I am a writer at heart
I like to compile my thoughts and emotions
into strings of words
that make others have thoughts and emotions
and so when I cannot explain
what and how much you mean to me
I am annoyed
and at the same time
I cherish it
and so I won’t try to say
what you mean to me,
I will just say you are beyond words
Pixabay/user:cocoparisienne
The
Hate
Door
But
Candy Cane
Bunny
Eyelash
For
Fast Forward
Do
Card
F
Lose
Why
Liver
And
Touch
Vibrant
Zebra
And there are times when I am drowning in words
His words,
her thoughts,
their words about me,
swear words,
articulate words,
sweet words.
Sometimes it is just too much trouble to filter them,
to categorize them,
to put them in their own nice little sparkly boxes.
And so they clog my throat,
sting my eyes,
make me wrinkle my nose.
Words:
too much,
too little.
But right now,
I feel like all of them are in my head.
I have a blue notebook in my office that I received for Christmas in 2014, in which I write down in colorful pen whatever words touch me. I call it my Quote Book and I’m up to page 49 now. Not all the quotes are from famous people though, some are from my best friend, my teachers, myself, textbooks, or just random people who I hear talking in the halls.
Yes, this is what nerds do on perfect Sunday afternoons or on late Friday nights. I scour Goodreads looking for quotes and then I get lost in the ocean of humanity’s mind just like I get lost in the encyclopedia. Ralph Waldo Emerson once penned “Words are finite organs of the infinite mind” and I want to douse myself in other’s lively minds. I want to pour wisdom into my mind from wherever I can find it, so that I can have that wisdom while I live my life.
And so if I get lost on Goodreads then that just means that I am getting lost in wisdom that will prepare me for living. I am being found.
I am in a constant state of losing and finding myself. I am designing and developing myself by adding to my schema the thoughts of others who have already lost and found themselves hundreds of times over.
This is why I like learning because in learning about the world and how it works or doesn’t work, I am really learning about and forming myself so that I can change the world. Muriel Rukeyser once said, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms” and so I learn about the universe by learning about stories and the people who tell them.
If you can’t tell already this blog post is gonna be loaded with quotes 🙂 If you are asking yourself why a teenage girl is writing a blog post about quotes when most girls her age are either taking duck-face selfies on snapchat, let John Green answer your question, “Nerd life is just so much better than regular life.” And let me remind you, you are reading this nerdy blog post so you might be included in that “nerd life”. Plus, you have hope for humanity.
Anyway, back to the Quote Book, on the inside front cover I have written a quote by John Green “Maybe our favorite quotations say more about us than about the stories and people we’re quoting.” So what does my Quote Book say about me?
Well, on surface level, I at first only wrote down quotes from Superhero movies and comicbooks then branched out to other types of quotes. I was on a Mark Twain kick for a while (thanks, Goodreads!) and now my quote-obsession is John Green.
On a deeper level, just from that information of who I quote (comicbooks, Mark Twain, John Green), a statement is made about me. I do not care about who said the words; I care about what the words say to me.
I like to play a game where I read a quote from my book and a friend has to guess who said it: a professional writer, a normal person, or a comicbook. Generally they are surprised by who said it, and so the speaker of the words holds little power over the words themselves. Just because comicbooks has fist fights and aliens, doesn’t mean that they also have heart and poetry. “No acknowledgement or any amount of money can return integrity once it is spent” is a quote from One Month to Live #5, which was a comicbook produced by Marvel Comics in 2010.
But what is my favorite quote? My favorite quote is my mantra, my motto, my manifesto that was written two thousand years ago; it is my rallying cry when I do not want to move forward; it is what is written on my heart and what I want to be written on my every action. My favorite quote says everything I want it to say about me and what I want to say. “But anyone who is not aware that he is doing wrong will be punished only lightly. Much is required from those to whom much is given, for their responsibility is greater” Luke 12:48. I have a great purpose to accomplish and I will fulfill my potential with every breath I take because that is why I breathe. My favorite quote tells me the meaning of my own life and what I should do with it.
Plus, my favorite Bible verse is oddly similar to my favorite comicbook quote, “With great power there must also come great responsibility” from Amazing Fantasy #15. But this is a case where authorship is everything because I want the words I live by to mean more than words. Although I love Stan Lee, I have so much more assurance in the truth of words spoken by Jesus Christ, Creator and Savior of the Universe.
Ossie Davis said, “Any form of art is a form of power; it has impact, it can affect change — it can not only move us, it makes us move”; I think that quotes are similar to art. Quotes necessitate action. They inspire us to move forward and encourage us to keep moving forward. Quotes tell us to live. And yet quotes are just words of other people to whom we entrust power of our belief upon. A quote — if I choose to give it power — could literally be as plain as “I walked my dog”. A quote has power if we accept it as truth.
And so, John Green’s quote about quotes has power because I accept it as truth and will transform its words into actions. With this in mind, I think that my Quote Book is not as its name implies; rather it is a collection of words that I have granted power and have promised to take action upon. It is a compendium of thoughts I have deemed worthy to hold prestige in the ranks of my identity. The words that others declared and whispered and hoped are the ones that tell my story because they are the ones that I have chosen to tell it.
“Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart.”
-Proverbs 7:2-3
My bookshelves are overflowing,
spilling over and novels stacked up upon themselves.
I just tore through a lovely lovely masterpiece When We Collided
Yesterday, I bought another comicbook to add to my collection
There are so many many words
and yet never enough.
No matter how beautifully strung together they cannot describe a person
or a memory to the fullest.
I can describe how I feel just a little happier when
I see all the spines of my beloved books
and knowing that parts of my soul are tucked in between their pages
kept safe for when I need to return to what shaped me.
I can describe how I almost cried on the second to last page
of being a hidden observer of Vivi and Jonah’s lives.
I can describe how I feel when my eyes flicker across the detail drawn page
and emotion driven speech bubbles that reflect concepts of
heroism, passion, sacrifice, humanity, responsibility.
And yet it will never be enough.
It is one of God’s greatest gifts to communicate,
some of us are better than others;
however
there are so many many words,
but there will never be enough.
Indulgy/TerrilnVA
I am currently re-reading my second favorite book.
I got a copy of it for my birthday
and I am writing all over it,
Underling phrases
Blocking off paragraphs and pages
Scrawling in the margins little notes to myself
It seems like when I do this
then I become a part of the book
and not just the book a part of me.
The book becomes personalized,
an outward sign of the impression the words have left on my heart.
So when someone else reads the words I’ve written
and the phrases I have underlined
Then they see to my heart and my mind.
The second reader trespasses on my personal
private
heart and soul.
And that’s something deeper,
sometimes,
than the words themselves.
I have so many drafts
Poems or stories that stop mid-sentence
because they don’t feel right
like my brain is revolting against my finger tips and I can’t type another word
Emotions halted
Dialog hanging
Characters mid-movement
I have ideas but
they never come to fruition
So I do the normal remedies for writers block
but no matter how good the book is
my fingers and brain just do not line up
I have ideas bouncing everywhere to be written about
but I just can’t scribe the words
So I try and it’s going swell
until the flow stops . . .
Flicker/SEO
Our eyes have adapted
From seeing landscapes and hunting animals
From seeing paper and writing in ink
to now seeing screens and tapping on them.
The question posed to us,
as individuals.
is if we can keep up
with the rest of society
by adapting.
Pixabay/Unsplash
Words create reality
Words create the perfect romance
when the author has never felt the touch of a lover
Words create the image of the stary night sky
when the author has never seen the dark
Words create the empowerment and remorse of murder
when the author has never washed off bloody hands
Her words are the Pacific, Indian and Atlantic all pooled into one and I have never been so thristy. But drinking salt water only makes one more parched. Although, in this case, that is completely fine because I still have one hundred and forty-five pages left.
Indulgy/TerrilnVA
Fire!
Our tongues are our triggers,
that we are more than willing to let our bullets fly.
The bullets lodge themselves in hearts, souls, and minds
inflicting their wounds of –
“not good enough”
“stupid”
“coward”
“worthless”
“weak”
“fat”
“unlovable”
“ugly”
Our bullets sting and kill
They kill dreams and self-esteem and goodness and respect and happiness and control and hope and success and love and peace and optimism and confidence and courage and possibly life itself
but we shoot our guns without care to aim
We shoot because we love the noise
and the kickback that maybe,
just maybe,
it might dislodge our own bullet wounds.
We fire harsh words
and nasty phrases
and angry sentences
and expletives
We fire because we can
and we fire because society says so
and we fire because everyone said it is okay
and we fire because what else were guns made for?
There are sharpshooters
so that no one can know where the bullets come from,
and there are silent handguns
so that no one can say they heard the bullets too,
and there are machine guns
so that they can shoot as many as possible,
and there are shotguns
so that they can inflict the most damage with only one shot.
We,
as a species,
as a society,
as a community,
as individuals,
have mastered the art of inflicting pain.
The bullets are smooth and shine in the light,
and whisper to us to fire them
to shoot
to shoot
to shoot until you can’t feel your own bullet wound anymore.
But we forget that the bullets lose their luster when covered in crimson.
We carry these bullet wounds with us,
they are the first set of eyes to welcome us to the morning,
they are sitting in the passenger seat on the way to work
they are tying our shoe laces together on the way down the street
and yet
and yet
and yet we cling to our guns
that if we fire today our own wounds might hurt less.
I believe that language
whether it is Spanish
or German
or Japanese
or Swahili
or Sign language
is the best invention ever.
It gave birth to everything there ever was or will be,
because language gave the ability to cure smallpox’s and bake cakes and drive cars and read bed time stories
At the same time, I believe
that it is also the worst invention ever,
because language gave the ability to create nuclear bombs and convince us that smoking isn’t bad and tell little girls that they shouldn’t play with Lego’s and tell lies
But language is needed
communication is needed
words are needed.
Our tongues will always be our triggers,
and we can’t make less guns
but I just wish there were less bullets flying.
Pixabay/user:stevepb
Never get lost in the Sauce
If you want to be a hero well just follow me
Michael Ryan Hunsaker, Ph.D.
Receive Grace 2 Show Grace 