the interaction of word and thought

 

Word!

what is the relationship of word to thought?

a concrete reality, a noun,

can be obvious in the equivalence of word and thought,

what's in front of us, "apple" for the fruit sitting there,

much, though, of our thinking is far more abstract and intangible,

the word itself creates a new reality

of concept and relationship not held before the word captures an idea,

a word that speaks to a truth just within our ability

to stretch enough to hold it,

I learned the word "pareidolia,"

it expresses our need, our ability,

to perceive recognizable pattern in the shapes before us,

a face in the clouds or in the branches,

a geometric pattern that reveals a truth,

like the spiral for Indigenous creators of petroglyphs,

the seeker within feels something important in the universe around them,

and finds how to precipitate meaning from out of the random,

as I focused on our grandchildren learning to speak,

I saw an openness in speaking 

as they sought to see patterns

of relationship, to see depth to reality.

they opened themselves into a burgeoning understanding of pattern,

they sought how to find words, sounds

that could hold pieces of the world before them,

and allow those pieces to fit together into meaning,

sounds that increasingly revealed what could be known,

what should be known, what will be known,

each of us then can break free

into the power of the complexity outside and within us,

we ache to understand

and to then act upon the world,

think of the word "love,"

and of how the very word 

demands we understand and act upon a reality

that is as real as the apple,

but a reality that demands we expand ourselves

and use language as both a holder and a creator of meaning,

can we love without the word itself?

by Henry H. Walker

August 18, ‘26