Words trickle down my arms into my fingertips and somehow make the inter-dimensional trip to the white screen. Like that scene in “Chariots of Fire” where the English chaps run along the beach. Except these words, with glimmering hope in their eyes, destination in sight, rush headlong toward death. A shiny obsidian cliff with an infinite drop. So here I am, playing God.
Without scruple I sentence these halting, insubstantial words. I shackle their feet and bind their hands and away they are whisked single file to the awaiting trains. These old lumbering trains whose wretched smoke fill the skies pitching the earth in shadow... perpetual shadow. Helios died a long time ago, or perhaps he hides, or perhaps he kneels before the golden calf of capitalism. Men no longer worship the sun, or his sister the moon, or the Gods of old who died before the arrival of Jesus. Fuck, they don't even worship the God Elohim, Jehovah, Jahveh, Yaweh, or Shem Hammephorash (if you like). Men worship idols made of gold, silicon, platinum, and celluloid. Men worship the quantity theory. Back-room alchemists laboriously study fluctuations and trends and through some magic known only unto them amass riches.
” Money, clothes, and ho's.” The new Hammurabi Code.
Words written in stone, bronze, parchment, paper, magnetic strips, compact discs, and now words written nowhere. Non-words. Words floating about, riding the fiber optic wave, from one isolated beach to another to another to another. There was a time to be literate, to understand the manipulation of words, to have the ability to create words, to create worlds – to translate them, to transmute them, to alchemize or alchemate or alchemulate words; to spin words out of air as the millers daughter spun straw into gold, was to understand power.
13 comments:
Ah, the total and complete unrecognized power of words. In this day and age, we have all lost sight of the value of the individual word. We take words - language - very much for granted, just as we take our eyes, our power of vision for granted. Both are tremendously flexible and wide-ranging powers - which have hardly ever been described in any complete way, never mind explained. Language is a powerful instrument. It is used in many different ways and constitutes one of the principal forces controlling and forming human behavior. Words crystalize our thoughts. Make our thoughts recoverable. Make the thought of others recoverable. However, very few realize this. Those insubstantial words you have shackled, bound and whisked away single file will disappear from memory very quickly; the meaning remains. Carry on, lumbering trains. Carry on.
God! I love words!!!
Nietzsche had a nice take on grammar - he renounced his statement that God was dead because of grammar - claiming that language is a chaos of such magnitude that there is no way that man alone could harness it, therefore God had to exist.
For me the word 'fuck' which is the most grammatically flexible word in the English language is possibly proof of God. Fucking excellent.
Really amazing isn't it? too bad i have not really grasp the menaing of it.
I'm not so sure whether or not I agree with Exploring_Idly. I feel that we abuse the power of words, rather than take them for granted. It is human emotion and reaction to situations that cause us to abuse or flaunt our language. I agree that words allow our thoughts and emotions to be recognized, and I find us all to love and embrace the challenge of creating, mixing, matching and molding our own personal expression into masterpieces of art and work no matter what/which connotation one so chooses to use.
Language is our tool for communication. The power of the word is essential to the power perspective and understanding.
Awesome work here, Herm. I think this is my favorite so far.
Happy Thanksgiving, Spermes.
Gobble. Gobble. Gobble.
despite the advances of civilization and its discontents, words remain our constant companion for communication and manipulation. without words we are waving our hands in the air, straining for meaning. with them we plunge our swords into our dreams and fears.
Sshhhh, for i am concentrating. Hard. These words create such a sweet rhythm in my head as the thoughts behind them flourish and flow through my vein.
You write well hermes.
Hammurabi Code Law I'd like to talk about this more.
Till then Happy Turkey Day.
Ah, you have captured so well why I hate instant messaging. My friends think I am hopelessly archaic.
My subpar commenting doesn't do you justice, but I do enjoy reading your words. They alternately invite me and make me draw back; what a brilliant combo.
Cheers.
Words are entropic. Constantly degenerating. Open to a million interperetations. To be able to speak across the lines of understanding and experience is near impossible.
Excellent.
Actually, I think that abuse and take for granted are lil' twins.
Sometimes I think language is so cumbersome, ill-suited to the purposes we would have it serve and then I read what you and others write and I acknowledge my misunderstanding.
i miss your words Hermes. i honestly need it right now.
this layout is possesed my friend.
Excellent use of otherwise common words.
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