Furious At Words

For two months, I realized I could live and function daily quite well (perhaps better) without being consumed with what's hot on Memeorandum. But that's not why the question of giving up blogging occured to me (that is, after my tsunami anniversary posts were published).

I didn't want to write - anywhere - ever - again - period.

I'm not a social constructionist, but as a (former?) writer and marketer you wonder about the impact of writing and conversations and language - if any. In a recent post, Lisa Haneberg writes, "To change what’s real, change the conversation. One of the most powerful ways to create change is to shift what people are talking about."

Changing the world one post at a time?

The fact was I was furious at words more than the futility of writing. (I pondered the A-List koan: if a blog falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?)

I wrote to Julie that my tsunami stories thus far have underwhelmed me (Julie spoke at Northern Voice about storytelling).

There is a gulf between letters on the keyboard, sentences on the screen and anything I know to be true. Words rang false. I wrestled with the world of language. I can never ever convey to you the pungent scent of cinnamon and how I was able to escape from the prying fawning fingers between the cracks of the seat by jutting my face out the window on the Hambantota bus. But it goes deeper than that.

Words stand between silence and silence: between the silence of things and the silence of our own being, between the silence of the world and the silence of God.

Yes. That's it in a nutshell. That's precisely why I did not want to write anymore.

I resolved the wrestle along the windy road to Nilambe on my second to last day in Sri Lanka. It it happened somewhere between the lace-and-sarong clad jug-woman and before the sack-aproned-tea-pluckers and long before the meditation center itself. Thomas Merton continues the quote and quietly confirms:

When we have really met and known the world in silence, words do not separate us from the world nor from other men, nor from God, nor from ourselves because we no longer trust entirely in language to contain reality. - Thomas Merton

p.s. I will create a new category on Writing. Words spoken from silence are perfumed with the source which they came from, said the mystic Jean Klein. (And I suppose that is what James Joyce was driving at when he philosophized about 'proper art'.)

Comments

[qbic]

Hi Evelyn,

Don't be underwhelmed. There are two levels to the things one write.

Level 1 is read and experienced by those who read and try to imagine, at "facevalue" what you are trying to say. Depending on the readers imaginative and emotive capacity he/she understands and feels what you feel.

Level 2 is read and experienced by those who have had similar experiences and can truely, by memories triggered through your words, relate to every word you write (feel the smells, the heat, the sounds) and actually be where you were or are while writing.

Walking throught the forest and hearing a bird sing is a different experience from walking through the forest and recognizing the warbling of a specific robbin somewhere up in the trees.

Knowledge and experience enhance the presens in what you write and I read.

You inspire Level 1 readers to find out more and seek the same experience and you create a bond between your text and the Level 2 reader who feels the power of sharing an experience.

Keep on trying to find the words to describe your inner world, you are doing wonderfully as it is...

My two cents

Robert Seyfert