Sometimes I wonder if the true ideas behind our sentences can really be expressed in words. We humans have these sentiments, and we try to express them through language. But the words in our hearts are discordant with the words we speak, if not to ourselves then to everybody else, because each word is loaded with different colors of emotion for each person based on individual experiences and understandings of each word.
From this perspective of language, we are all separated by impenetrable boundaries. Yet most of us react to something which is a product of another human being, be it art, poetry or music. And in that moment maybe we do feel the same moment of complete silence and utter bliss, joy, ecstasy.
I don't know if others have felt the same way. That moment when nothingness enters your being. But that nothing is all, and you feel so complete just to witness this moment of truth.
I was going to write about Frederico Garcia Lorca for you, my friend, so far away in Harvard. I will leave you to explore his poetry. The collection "In Search of Duende" is a favorite of mine. It is the duende which I seek to find or to rekindle in the people around me, because it seems as if we have collectively lost our urge to experience life.
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7 comments:
I often think that words don't work. I know that much of my day is spent explaiining and clarifying what I said about simple things like the car or soup or the weather.
Writing is my attempt to get it right, but even there the words are slippery. I say today, you hear tomorrow.
What can we do?
Live with hope and keep writing.
When words fail us -- everything fails us.
words can never express a feeling perfectly.... but one can try...
Words are more powerful. one can express any feelings through words perfectly.
Words never fail us if we can make the right choice of words.
Very good post! Keep going...
I've been following this conversation and thought that you might like to see a blog I posted about writing about loss.
It's at my blog about my parents and their experiences in the Nazi concentration camps.
http://lightning-and-ashes.blogspot.com/2008/10/language-and-loss.html
So very true Athelas, our sentences
become catacombs, compiled with words wrought with every experience
we have ever actually felt or
which may have existed only in our
minds. A thought-provoking piece.
Very true, I have thought about that very difficulty many times.
:0)
Amazing! You captured the very imperfection of language but I think this "impenetrable boundary" could very well be what makes writing so captivating and mysterious. Then again, should writing be able to express the depth of human sensations completely? If words could capture emotions perfectly, the "live" experience itself would become somehow obsolete and that would be a very sad thing. I'll definitely read Duende (after my midterms are over lol), seems like an existential experience in itself!
P.S. Keep writing! Your poems are fantastic!
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