Amor dictis

People are afraid to use words.
What are they afraid of?
That they will awaken some evil?
That in the moment of putting down one word after another, something hidden behind a mental door will peek out?
Yes.
But that is why I like to write.
I want to know what is behind that door.
I want to meet it.
I want to befriend it.
If it seems good enough, I will want to become it.
I write to know myself.

The bigger words are not just fancy contrivances.
No.
They are each a separate kind of meaning.
I could say I'm "happy".
I could say I'm "gay".
I could say I'm "joyous".
I pick "joyous".
It sounds more mature.
Beyond the simple mapping of sound to meaning, there is the emotion of the sound itself.
The words you know are "sound" + "meaning".
The words I know are "sound" + "meaning" + "sensation".
Remove the "meaning" for once.
Listen to words as "sound" + "sensation".
Haven't you ever sat and listened to the calls of a nightingale?
I have.
In the forests of Yercaud in south India.
That was when I wondered.
That was when I first took away the "meaning" and discovered music.

Have you ever said "vendetta" and thought it sounded like wood being chopped by knives?
Have you ever said "fabulous" and thought of the colour green?
Have you ever said "anathematic" instead of "despicable" and thought how antihero-like it sounds?
Have you ever wondered what the timbre of a word is?
Words are both written and spoken.
Have you ever wondered how novels are successes?
They are successes because the reader is able to read what the writer is able to write.
And vice versa.

Don't be afraid to use words.
That which we have a finite supply of is wasted when used.
That which we have an infinite supply of is wasted when unused.

Amor dictis

People are afraid to use words.
What are they afraid of?
That they will awaken some evil?
That in the moment of putting down one word after another, something hidden behind a mental door will peek out?
Yes.
But that is why I like to write.
I want to know what is behind that door.
I want to meet it.
I want to befriend it.
If it seems good enough, I will want to become it.
I write to know myself.

The bigger words are not just fancy contrivances.
No.
They are each a separate kind of meaning.
I could say I'm "happy".
I could say I'm "gay".
I could say I'm "joyous".
I pick "joyous".
It sounds more mature.
Beyond the simple mapping of sound to meaning, there is the emotion of the sound itself.
The words you know are "sound" + "meaning".
The words I know are "sound" + "meaning" + "sensation".
Remove the "meaning" for once.
Listen to words as "sound" + "sensation".
Haven't you ever sat and listened to the calls of a nightingale?
I have.
In the forests of Yercaud in south India.
That was when I wondered.
That was when I first took away the "meaning" and discovered music.

Have you ever said "vendetta" and thought it sounded like wood being chopped by knives?
Have you ever said "fabulous" and thought of the colour green?
Have you ever said "anathematic" instead of "despicable" and thought how antihero-like it sounds?
Have you ever wondered what the timbre of a word is?
Words are both written and spoken.
Have you ever wondered how novels are successes?
They are successes because the reader is able to read what the writer is able to write.
And vice versa.

Don't be afraid to use words.
That which we have a finite supply of is wasted when used.
That which we have an infinite supply of is wasted when unused.

Rusty and Sharded

Before I began writing this, I thought to myself how I would begin this entry. That's when it struck me that this is my diary; I can write whatever I want to write - and so I began this entry! Haha! It is difficult to understand why people pour out their sorrows in thousands of words but joy comes out in not more than a hundred words. If it weren't for a "special" relationship I believe I have with the words I put down, I wouldn't think words are oppressed that way. Would they rebel? In a world of words, what would the rebellion be like? Will the world "bloody" be draped across a thousand pages of their chronicles? Perhaps, but words are often used together with the logic that comes with using them - not grammatical but the one accompanying the justice (or judicial capacity) of reason.

He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.

Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.

I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".

Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.

It's a world sans friction.

Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.

