Monday, April 13, 2009

Words Can Never Make Up for What You Do

When I was a kid I was good with words like others were good with basketball or trombone or getting people to kiss them. I had a way with words, and words had a way with me. We still have our way with each other, on a regular and mostly satisfactory basis. While I don’t think language is the province of the fancy and the few, I believe there is something to be said for being good with words (and it takes words to say that something.) Still, sometimes there really just are no words.

Certain emotions and sensations end up expressing themselves as best they can: through a series of shrugs or mix tapes, longing looks, little laughs tucked into the corner of your mouth, crying jags, the flex of a hand, the tap of a foot, the way you shake your hair out of a ponytail or smooth your shirt or inexplicably touch a wall, how you touch someone’s back or arm at the precise moment and pressure they need you to, the measure of your laugh, the intensity with which you look something up for someone on the internet, do a favor, keep your mouth shut, come out fighting, reach or someone, pour a drink, steal a kiss, sneer, sigh, shudder, hold your breath, a door, a thought.

Not to get all grad school phenomenology class on you, but all that’s language. Each smile we burn, pain we show, tremor we swallow: all words in their way.

And we all have some sort of way with them.

No comments: