But the most fascinating thing for me was—and is, still—that there were words, lined up to say one thing and another, but one’s response was not exactly to the words, and what they appeared to be saying, but to something enormous and living beyond that, which the words exactly entailed.

-Deborah Eisenberg

I have thought this for a long time. I’ve thought that words are the stones that mark out the outlines of greater thoughts and ideas—even another world. They are so very little in themselves, these poor words. But they have such power at times, when wielded.

Books, poems, they have a use. They are particular and different than other ways of conveying ideas. Music has it’s own, movies have their own, conversation, theater, photographs—they have their own particular strength and logic. Each has a cause and effect.

But words as so dear to my heart. Words on a page or spoken out loud move me like nothing else.

Even talking to myself, I am in awe so very often of what words can give me.

I think of Archimedes “Give me a place to stand and I will move the earth.”

He was speaking of the mechanical tool, the lever. Words to me are the lever of the soul. Give me a way to string the words and who can’t I move?

At least that is the possibility.