oleaginous...gallus...
I love words and the combination of sounds that make them. I love to roll them around my tongue and feel the soft whirr where my tongue and palate meet to produce that fine Scottish, rhotic 'r'...beloved of linguists and those who wish to take the piss out of a Scottish accent...if only they could.
I love to notice the small explosion created when the air from my lungs is stopped by the complete closure of my mouth and then released to make that 'p' sound...try it.
I love the words that describe those sounds...plosive...fricative...
I love words.
I especially love words when you string them together and the words and the sounds create meaning...telling a story that mesmerises or makes a poem that says 'what you've always thought but never expressed so well...'
In my work, I chase words around. I try to find the right combination of words to convey what I think are often important ideas of freedom and justice and power. I don't always manage it...
My quest is to find the right word that will unlock meaning so that the person who hears the words will hear and understand them, for sure...but will also somehow be caught up in the words and move through them into action. The words I use matter...they influence the thinking of others and if they influence thinking, they will have some impact on what people do.
I find myself saddened sometimes at the way we use words in Human Services. Many of our words convey messages at odds with the ways in which we say we want to work...we're always taking, bringing or allowing and our words reveal our beliefs about who is in charge. If we're not taking or permitting, we're reducing everything to letters and initials or acronyms that are really the jargon of the people who are in power...and our letters strip away the potency of the ideas being conveyed or the important information and meaning that the words are intended to carry....PCP, PWD, VDQ...
I've read policy documents intended to discuss real and useful change for people and, although I've known the meaning of the individual words, I've often been unable to make sense of the sentence. Worse than that, I've made my own contribution to the confusion, usually when trying to engage boards or funders or bureaucrats. I've done my share of 'accessing' and 'transitioning' in my time.
Words are used that suggest that people are simply commodities...beds, packages, consumers. I've heard words used to describe important ideas about a person's potential, they gifts they offer and the people in their lives that would sound more at home on the floor of the stock market than in any endeavour concerned with assisting people to enjoy and experience the good life. These are words that diminish as surely as any curse or insult, limiting opportunity and potential and understanding.
I love words. Use the wrong word and the life is sucked out of a person or situation and the words can ring in their ears for a lifetime. The right word, spoken warmly and in truth, can take our ordinariness and somehow light us up from the inside, inspiring us, challenging us, nourishing us...
I want to be more careful with the words I use. I want not just to love words but to have my words express love...
“I know nothing in the world that has as much power as a word. Sometimes I write one, and I look at it, until it begins to shine.”
Emily Dickenson
