Study no.1: Words

Words are the essential elements of my life.

They make me employable, relatable,

visible. I will not say I am nothing without

words but to be without them would induce

a particularly venomous vacuum.

My dependence on explication smacked me

in the face while at temple. There I witnessed

another human whose words seemed to come

at great expense. While I use words like paper

towels at a picnic this human labored to expel

each one only to find that most were hardly

understood. The audience at hand repeated

or rephrased. The speaker also repeating

and rephrasing until meaning was met with

a shadow of receipt.

Sometimes we in the waking, walking,

warbling world observe disability with

horror, disbelief, or even distant sympapathy.

That is to say, when we 'can't even imagine'

what life would be like in the other's place,

we say so, acknowledging our emotional

limitation while allowing the brain to feel

some sense of performed human duty. I

know this place, because it is the place we

all go when we don't know what to do or say.

Please understand that I am not speaking

with any authority on the matter. I am not

asking you to do something out of an

altruistic bottom of your heart kind of

place. I'm not sure what I'm doing.

I am not sorry that I have something

another does not, but I'm also not proud

of it. It's like when someone compliments

your face. I didn't have much choice in the

matter. And while I can refine and reorganize

my words in ways that might appeal to others

or persuade, the fact that I can speak is no

more my doing than my brown eyes or big ears.

In the classroom I would say that phrase three

or four times until I was sure you had it.

I remember when I learned how to save

money. I promise this has a point. I learned

this important lesson when all the money I had

and could use was my own. No one was

paying the bills except for me.

During those years, I held on tight to every

paycheck and worried a hole into my

lower intestine. I could not waste anything

on items or experiences that were cheap

or fleeting.

But words have never been out of reach.

Even when my proverbial pit is of

Olympic proportions, I will spend more

words with a hope to get myself out. I

have never been in a position in which

my vocabularic bank account was at

risk of being overdrawn. Or at least I

would like to pretend that is the case.

So here is the point. Something is only

precious when there is very little of it.