Sunday night I sat in front of my fire and read the NY Times. It is winter, it is cold, windchill against the walls of this old house, sweaters and tea, economy, politics, Gaza. Today is the inauguration of the 44th president of the United States. It’s been said that one of the influencing factors in this presidential race was one campaign’s better use of words--more convincing, more visionary, more “hopeful.” How we use language, in some ways, cuts to the core of why we write, why words matter, and for heaven sakes, why we even bother to talk. Our words hold the potential to advance ideals, to help distinguish right from wrong, to motivate, to affect…and sometimes potential never becomes more than an idea, and sometimes it seems that war is what happens when we run out of things to say.
A friend of mine used to write, a respected, high profile journalist. She lost faith in words and became a documentary photographer, telling stories, the same stories, with images that writers describe. It was the only way she could continue on as a witness, as a storyteller. She, indeed we, are all still caught in words, in finding compelling ways to tell our stories to ourselves, and to convince those around us of who we are, of who we want them to see. Our friendships, relationships, hinge on how well we use words, spoken or written. I wonder what would happen if the world lost faith in words, I wonder if that is what is already happening in many corners. In an admittedly simplistic view point, the Palestinians and Israelis have lost faith in each other and in the hope of past, present, and future words exchanged, and now bullets and blasts of rounds the new syntax. One article in the Times discussed how the neighboring Arab governments cannot reach consensus on action, so the various heads of state don’t gather, don’t summit, don’t throw words up into the Eastern sky as mortar interference. Silence and inaction is the advance of troops, boots on dirt, one foot in front of the other, approaching the next wall.
When it is quiet, my photojournalist friends tell me, at dawn, or if standing outside the city, the missiles echo, the flares whistle, the rocket launches’ sub sonic booms rattle spines and hot plates, door hinges. Six million people have converged on Washington, D.C. today. Radios and televisions hum with song and speeches-- these are the sounds on this side of the world as the afternoon sun widens to a soft saffron haze against an incoming night. It is my ‘hope’ that we do not try to rewrite history with this new administration, that we take the hits from the past decade as information, that as we untangle the many knots, we don’t let go of the string of lessons learned. That we, as uncomfortable as it is, continue to strain to hear the shifting sounds from across oceans and time zones, that as jumbled as we may sometimes sound, we continue bravely and with effort, giving our words as collateral against mere potential.
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It is, indeed, refreshing to hear our national leader speak well; one takes almost a personal pride in the fact that "our" leader understands the language and glories in the sound of it as well as the sense. I appreciate the admonition that we not use this "new" sense of the language to sever the trials and lessons of the recent past so skewed by doublespeak and evasion.
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Kirsten,
Your post offers much wisdom to me after a week when much talk, many eloquent and lofty words, have amazingly, stunningly moved to center stage. So much is at stake, as you say: "Our words hold the potential to advance ideals, to help distinguish right from wrong, to motivate, to affect…and sometimes potential never becomes more than an idea, and sometimes it seems that war is what happens when we run out of things to say." I often wonder if we all might do well to take ourselves out of the constant talking, the incessant noise, to have a brief break from the too much that flows from all of our babbling mouths and typing fingers, to have even a short reprieve from being all a-chatter all the time, 24/7. To reclaim in and with and through silence some of what, I think, we will be needing as we go forward to try to begin to measure the continuing depths of how much is broken for so many people in so many corners of the world. To find the collateral that we can then use, a spiritual hedge fund that invests our words as well as our deeds with meaning, insight, and truth.
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