For all the wonder of words, I’m glad we’re not reduced to single-word communications. I’m glad I don’t have to send out one word, and then another, hoping that you can find, amidst the deafening roar of denotations, the cacophony of connotations, the one that I intend. Instead, we have a brilliant system of combination by which I can narrow and refine my meaning for you.
An example: “green.” It’s a simple example, but has the potential to go dozens of directions. How many can you think of?
Limit it to colors. “Green” is still quite vague. Do I mean the green of pine needles in winter? Do I mean the green of the ocean under gray skies? Do I mean the green of new oak leaves? Do I mean the green of a lizard on a sunny brick wall? The gray-green of eyes? The pastel-green of butter mints? The brown-green of Mossy Oak camouflage?
Outside the realm of colors, there are even more options. I might mean environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, recycled, renewable, emission-free. I might mean new, inexperienced, rookie, unripe. I might mean fresh, alive, flexible.
If I say only “green,” how are you to know? In order to communicate with you, I need more words than “green” alone.
But even if I refine the kind of green with extra words, it still leaves you with questions. What is green? Who is green? Why does its greenness matter? Suppose it is a mint-green dress. What of it? Why should you care about a mint-green dress? Who wears the dress? Where does she wear it? Why does she wear it?
I could continue the example, but I think you will have already understood: with each added word some of the potential ideas are eliminated, while others become more likely. (Here I might launch a paean upon punctuation, but I’ll keep it small, and simply say that, in answer to the problem of knowing which words limit and explain which words, we have a glorious system of dots and curves which at once contain meanings and make them more accessible.)
It works outside the realm of words, too. As soon as you step through one door, it becomes obvious that you have not stepped through a myriad of others. But beyond the one door are doors of which you could not have known, without eliminating that first myriad. Each day spent in a certain way is not spent in certain other ways. Each conversation had with one person is a conversation not had with any other person. And yet the doors, the days, the conversations, open upon one another and expand upon one another, so that today could not exist unless yesterday had preceded it, so that what is said now leans upon what was said before.
And as with the words, so with the rest of the world: seeking the meaning of this door, we look to the doors that came before, the doors that followed; seeking the meaning of today, we look to yesterday and to tomorrow; this conversation carries more weight because of what was said yesterday, and tomorrow’s conversation will add more weight to today’s.
Much of the time, we’re only guessing, but as we move further away and learn to see whole sentences at a glance, we start to grasp meanings with more certainty. No longer need we wonder how the “a” fits into “cat.” Now we’re asking how the sentence fits into the paragraph. We have lost some simplicity, yes, but we have gained so much clarity. This is good.
©2013 by Stacy Nott
Between Blue Rocks 