Tag: Words

Categories
Life

Words Are Not BIG Enough

The room glowed orange. And LOVE. A wooden carving of the word sat against the wall in my room, opposite my meditation cushion, on top of a painting of my favourite tree (the letters light up if I really want them to. I very rarely want them to.)

I’ve become increasingly frustrated with words and their inability to capture and express the absolute truth of the concepts they frame. Love is one of the best examples of that, for me.

Love, for instance, is on a spectrum, for starters. There are differing types of love, differing levels of depth, differing levels of understanding of it as a concept, differing levels of experience with it.

And here is the problem I have: LOVE, the word, is far too small.

It is too small to capture

and hold

the vast ocean

that love

truly

is

to me.

So I get a little frustrated.

Words, in general, are a little frustrating to me, because even people we share a language with will never know the exact meaning of a word according to our perception and expression of it.

An example. I experienced the most profound moment the other day, when discussing some things with my beautiful, spiritual counsellor. She is trying to help me work through some of my energy blocks, at the moment, but as we discussed a particular topic I found myself fumbling. I knew exactly why.

Words. They were vastly limiting us in a few ways: one way being our different perception of particular words (it seemed we weren’t quite on the same page). Another being the energy beneath the concept I was trying to express. The whole thing seemed far bigger than any means of communication we had in our toolbox to discuss it with. It was as if we were trying to catch a whale with a plastic fishing rod. It was just never going to happen.

I even said to her that I felt so frustrated because I couldn’t possibly express the depth of what I was trying to convey to her in words. This was a feeling. But it was also something so much more than a feeling.

I don’t need to capture the entire universe and express it in form. But if I did…words couldn’t possibly reach the heights I’d need to climb to pick that apple.

I wonder if there is any human tool that could.

I wonder a lot of things, actually.

Perhaps I’ll keep wondering.

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Categories
Poetry

Magical Questions

Where do thoughts go

once we have thought them?

Where does the wind go

once the storm has passed?

And why do so few wonder about life,

why do they not ask more

magical questions?

Like where do thoughts go?

(And the wind: are they together, somewhere?)

And how is it that these words

came to be called

words

when there is surely

a deeper dimension to language

and life

that will never be captured

by labels

and concepts.

Categories
The Darling Blog Of May

Darling Day 3. Beautiful.

Darling is a beautiful word.

It sounds like a hummingbird bird, hovering sweetly in her field.

It feels like a little bell that rings away the muck of a muddy day.

There are words that I know.

And there are words that I love.

Darling is a word that I love.

Because what lives within its delicate walls is a treasure greater than the word itself.

An essence.

A code.

A little piece of wonderland.

Beautiful and true.

Categories
A Blog a Day in May

The Best Thing I’ve Ever Written

I’ve just deleted it all.

On purpose.

Five whole paragraphs of the BEST thing I’ve EVER written.

We do that sometimes—us writers of words.

When ‘the force’ flies through us with alarming ease and grace, and we just know this is the one…until it’s not.

Because we’ve just read it all back.

And it’s not.

No.

Nopey, nopey…no.

Ah, yes. This creative life of mine.

What an absolute bloody shemozzle.

photo of woman smiling while siting on stairs and using white smartphone
Photo by rawpixel.com on Pexels.com

Categories
Nerdy Party Writing

How Mood Affects Writing

I’ll be honest with you. I-am-cranky. There. I’ve said it.

And now I don’t even know what words are going to end up in this sentence because my fingers are just banging away without me even thinking, without me even caring about what comes out of this cranky mind of mine.

Now.

In the spirit of maintaining some of the glass half fullness that I believe to be a more accurate representation of me, I thought I might take this opportunity to gather in my little nerdy corner and make the most of this mood. To close my eyes. To breathe. To think all the lovely nerdy thoughts. And to have a little nerdy party.

You guys wanna come? We could hang out in the corner for a while, have a little chat about how language and tone indicate mood in a piece of writing? More specifically, we could analyse some little pieces of cranky me above, and try to dissect and plump up some of my cranky, writerly ways? (Omg. Fun, huh?)

Yes! Let’s DO this!

I suppose there were a few indications at the start of this little post of mine that may have given cranky me away.

Readers (ahem, humans) are creatures of habit, tradition, and pattern

In my experience, the sentence I’ll be honest with you often leads to something negative. So, even though the words themselves might seem kind of innocent—depending on the context in which they are being used—in this case, we all knew what I was really saying. (Hint. I am cranky!)

Example: ‘Omg, Brooke. I’ll be honest with you. These nerdy parties of yours are such mega buzz kills.’ (Sure, you guys. I know you secretly love them. Wink face emoji.)

yeah printed white board
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Impact. Start with a bang

In fact, if I was really serious about bringing a reader into my cranky world, I’d have completely chopped out the I’ll be honest with you, and gotten straight to the point:

I-am-cranky. Boom. Like a punch in the face.

