Friday, September 5, 2014

What is a word

Intimate is such a delicate word, isn't it? No hard consonants, no long, obnoxious vowels. The sound of the word seems intrinsic to its meaning. It's a soft word that rolls off of the tongue and dissolves like cotton candy in the air. It's such a fragile word... an almost perfect ononmatopoeia for the concept of vulnerable trust; exposed and defenseless.

What is a word, anyway?

That's like saying why do people ask questions, or...

After giving it quite a bit of thought, I arrived at this description of what a word actually is:

The thoughtful essence of a thing.

Or... The attempt to describe, or translate the essence of a thing by condensing it into terms which are, by necessity, finite and truncated in order to fit within the local structure of language...

...an abstract essence which, by....

...is made more accessible as a concept... and more manageable as...

...has been made manageable by reduction to finite terms, in order to more easily fit into the structure of...

Words are extremely limited and simplified descriptions of abstract ideas, condensed to the simplest finite terms which, due to the limitations of language...

A word is an abstract idea contained within simple boundaries consisting of...

...an abstract idea which is given meaning in finite terms in order to contain it and to separate it from other bounded, word-like ideas.

Yeesh. What the heck just happened?

Alone. Not the definition, but the simple expression of a few bits of information. Hollow sound that feels like an endless, empty tunnel. It has just enough structure to thoroughly describe the concept of isolation, and...

...just enough substance to build an echo around...

...the yearning for the simplest, most basic compliment to define it.

I feel so far away from everything, especially.