Finding Words



No words today. Nothing but the wonder. I hope I find an answer soon. I have a story I want to tell, but I want to use real words that mean the same outside of me as they do in my heart.

Where is the profound? Where is the dangerous? Where can I find a Joan of Arc or a Guinevere or a Madam Bovary…where are our beautifully flawed female characters who set out on a quest to find themselves but don’t end up with failure as grand as their dreams?

I wonder how we can send a robot to explore Mars, but can’t seem to do more that skim the surface of the people we touch. Why do we measure each other in commodities and usefulness?

I wonder because even brave sacrifice can lead to weakness.

I wonder because I keep playing out the same old human stories, and I have yet to come to one ending that is uniquely mine. How can I endow a character with anything more than I am able to give myself in my own life?

I wonder about the ache of standing between personal happiness and the happiness of the people I love. When both can’t be met, which one answers the real meaning of life?

I wonder about the times I’ve fallen through trap doors in my choices and glimpsed life as it might have been. How I came back changed, like a child who returns home an adult but is expected to wear those same clothes of her younger self. They don’t fit anymore, but she wears them because she loves everyone too much to stop playing the child.

I wonder why most of us walk around like actors costumed in our own bodies while the real characters inside us live unseen. What a shame when life is short and none of us know what kind of chances we’re offered after we take our last breath.

But how to say it? How to find the words?

Words, words, libraries and kindles and an internet full of words but they do us no good because most of them are so safely vacuous we don’t even remember what was said. I’m right back where I started, searching for words that won’t come up empty. I hope I find them soon. I have a story to tell, but why? No words today. Nothing but the wonder.

2 thoughts on “Finding Words

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  1. The difficulty in writing is trying to package sensations into the words. No matter how emotionally consuming the words might be, or how intensely the words convey the intended effect… is impossible for the words to contain the sensations of the actual experience. It is the same with verbally expressing feelings, emotions, and sensations to other people. Perhaps people can try empathize, sympathize, and agree or disagree with our spoken words. But, again, they can never have the sensation(s) of the actual experience. As writers and Human Beings, we engage our best efforts in our writing and in how we live our lives. We do not have to please anyone else in the process. The best writers do not write to satisfy the pleasures of others. They write for the love of writing. The people who live the fullest lives do not live to satisfy the expectations of others. They live for the love of living.

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