Tuesday, July 26, 2011

The wonder of words

There are entire books that are dedicated to the wonder of the written word.  Authors exalt them.  Readers savour them.  Children marvel at them.  Students learn them.  They are words!  Words that are the cornerstone of communication.  While our bodies apparently have a lanuage of their own, they can not express or describe as well words. 

The word itself... :WORD: seems unworthy of describing its own function.  But then, words are so beautiful that each and every one of them is worthy.  Some words come together in a way that is soporific to the reader.  That is the sad truth about the most powerful weapon known.  It must be controlled, it must be wielded by a speaker or writer or even a reader and given life.  It must be given meaning.  The author breathes life into the printers' ink that forms the marks on the paper. 

Authors often pay homage to their greatest tool.  They write of the joy that words bring them. 
A Book... a community of words that work together to tell a story! 
Books bring such pleasure as they invite us into their very own world.  Authors praise their fellow authors, their contemporaries, their favourites and their successors.  They are amazed by the composition of foreign lands and fictional characters.  Then they sit down and do it themselves. 

Then readers take their favourite parts, the delicious words, and quote them.  They enter them on websites and write them on posters and hang them on their mirrors.  We all partake of this gourmet meal of paper and ink.  We find our favourite course and order it again and again.  We relish it over and over.  We roll the words around on our tongue until they melt like a chocolate sauce.  We experience the joy and sorrow of the characters.  We travel the lands of literature.  We hate the villians and cheer for the heroes.  We hope and we grieve and we dream and we love and we hate and relax while we read.  The joy that reading can bring is indescribible. 

I have rambled enough I suppose.  But it is vitally important that I tell you.  I must share my thoughts on this one subject.  Words, especially written words are windows used by our minds to see.  The written word allows us to the see the world through the eyes of others.

When words are wielded by the talented, they are more powerful that we can ever really know. 

Okay... I'm done.