words

Words

by Allen Darling

There will be things you’ll wish you had said - the perfect retort, a fleeting insight, or I love you. Thank you.

And there will be things you’ll wish you had never said: words spoken in haste, or reproach, in anger or simply ignorantly unaware of how your words sounded in other ears.

How did words become so powerful?

Wondrous rhapsodic locutions weaving mellifluent magics of meaning from chaotic collections of glyphs and symbols.

jambalaya

kerfuffle

nincompoop

phantasmagoria

if

paleontogy

fuck

Splendiferous spewing of syllabic segues creating cycles of civilization in the ethereal void.

gallimaufry

opalescent

effervescent

stimuli

cosmology

falafel

I had a lesson the first time I sat in a meeting with indigenous americans who were 'Indians' at the time (words!). We sat down but no one spoke. And still no one spoke. And then, no one spoke. After many fidgety (there’s a nice word) minutes for a naive (hah!) kid from a different cultural background (whitey), someone finally broke the silence and said a few thoughtful words about the issue at hand, which was saving a historical site (that is, sacred site, words, i mean there is no getting away from them). He spoke softly, staring into the middle distance, and when he finished, "Ho” and a few voices in

the room echoed “Ho” "Ho” and then another millennium of silence until the next person spoke. Silence, a speaker and silence again and so on. And it seemed to me they were not thinking of what to say in those silences. In fact i don’t think anyone knew what they were going to say. Each speaker was waiting for their heart and mind to come into balance so that when they spoke, not knowing what they were going to say, but knowing whatever they said would be their truth and possibly even be the gestalt (i’m not even going to go there) of the whole group "Ho. So have I spoken”. In the intervening silences each speaker's words had time to resonate, integrate, settle on the group like a blanket of collective

thought. In contrast the city council meeting on the same topic was a cacophony (yeah, so?) of motions, interruptions, shouting and eventually delaying a decision to a later date. To be fair, neither meeting resolved anything, but that’s another story.

oxymoron

discombobulate

efficacious

mackle

opsimath

maelstrom

cadydid

metonymy

wampeter

All of which is simply to say: May you be careful with your words. Try to find the one that says it just right. Become intimate with nuance. Make a pun. It may help if you try to speak the truth but even that isn’t always for the best. And anyway, Einstein proved that truth is relative, only becoming absolute as you approach the speed of light, which very few of us ever do, except in death of course. Good

intentions may also help us speak with clarity but are no guarantee of positive outcomes. So be careful and mindful with your words. Make your words uplifting and never hurtful. And be generous with your silence when it's not your time to speak. Word.