Words

I've always loved words.

I love their texture, their taste, the way they roll off my tongue. I love the way you can sense the kinship between related words, through their sound or their spelling or structure - that you can almost trace the history of a word a few generations down. Words can sometimes seem alive that way - with their own family history and descendants waiting in the aisles as the language grows and changes - branching out into an, as yet, undetermined future.

I like playing with them and breaking them and putting them together again. I like them swirling around and melting into each other. I like the sound of that choice word going splat against the wall. And I love picking up the squishy little pile of whatwasonceaword and moulding its mangled form into something beautiful.

I love subverting them - taking a word and making it do my bidding, giving it meanings no one would ever impute. You can make words dance, if your soul sings them right. And you can sing to other souls. You can calm your own disturbed thoughts by putting them to word. You can stroke lovingly at another's angst till it is soothed and goes to rest.

Then, there's the subtle melting of a word into a meaning it might just have in just the right context, a juxtaposition of meaning, form and sound to make it play the games you want it to, to make it tease at your senses - looking like one thing, sounding like another, meaning something else altogether or maybe just its motion, as it leaves your tongue, conjuring up visions of things unsaid.