Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins ~ Malinda Words

Words are of many kinds. That’s stating the obvious, yes. This is about words associated with love. Love-words, then, if you will. Things that need to be said. Things one wants to say. Things that get said and, for whatever the reason may be, get detained at some unnamed barrier in the complex matrix made of heart, mind and vocal cords.

Then there is the immemorial problem of word-inadequacy. In other words, the right word hasn’t been coined yet. Creativity deficiency gets in the way of manufacturing words and even if one puts together word-shards and forges a new word or rearranges syllables and words to translate the heart into voice, there’s still the possibility of being misread, misheard or missed altogether.

There are words, though. Well defined and meaning-locked in dictionaries. Things named and names agreed upon. We see them and we know what they are. We hear their names and we know what is being referred to.

This world, however, is also made of scramble. There is amalgamation and there is scattering. Everything can be brought together and can also be dismantled to constituent parts or smaller pieces. Indeed, sometimes, in this reordering we can come up with something new, fresh and startlingly different.

This I have come to realise:

If we listen carefully enough, if we gaze to the point of discernment and beyond, it seems to me that even approximation is an inadequate word in the matter of naming and description.

This I have come to realise:

There are lines at the perimeter of definition which, when crossed, turns this into that. It is a line, I like to think, that is product of human error or inadequacy and as arbitrary as anything else.

This I have come to realise: Those demarcations are also vantage points.

Vantage is edge, on one side firm ground and on the other a precipice. It is water between solids where slippage is the state of being. It is not an easy place to keep feet firmly planted. Dance, however, is possible there. Indeed, if one doesn’t want to slip on sound and silence, dance one must.

The problem is that we have to depend on the defined and ill-defined. We have to manage at end-points, peripheries and edges. And so we have words and silences. We have words said that can’t be taken back. We have words that have passed use-by date. And silence that works pretty much the same way.

And so the world is made of lost words and lost lines, banished from conversations that did not or will not take place. They wander the earth like fugitives, without license, without passport, constantly under suspicion.

Where do lost lines go once their authors realise they were meant to be footnoted or ignored, when they realise they were written too late or too early? And from which bibles of love, forgetting, memory or insanity did their authors draw them from? And after they’ve left mind and heart through fingertips and longing, do they recline among fragrant pages of magical books anticipating the perusal of similar dreamers and lunatics? And when someone does turn those pages and perhaps discover the particular word or line that happens to be the perfect transcription of the heart’s unspoken poetry, will it be too early or too late, will it be heard or deemed inconsequential?

Are lost lines the private properties of the forsaken or hopeful? Are they best preserved in parchment that could crumble at the drop of a tear?

Lost lines

Those things that don't arrive
on demand,
things that stop fingers
and interrupt beautiful stories:
where they went
and where they go
who knows
who will tell?
They may break into words or song
crumble into syllable and dust
creep into conversations
as filler or frill,
but lost lines
return in disguise
alleviate other headaches
fill spaces differently made
energize.
Don’t believe,
but flip the question and ask
‘where did those other lines
that came without saying
and wrote themselves almost
where did they come from
which lyrics or love notes
did they escape from?’
All lines are lost
and words are people
looking for the once-familiar
but gone
perhaps forever.
Lost lines are consolation prizes
in competitions no one ever wins.

['The Morning Inspection' is the title of a column I wrote for the Daily News from 2009 to 2011, one article a day, Monday through Saturday. This is a new series. Links to previous articles in this new series are given below]

16 May 2023

Consolation prizes in competitions no one ever wins

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