The Feel of It
Sean Moore
Sometimes the truth of a thing is not so much in the think of it, but in the feel of it.
Well, maybe you’re trapped.
Or, maybe trapped isn’t the right word. Maybe captive is closer. Or maybe stuck, instead. Or walled-in, or frozen, or grounded, or affixed, entranced, petrified, tied down, tied up, shackled, chained, bound, gagged. Or maybe you’re many of those things. Or maybe you’re none of those things. Maybe you’re some other right word.
The right word.
I spend a lot of time thinking about that. About the right word. Thinking there must be a better way to express this feeling, must be a better way to illustrate this thought, must be a better way to convey this meaning. Must, must, must. Me and my engineering mind, always thinking there is an optimization.
Me and my liberal arts heart, knowing better than that.
You see when I look at writing and I start to think – and that’s the trouble with the brain, always going on about the thinking – it’s always about thinking that this word, this phrase, this sentence, this piece – this something could be better. Must be better. That somewhere in this convoluted, symbolic, horribly inadequate medium we call writing is a best way, is the best way to communicate.
The trouble with thinking too much is that you start to believe that there’s a solution to everything. Just give it another couple of minutes, you think, and I’ll have solved it all.
But my heart knows better – there I go again, with that word – not better then, but different. Is not concerned with better at all, in the slightest. Knows its not about what’s good or bad or best or worst or any other sort of shade. Understands that in this line of work, it really is a binary matter, a black and white affair. Believes it’s about asking a very simple question, and answering it in the affirmative.
Does it move?
Simple questions carry far too much weight. Ambiguity seeps from them, taunting you, practically, to ask what sort of convoluted meaning could possibly be inferred from answering such a stub of a question.
What does it feel to move? Surely you could know the feeling when you’re own to feet take you from point to point. It is no different with words. When they take us places. When they compel us. When they give breath and life and action to a scene. That is movement.
When I can feel the words leaping off the page and accelerating into my retina and ignite in a brilliant staccato and I can hear the faintest sizzle as they unmake themselves and become little pulses and travel down my nerves and up into my thinking brain and I can smell the ozone of combusted language and the ferrous bite of ink that once was and now is no more and I can feel each word go back down to my vocal chords and try to escape and all and each one of them jam up in my throat and cannot and mix into a jumble and I am left gasping for air and am made desperate and unable to speak and my eyes hunt for another word to engulf and starve when there is nothing left of the page but the dead pulp of a tree and a pile of letters and punctuation where a set of words and a meaning once where and would you put them all back where they were thank you much and make sure they are in the order the author damn well intended them to be. That is movement.
When you feel ravenous. When you feel emaciated. When you feel like there must be more to go, but you can see the end of the line and you know that there is not. That is movement.
But where were we again?
That’s right. Well, maybe you’re trapped – or some other right word.
Some times the best way out isn’t to think a solution.
It’s to move.