For Being a Wordy Bastard...

I've lately been pondering just how weak words actually are. A bit sad, and mildly sobering, for a man plying his trade and spending his leisure with words. But when you really start thinking (as with a sustained analysis of anything), you come to the realization that words are at best a clumsy simulacrum representing the ideas underlying them. At worst, they are little more than guttural grunts.

My strength in writing, if you can call it that, is crazy imagery and original similes/metaphors, fueled by an ever-ticking imagination, always five seconds from explosion. My weaknesses are the words, and the inability to finish longer stories. We'll concentrate on the words right now.

Saturday morning, I had to drive at 7:30 A.M. Apparently, I was traveling eastward, for the silken sunlight draped over my car, engulfing me in a golden fleeced blindness. Just as Jason lulled the ram to sleep, so too did I find myself blinded and drifting off.

Now, I experienced the sunrise. It is no different from sunset, save being in reverse. I think that people only say you should watch a sunrise because it's more the effect of waking up while it's still quiet, and being alone, isolated, in your thoughts. If we lived in the 17th century, no one would tell you to watch a sunrise. you'd be up with the sun anyway, and too busy to have to deal with such romantic nonsense. (Standard disclaimer: I still love sunrises.) And, as usual, I digress.

My conveyance to you of the sunrise rings imperfect. There is no way, short of merging with you, casual reader, heart and soul, that I can properly set to words the sunscape. And this isn't limited to nature. Science, math, business processes, all of these I fail, for my words also fail them. There is no justice. There is just ice.

Part of this is the degradation of my vocabulary from my halcyon college days, when I could spin phrases in casual conversation that would send people to the dictionaries to look for the definition. Keep in mind I have higher standards for my own speaking abilities than what I expect from others, but I do not live up to those standards in everyday conversation anymore. You've heard me speak, if you're reading this. I sound like a buffoon, and my word choice is that of a lobotomized chimpanzee. The words fail me, and I fail the words.