Why do we write?
No, why do I write?
Is it to leave some mark on this world, in hope that after I am gone, there is a trace of me left? To immortalise a fragment of me in here? So that I don’t forget these thoughts that I hold so precious?
But thoughts come far faster than words, and words come far faster than my hands can type or write. By the time they are written, they have been filtered, distorted, mutated to fit the context and flow, thrown about relentlessly within the confines of my mind. This or that? How should I phrase this? How do I maintain flow?
Words cannot hope to express my true thoughts, meanings, intentions, and as much as I might try to weave and wind them into the underlying web between the parts of a sentence and paragraph, I... the web, is never flawless, never even close to flawless. And each new addition may complete or extend the web, but that in itself breaks the flawlessness...
Even as I write and think these words, they are imperfect. Incomplete.
Analogies are only that – analogies. While they can offer insight and clarity to the true thing, they are not the true thing; much in the same way, my words are not what I truly mean, only an impression, a shadow, of them.
Now I wonder why I fixate so much on ‘rolling’ words, listing different ‘inflections’ of the same... thing, synonyms. It’s because none are perfect, or maybe I just can’t find that which is perfect. It’s to create the impression, to convey that which I’m trying to convey. Weaving my web between multiple anchor points in the hope that it crosses the invisible spot which I’m looking for.
Sometimes, words are hard. Tough. Difficult. Challenging. Perplexing. Frustrating.
By the time I am done, the building has been constructed out of order, and every single time I question if it will stand. Everything haphazardly thrown together, some parts finished before others, some refined before finished. Including this paragraph. The self-consciousness is back. Get out. We’ll save you for another time.
Analogies. Analogies, analogies, always analogies.
No matter how I try, it is a performance. Anything and everything that is written – this, too – for anyone to see, view, read, hear, know about – future me, too – has been carefully crafted, its purpose and audience considered. I cannot write truly and purely without a filter; of course I need to write with proper spelling and grammar!, I can’t only use my own invented words when I don’t even know what I want my own invented words to mean!; but any framework I use, however flexible, leaves its mark, stains and imprints, and corrupts or conceals the truth in some way.
Lies.
It is so, so, difficult to tell the truth. The absolute truth, the real truth. Not only due to the limitations of words, but more subjective factors – my perception of truth, what things are more ‘truthy’ than others, truths built from other truths.
Yet all these lies contain some element of truth. They’re a 2-dimensional face of the 3-dimensional sphere that I’m trying to visualise and describe. Maybe, if repeated enough times, they’ll become true.
Even as I write and think these words, I don’t believe them.
It is a false truth, but perhaps that is the only truth we can attain.
Are emotions true? Or are they, too, only a shard of our underlying perspectives and ideologies? But that shard can cut, and morph, and reshape us–
Have I just been conditioned to be this way? The way we learn language and how to express ourselves? The emotions we feel limited to only those we can describe?
Is that even what I’m trying to get at here?
As always, it is the self-questioning, and the self-doubt. I don’t know, and have no way of knowing, if I’m just waffling, whatever ‘waffling’ means. Sometimes, the more I go on, the more lost I get. Maybe it’s time to pull myself out.
Our minds are an infinite universe, and these symbols can only hope to capture a tiny snapshot of that.
It’s imperfect, it’s incomplete, it’s flawed, but it’ll... have to do.