Words Like Water By Christopher Grubic

 Words are a crazy, wonderful thing. I like to imagine letters swirling around in a bright, crystal clear ocean. Their shapes and sizes are as varied as fish. Letters the size of whales or as small as plankton. The depth of this sea is immeasurable, yet the letters are there, in the void, waiting to be more. There are rivers of adjectives and icebergs of conjunctions and the rain is made of verbs. Nouns, like snowflakes fall silently on the grass or cascade down from the mountains like an avalanche.

Imagine a world with no words. Would we have found love without it? Meaning? Would there be wars or peace without words? Could there be hate?

A wordless existence would be a world without philosophy. The need to find ourselves in the universe would be a journey without a first step. Aristotle, Plato, Sarte and Dostoevsky would be animals in the grass, searching for food.

The body needs air to breathe, food and water to nourish, shelter and clothing to withstand nature. These are truths, undeniable. But how would man survive without community, knowledge and meaning? And could those things exist without words?

 

I write to be more.

 

I write for the letter fish in the sea and the avalanche coming down the mountain. Because words are what make us who we are. They define us. They are inherently more valuable than gold or gems. Words allow us to love one another. They can stop hate or allow it to grow. They make us who we are.