from….the soft landing is given by the many meanings that words have.
Aided by accents, rhythm and pitch their meaning blows in different directions and often they blow our minds if not those of others. They breeze through us, freshen us up, bite through depending on the pressure. Words create blue skies and balmy weather; they engross our body of knowledge and slim our certainties as they soak up the warm sun of our imagination creating rainbows or creative explorations. Whether we use them sporadically or continuously they affect our skies. The word weather forecast can bring severe adverse conditions. Hailstorms of demeaning adjectives, blustery verbs and an army of exclamation marks soak and spoil us until we open our umbrellas. At a click we find refuge. Words slide down and create puddles of tears or diamonds. Storms often surprise us and catch us unaware but if we carry a raincoat, umbrella and rubber boots we can face the adversity.
Mind the words you use! Words might behave differently in different minds lighting up a myriad of adventures that love to stay snug in our imagination where the possible is apparently invisible but strongly felt and experienced. Words are silent and have no real shape but the one we give them. We see their sounds and touch their scents tasting their delightful aroma. They drench us with laughter, infuse the perfect cup of semantic tea and dress our ontological windowsill with intellectual blossoms. They frame our reality and as we peer though we notice that they are skylights, sliding windows, pivoting windows, shopwindows, bay windows or arrow slits, and shutters.
If a word is a drop of ink it would flow on a surface that receives it starting a journey. Where to? Where from? Blown away, dried up, smeared, erased but never forgotten. If it was an utterance it would travel through the air and latch up with many others finding accomplices. If it was a movement it would speak the body language of its possessor. Flexible and acrobatic or stiff and unyielding.
No matter what, shape, form, texture, angle, width, or depth….
As we think, whisper, sing, shout, write, paint or dance our words, someone will listen, see, and hold them for a second, a while or a lifetime.
