Words Bend Time
and outrun light...
You have an inside joke with a friend or partner, something that dates back years or even decades. You read a poem to your lover when you were first together. Maybe it was even something that enticed them to fall in love with you. Your mom read you a book as a child. And you read the same book to your children. And there’s that line from Rilke that shepherded you through a rough time.
Words are mystics, allowing us to time travel with them, back to the beginning. Back to when their feeling on your lips was new. Back to better or harder times. Back to the end of something, maybe. Or an end and a beginning.
Words are magic creatures. And we discount their magic all the time. But we can change that. We are all poets. We are all alchemists of words. And we can all change the universe with a few well-chosen verses.
There is a thread dedicated to this idea in the novel Waking Up at Rembrandt’s. And it plays out in mystical ways throughout the storylines. Here’s an example:
words: study 5 we do not create words, we discover them. words have their own identities, their own minds, their own sense of purpose. right and wrong, left and right, true north. we build fences to contain them, they slip through the rails. we lock them in their rooms, they move through walls. they hide under beds, smoke cigarettes in bathrooms. they eat junk food, read dirty magazines. fornicate with other words. we call words to the table. but they may not answer or they may not eat. words play with their food. if you kill their spirit, they die. lying flat on the page, translucent. the dna of words cannot be mapped. there’s only a probability of words. words fold space. bend time. outrun light.
If you want to follow the whole thread, and walk this magic road along with Jillian, Maggie, Phillip, and Dillon, you can order a copy of Waking Up at Rembrandt’s now.
