Strain of Consciousness #1 (Day 128)

November 29, 2013 by K 2 Comments

There are words with hard edges, like regret. These words make you wince when you speak them, so you tuck them away, and only think of them. Then there are words that come packaged in warm syllables. These words sometimes embody disaster, words like ambivalence and anger. Words that are spoken so often, they are hot from the friction of lips rubbing together. Polished to a pulp, these words define certain actions, certain ways of being, yet they lack an emotional definition. We use these words because they don’t mean a thing. Contradictory words to describe things that won’t ever meet an understanding.

I’m protective of these words. The words that are selfishly stolen and robbed of true meaning. I have a disdain for people who take these words for themselves. I have a disdain for people who created these words, these ’emotions’, for themselves.

If words are inherently recycled and untrue, then what is emotion? What is sadness, and happiness, really? What is melancholy? When I think of melancholy, I think of a grey rainy day, and I have forced myself to believe that I am feeling an emotion akin to weather. Can a word be weathered? Can the weather be described by a word that holds one single definition? Can the weather be described by a word that holds four definitions, each succeeding the other in hierarchical order? I’m not one to trust the dictionary. I’m not one to trust words. And I’m not very trusting of the users of such words.