Rusty and Sharded

Before I began writing this, I thought to myself how I would begin this entry. That's when it struck me that this is my diary; I can write whatever I want to write - and so I began this entry! Haha! It is difficult to understand why people pour out their sorrows in thousands of words but joy comes out in not more than a hundred words. If it weren't for a "special" relationship I believe I have with the words I put down, I wouldn't think words are oppressed that way. Would they rebel? In a world of words, what would the rebellion be like? Will the world "bloody" be draped across a thousand pages of their chronicles? Perhaps, but words are often used together with the logic that comes with using them - not grammatical but the one accompanying the justice (or judicial capacity) of reason.

He was a coward who said a picture was worth a thousand words; he was a coward because he couldn't bring himself to concede that each image is worth hundreds of thousands of words; he was a coward because he chose to remain shielded behind the idea of progress when he could have stepped out and up to realize the continuum of realities that spanned the gap between "the now" and the future. The sheer volume of information is stupendous. How can you stop at a thousand words? The "aphorism" itself seems like a bit of an irony: if the sayer was going for a metaphor, then saying "thousand words" is equivalent to asserting that a picture is worth a million words, a billion words, a zillion words... if you can't stop, then why put them together at all? A picture's a picture and a word's a word; let them bloody be! You don't have to understand everything for it to be a continuum. In fact, if you did, it wouldn't be a continuum! Think about it! I use a million words and, just like that, someone adds or removes a word to give the picture a completely different verbal form.

Anyway, there's one thing I don't understand at all. How can people not think? How is is possible that people haven't thought about of the things I've thought about? How in the Lord's name is it possible for a mind to be at rest? The mental sophistication is so easy to acquire that it's laughable! In turn, thus, it would mean that such people have probably visited all those realms of possibilities and still choose the verboten-addicted reality around us. Guano.

I don't believe that; it's too wonderful an explanation... and so is the "still mind". Why isn't everyone as curious as I am? Why can't the best engineers do with machines and logic-constructs what even an unaccomplished writer such as I can do with words? Or have I not seen it? I don't think such things would've escaped me. And before you, you Faustus!, begin to defend yourself, mind: I will always hold that logic has its own exotic designs. Only yesterday, I had stumbled across this site/page called "But Does It Float", and behold! What an awe-inspiring collection of images! Short descriptions here and there told me most of it was either avant-garde or "deconstructivist". "Deconstructivist"? Really? Why can't you name something with whatever comes first to mind (on an average) amongst the first thousand people who see it? By that suggestion, I'm going to call avant-gardes "rusty" and deconstructivists "sharded".

Anyway, there were hundreds and hundreds of images on display. At first sight, they were ALL excellent. After a few minutes, once the standard of excellence's been raised to accommodate the findings, about 30% of it is simply stupendous and the rest is... well, stupendous. Talk about logic and its designs! Only the truly insane can manage a recreation of chaos, and even then, sporadic manifestations of logic will become observable. Rusty and sharded both captured certain moods splendidly, and by "capture", I mean the freeze-frame trapping of the mind's infinite form-dance. By looking at the perfect painting, you suddenly become aware that your mind is a small individuation of the entire universe that the painting encompassed. That moment of oneness is truly fascinating; moreover, it feels like a release. Imagine an obscurely curved pipe which must be inserted into a bigger shaft; the engineer twists it and turns it and jams it, but when the orientations of the cross-sections match, the pipe just flows in without a complaint.

It's a world sans friction.

Sometimes, the banishing of logic itself seems like a kind of logic, and when you witness a creation fashioned on that basis, you know that rebellion is the order of the day. Literature, I now believe, has a similar, if not the same purpose: some liberation. That liberation, obtained via art of any form, I will always recognize with the individuation - the "charitocratic" vessel within which we sail, and the mind that enables such a journey is therefore not within us but without, at least in that moment. In hindsight, I recall having simplified the writings of Abhinavagupta for a friend. While Abhinava called that mind-universe coupling "God", I choose to call it the mind's awareness of itself, the ultimate permission to think, to keep thinking, to think whatever.