Immediately on hearing the phrase “restless syllables”, the space around my head is filled with floating letters, individual and lively little figures that all come from the 26-letter long litany that is our alphabet. A’s,B’s,C’s,D’s, and Q’s,T’s,R’s,W’s, carved out of thin air , moving to the rhythms of the breezes that come blown from forces in my head; forces i would not yet call thoughts.
It’s as if an old-time animator from the Disney gang looked inside my skull and decided to make a cartoon of what was going on inside it. The air is chock full of small animals, little insects, tiny worms of words, arabesquing to practically silent music, but all happy and content in their existence. These individual minute marks, both capital and lower case, dance as if no one is looking, as if they’ve not a thought in their heads but to move and fill the space around me with energy of their gentle embrace. Their life is to move and move and move until i capture them, own them, brand them as mine.
It is a lively and companionable barn dance, and i am its host.
Yes, they are restless, but they are not totally without aim.
All it takes is for me to put on my intellectual apron, go to the kitchen of my mind, and begin to bake those squirmers into words, thoughts, coherent meaningful phrases, and i am soon able to set a table filled with a meal i wish to share with another. Because without sharing, the marks remain cyphers.Nothing but ingredients.
Because words are nothing but the gathering of little tiny marks floating, ballooning the universe with their weightless lack of significance, until they are instilled with purpose.
So, if one opens one’s imagination to the very idea, we are never alone , without material to create with, to form from, to concoct into recognizable words that have lives all their own.
Once the letters – those dancing dervishes- are joined together, then the words fling about with a bit more discipline and before you know it, a Nutcracker Suite of verbal snowflakes fill the air and an entire life has more weight to it than it did before. Before language, we whirl in an ether we cannot contain.
Letters give me words, words give me shape, shape gives me meaning.
Letters give me words, words give me phrases, phrases give me thoughts, thoughts give me even more meaning than I ever thought I could have. My restless words become who I am, and the more specific gravity I endow them with, the clearer the meaning of my existence.
WE are letters, we are shapes, we are floating specs yearning to breathe free until we join and breathe life into each other, for letters, words and language are the common tango of us all.
It is a passionate dance. A dance that joins heart and mind, making us human.
So, grab your partners, oh partners, and blend into the waltz.
By Aline Soules
On January 1, 2023
Great piece. Aline
By Evalyn Baron
On January 1, 2023
Thanks!
By Paul DeLong
On January 8, 2023
A number of lovely phrases, but the one that stands out to me most of all is “Nothing but ingredients.” Words are bridges to others, but by some magic, they are also bridges to unheard, even mute, portions of ourselves. In some kind of call and response, we find ourselves through our cooing and calling to ourselves. Wonderfully thoughtful piece, which I will read again. Though, I might humbly venture that despite the crampons and ice picks, the handles in the slip stream that words do provide, we still live in “an ether we cannont contain.” Thanks for the conversations started here, Evalyn, and enjoy your dance! 🙂 Paul
By Paul DeLong
On January 8, 2023
Oh my, I left out an adjective. LOL. As in “remarkable.” “Remarkable piece of reflection.” 🙂 Paul