WORDS

Words.

Words are such worthless things.

Packets of meaning, symbols rich with purpose, and yet utterly, completely, useless.

Every word written is an effort in futility, an attempt to capture something which cannot be contained. I want to capture the meaning, the feeling, the essence of a moment or a thought. Yet every word I pick, despite it's objective meaning, will have a subjective package provided by the reader.

Some packages are subtle, unknown, as ethereal as an echo on the wind, like the feelings and thoughts that were around them when they learned the meaning for the word. A simple word, like 'fascinating', may have connotations of a favourite moment or show. For me, its a certain well known pointed eared Vulcan, uttering it with a simple unemphatic voice. His lack of emotion was in its own way, a wrapper for this word. Now, forever, for me, I can find a thing fascinating, despite whatever emotion should be tied to it. Yet others lack this wrapper, others lack this context, and so for them, the word, whose meaning is known, means something else.

Some packages are harsh, their meaning changed by the use of society and people, taken and twisted to fit a new case. Consider 'decimated', once meaning to have reduced by a tenth, hence the 'deci' at the beginning. But now, through sheer force of societal inertia, simply means to destroy. Yet, even in that use, it somehow sounds worse than destroy. If someone has decimated their enemy, it is a thing of brutality. Yet, once, that word, with it's defined meaning, meant something else.

To capture a thing with words is to capture only a part of it, a sliver, a whisper. The emotions of a moment, lost, frozen, forever faded. Like a picture to a movie, or a movie to a memory, or memory to moment, each a faded echo of what once was. Each a lesser telling of the truth of what was once a flash in the pathways of eternity. Eventually all meaning fades, the words are forgotten, and the language dead.

Though we can read the hieroglyphs of Egypt, there live none upon the earth who can speak it. The sound of the words, ascribed to long ignored Gods, now as silent as a sarcophagus.

Why a sarcophagus, because my mere use of that word pulls you inexorably towards the ancient of Egypt, to the pyramids, and temples, and tombs. A word, which despite having meaning beyond the shores of the Nile, is forever linked to that fertile river, and the flow of history inexorable. Where is that meaning in it's definition?

Sarcophagus: a stone coffin, typically adorned with a sculpture or inscription and associated with the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Rome, and Greece.

But who, who among you, when I used that word, thought of Rome or Greece first, and not of Egypt? And why not? Because I was talking about Egypt, the pump was primed, the board was set, the move was made, and you were forced into the box I wanted.

And yet, there may yet be some of you for whom the trap was not sprung, thinking instead of another place, another time, another memory tied to a word, a wrapper to mask and massage meaning. To you I say, bravo! You bested my trap, and in so doing, only proved my other.

Words.

Words are such worthless things.