words

powerful stuff.

i've been wooed by them. brought to tears by their sheer beauty. been made to laugh and challenged to see over a foggy hill. i like to think i have done the same for those in my life.

they can create misunderstandings, both small and profound. i confess i don't do *jobspeak* very well. please just say what you mean. i have run afoul of this more than once with colleagues and bosses, and in hindsight still don't appreciate the level of lotus-blossom sensitivity people bring to the shop each day. i have learned to preface with, "may i just be direct?", or mirror back, "am i understanding you as saying *x*?" but i rankle at and resent the extra effort. sigh. i have yet to find a salaried hermit position. 'nother thread, that. lol.

i have also been stunned by their power. i have been gagged and disemboweled, a useless husk, tossed down to the floor as by a titan. i have crashed into the wall of subterfuge. they taunt, they goad, they lie. they spin the room so fast to make you sick. they have been used as blunt weapons against me and one dear to me in what looks to be a war of attrition.

lucy's aunt and uncle climbed down from the canopy, wandered the savannah and over time, lil hairy hominids set up camp. for thousands of years, epics of victory and loss, the wonder of the skies and the honeyed stories of how we came to be were passed down. the spoken word leaves a trace only in memory.

with machines we now can speak and be heard even through another's absence. in the late hours, we hear the voice so long silent, and without control our water glass crashes to the floor.

yet remembering long-ago warnings of doom and feeling the squeeze of a not-so-rusty tinfoil hat, we look at something that fell from the ether and It Doesn't Read Right. wrong format; at best a rhetorical question, at worst a poke with a cruel stick. all i feel is uncertainty.

"i got the feeling that something ain't right...
clowns to left of me, jokers to the right,
stuck in the middle..." (intentional snip, dear readers...)

there are the three truths.

and there is what we want to believe.

maya's caged bird makes me terribly sad and cuts too close to bone. instead i begin my day with solitary emily:

"hope is the thing with feathers that perches in the soul - and sings the tunes without the words - and never stops at all."

:)