I've been known to throw around a complicated and arcane vocabulary. I like juicy words. I like words which have depth and color rather than utility. Why say "green" when you can say "verdant"? Why say "wild" when you can say "incorrigible" or "fractious"? Why say ANYTHING when you can find another more layered and succulent word. I've been known to call my boss a curmudgeon (he loved it) and my children hellions. (Last week, Gabe called me a buffoon-it's rubbing off!) These words actually spring to my mind more readily than simpler terms. I love learning a new word and storing it away for future use.
As you can see, I clearly have some form of a vocabulary disease. It all comes from reading incessantly as a child. It is not snobbery. I don't feel superior. I can't spell for crap and my attention to details in my writing is atrocious. You'll doubtlessly have noticed that my posts are littered with small errors, poor syntax, dropped words and other crimes against good writing. And furthermore, I'm often known to curse like a two-bit whore when I could have chosen a nice strong and juicy word instead.
But here's the thing. Good writing- good communication- is all about the thing I often lack. Simplicity.
I have been grappling with trying to express my feelings. This might sound crazy to some of you. Trust me. I'm NOT shy about expressing my feelings. If you hang out anywhere near me you will doubtlessly be subjected to my exuberant form of verbal diarrhea. I blather and babble about what I think and how I feel and how I'm getting my period, and whose poop I cleaned up yesterday and more personal information that you knew was possible in a ten minute time frame. But that is, essentially, the problem.
No simplicity. I talk myself in circles. I yammer on and on and after all the words, deep down I am not connecting. I am spilling all the surface stuff and keeping the deep stuff down deep. And when I try to find the words for that stuff-for the super secret, deep dank recesses of my private reserve - I can't spit anything out. My own big juicy vocabulary steeped brain is incapable of forming words. There is no access to "lugubrious" or "confounded" or whatever words would let me stop spinning and start understanding myself.
If I stand perfectly still and stop all the mental chatter I just feel my throat tighten and my heart beat and no words come.
A great friend of mine (the Curmudgeon himself) said something profound to me this week. He said: We are all so busy talking, we forget to listen. In fact, when we think we are listening what we are really doing is processing what somebody else's words mean to US and then we begin formulating what we will say in response, just waiting for our chance to talk again. What we have stopped doing is listening, listening not just to each other's words, but more importantly, we have stopped listening to what is behind the words. We must listen with our hearts and listen for the words coming from the hearts of others.
I think of the days when I held a nursling to my breast and looked into the eyes of my beloved. No spoken words were necessary to hear the words of my child's heart. I think of my wedding day, how I could barely meet Brian's eyes because the emotion was uncontainable, and his steady gaze was stripping away my veneer of poise and my heart was leaping with such joy I had to cry or scream (I cried). There were no words.
Almost any moment in my life of intense transcendent beauty or joy or just rightness that I can recall was wordless. Wordless.
I still believe in the power of words. I know we can make things happen by using words and we can change our lives and the lives of those around us with words.
But more importantly for me, I need to put down my crutch, my bag of vocabulary words, and feel my heart beat.
Feel my heart expand, and break, and expand again.
And then I can feel your heart beat.
And hear your heart-words.
Because you say more with your heart while holding my gaze than all the words in the world.