Imagine if that was the first sentence? Right away the reader would have been invested in my story. They’d have been curious. By starting with the words, I-am-cranky…I may have raised their eyebrows, a little. I may have prompted them to say, ‘But Brooke. Tell us why!’

ask blackboard chalk board chalkboard
Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Sentence length and flow

Humans really are creatures of symbolism and expectation, don’t you think? We often learn cool tricks without really even being aware we are doing so. One of those sneakily learned tricks is our ability to translate the flow of language.

You might have noticed my first few sentences were short and snappy, splattered onto the page like spitballs shot from the end of a pen? I suppose it’s dependent on many factors (such as culture or context) but often times, short sentences and singular words can indicate aggression. Anger. Hostility. (Ahem, crankiness.)

And then there’s the opposite side of the cranky coin. Long, rambling, breathy sentences. There’s something like one of those if you go back and have a look at paragraph two: a long sentence snapped in half with a single comma, delicately laced with the odd italic to really hit the cranky ball out to left field. (Btw. If we’re going to be really nerdy about it, bold seems a better way to emphasis angry words, to me. It’s just that italics is so much prettier, don’t you think?)

antique background blur book
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Well! I hope you enjoyed my little nerdy cranky party. I sure did! In fact, have you noticed? I’m not cranky anymore! Just look at all the joyful exclamation marks a simple nerdy party can bring to this life of mine.

Yes. I really do think I should have more of these nerdy parties. Especially if I ever get the cranks up again.

Ps: Thanks for coming!

xx Brooke

Categories
The Darling Blog Of May

Darling Day 3. What’s in a word?

Let’s talk about words.

I adore words. I wrote about them here and I will, no doubt, write about them again on this blog because… I’m a little bit nerdy, like that.

I love writing words.

I love reading them, hearing them, thinking them. But most of all: I love feeling them.

Writing is one of those feeling things, for me. Reading also. And even though books have been a huge presence in my life for quite some time, it wasn’t until studying creative writing at university that I really started to think about words, and how they function in our lives.

Truly. I was stunned. How was it that something as simple as word choice could completely change the meaning of a sentence? And did you know that removing a word could enhance a sentence, rather than detract from it? I mean. What magic is that!

And so. I thought— why not dissect a word during the darling blog of May? Pick a word; play with it. Search for the magic hidden in its guts and sprinkle that magic around so all of you can share some too. Wouldn’t that be darling?

Yes! Let’s do it! And, in honour of the darling blog of May, the lucky word that will be chopped in half and gutted will be…

Darling. (Ha! I bet you didn’t see that one coming.)

Dar-ling.

The start of the word is a little bit ugly, isn’t it? (My Australian accent thinks so, anyway). To me, DAR drops off the tongue like a rock that’s just been lobbed into the ocean. It’s clunky. And not at all graceful.

But.

If we look at the end of the word—the LING sound—can you hear how it flings itself off the tongue? Isn’t-that-cool? It sounds like a lovely little handbell on a hotel countertop, one you could ring and ring all day just to hear the tinkling goodness of its song.

To me, it’s the LING part of darling that makes the word chime. It’s the LING that makes the word sing.

Darling.

Darling.

See? Pretty, isn’t it?

Then there’s the deeper stuff of words, the emotions that naturally rise from a word because of how we’ve heard it used before. Take darling, for example. We’ve all heard it said a thousand times, and usually, it’s said with a deep puff of love. It makes sense that when we hear the word darling, we will feel nice.

Of course, the word darling doesn’t always bring in all the good feels. Mums? Dads? I’ll bet you’ll agree. The word darling can be something of a double-edged sword when it comes to using it on our precious little cherubs. At least, it is in my house.

Example 1. ‘Darling. Please. Get down off the TOP rung of the ladder. For the HUNDRETH time.’

Example 2. ‘Darling. You are so many different kinds of lovely. Never change.’

How epic is that. ONE word. So many meanings.

So! We come to the end of my little nerd fest. I hope you forgive me for putting you through all that, especially if you’re not a big reader or writer. Then again, it is all a part of this little darling month of mine—pushing the boundaries of darling, seeing just how much this little word has to give.

I think it gives an awful lot. I so hope you agree. xx

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The darling blog of May

Categories
Writing

The Power of Words

The word peach makes me feel like summer.

I love that.

Maybe it’s the colour: dappled orangey, yellowy, red—to me, that colour sings. Just like summer.

Summer sings.

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It could also be the many hundreds of peaches I’ve slurped down over my thirty-something summers that give the word peach that summer feeling. Sticky fingers and dribbles down the chin—loving every minute, hating every minute, too.

No wonder those classic summer fruits have chiseled a feeling into my bones.

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The word peach; the visual peach; the feeling…

Peach.

 Surely it’s not just me that feels it.

It’s the power of words, right?

Fascinating, isn’t it, that when we know a language so well we barely even think about the words that come tumbling out of us, and yet they paint our whole world.

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Lately I’ve been wondering: why do certain books make me feel down to the very core, whilst others just make me smile?

I think I know one reason.

Words.

And the magic they puff up, and around, and all over us.

Peach.

Cocktail by the pool, anyone?