My girlfriend's mom said that to me, on Facebook. Here is my reply.... ****************************** I love words. But words are weird. They aren't really there. You write them and they carry forward. Where nothing was before, now there is... something. A blackness on the page, that can bring light, dark, laughter or tears. Words can be monstrously destructive or astonishingly creative. But they aren't really anything other than little instructions to our soul. Spoken, words have no weight but a tiny, momentary vibration in the air, which attenuates, almost instantly into nothingness. But how long would it take to forget a cruel word, spoken in anger? Would you remember it until you died? The power of that little word... You bet I respect words. Just like I would respect any other machine or device that could carelessly slice open a person's soul. -David Buschhorn *****************************
for me, also anything that can heal a wounded/suffering soul, inspire others to greatness and/or acts of kindness and love for all creatures...
When I was writing my bachelor's thesis I spend a lot of time reading old documents (XVI century) in Venice National Archive. They are letters from venetian ambassador in Istanbul to Senate. Despite men having written those letters are all dead long time ago, their words are still alive. After few pages, you can understand them, you can see them. How can I explain? They become like old friends. It's a kind of magic. And it's wonderful.
When I was a kid, there was a mini-series on TV about Lewis and Clark's journey. One of the Indians saw one of the explorers writing in his journal and asked why the white men were forever pointlessly scratching lines onto the pages of their little books. Rather than explain, the man took a piece of scrap paper and asked the Indian to tell him something that no one else knew. He said something about his mother. The explorer scratched it on the paper and then asked the Indian to hand the paper to "that man over there". He walks across the camp and hands the man the paper, who glances at it and asks "Your mother named your freckles?" You could see the wonder in the Indian's eyes as he understood, in an instant, the enormity of what writing was.
