Tag: language

Words Matter

 

“No one gets angry at a mathematician or a physicist whom he or she doesn’t understand, or at someone who speaks a foreign language, but rather at someone who tampers with your own language.”
― Jacques Derrida

 

In my experience there is nothing mere about semantics. Words are powerful symbols that many live by. You can call the same entity an angelic being or a demonic force and by doing so alienate a good portion of the people reading. You can say someone or something is retarded and some would nod their heads along with you while any who either had a developmental delay or who loved or supported them would be offended. Something similar would happen by using the word gay. We all have terms that offend us, words which we are quick to see as victimizing no matter the intent behind them. Words which tend to cause either otherness or offence based on a given reality tunnel. If you have never met any one who was gay and had no real experience with people who are classified as developmentally delayed than when you hear those terms so offensive to some, it might as well be a foreign language. When they are words that have been used to describe you or someone you know or care for then it becomes personal. The above are examples. There are many others depending on paradigm, people known and phrases used. Words do matter just not the same words to all people.
Blessings, G

 

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Red DreamsRed Dreams by G A Rosenberg

 

Moving Through the MachineryMoving Through the Machinery by G A Rosenberg

 

It’s Words and Words Alone…

 

“…Words…altered the universe. By merely speaking you could create damage and pain, cause tears to fall, drive people away, make yourself feel better, make your life worse.”
— Lev Grossman

 

The right words spoken at the right moment can prevent war or heartbreak. They can bring joy to someone joyless or hope to someone who is in despair. They can be the cause of union and possibly bring insight and an evolution in thought and spirit. On the other hand other words can start war and cause irreparable rifts. They can lose someone their livelihood and end relationships that have lasted years. We can build walls with words that block out the world or smash the walls down. Words are the purest form of magick and possibly the most powerful. If we learn to use our words carefully, we can control what spells we cast and their results.
Blessings, G

 

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Laying ClaimLaying Claim by G A Rosenberg

 

The Stage is SetThe Stage is Set by G A Rosenberg

 

Birthday Doggerel

 

“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language
And next year’s words await another voice.”
― T.S. Eliot

 

Another cycle of the sun has spun
another lesser feast begun
another soldier on the ground
Chronos buys another round

 

New Paths appearing, Others gone
I stand at the crossroads looking on
Hermes and Thoth will help me decide
Loki and Eshu the paths will make wide

 

So onto a new one I disembark
this one just may be a lark
a year to relax, a year to breath free
a year without challenges for me

 

Not a chance, I crave the test
the chance to be shown at my best
or worst, yet that way’s tests
does bring my spirt’s growth bequests

 

Whatever comes I stand here ready
my hand is on the tiller steady
with eyes bright and without fear
I leap into the arriving year
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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Burning Mind FieldBurning Mind Field by G A Rosenberg

 

Past Yields to Present(r)Past Yields to Present (R) by G A Rosenberg

 

Do I Know what I Mean?

 

“People have a very firm conviction, or belief, that they speak the same language, that they understand one another.
Actually this conviction has no foundation whatever. The language which they speak is adapted to practical life only. People communicate to one another information of a practical character, but as soon as they pass to a slightly more complex sphere they are immediately lost, and the cease to understand one another, although they are unconscious of it.”
— G I Gurdjieff

 

Language is a tricky business. People talk at each other and seldom realize that they are using the same words to mean two or more different things. Words like war or freedom or love or concepts like free will, acceptable losses, faith, religion, or meme. The words that people use in conversation with each other without sharing meaning is nigh endless. What’s even stranger is how often we use these words without having a full understanding of what we ourselves mean when we use it and how for many of these ambiguous terms, our meaning changes from day to day, conversation to conversation or hour to hour. When we say God do we mean an all-knowing guy in a white beard strolling through the sky? Do we mean an archetype, one of several that is part of the shared unconscious of mankind, an all-loving compassionate being, an angry vengeful parent. Is he internal or external? Then we can talk about love. I love you. Do I mean by that that I feel affection towards you and am trying to elicit whether you feel affection back? Do I mean it in a general sense that I love all of mankind and since you are part of that you share in my love? Does it mean I want to make love to you? Does it mean I would lay down my life for you or put your needs above my own? What if I’m not sure and it just seems like a good thing to say at the time? It always seems somewhat miraculous that any of us are able to communicate with each other at all. I guess we should thank god (or gods or goddess) for small miracles.
Blessings, G

 

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Butterfly TrailsButterfly Trails by G A Rosenberg

 

Dark DreamingDark Dreaming by G A Rosenberg

Do I Know what I Mean?

 

“People have a very firm conviction, or belief, that they speak the same language, that they understand one another.
Actually this conviction has no foundation whatever. The language which they speak is adapted to practical life only. People communicate to one another information of a practical character, but as soon as they pass to a slightly more complex sphere they are immediately lost, and the cease to understand one another, although they are unconscious of it.”
— G I Gurdjieff

 

Language is a tricky business. People talk at each other and seldom realize that they are using the same words to mean two or more different things. Words like war or freedom or love or concepts like free will, acceptable losses, faith, religion, or meme. The words that people use in conversation with each other without sharing meaning is nigh endless. What’s even stranger is how often we use these words without having a full understanding of what we ourselves mean when we use it and how for many of these ambiguous terms, our meaning changes from day to day, conversation to conversation or hour to hour. When we say God do we mean an all-knowing guy in a white beard strolling through the sky? Do we mean an archetype, one of several that is part of the shared unconscious of mankind, an all-loving compassionate being, an angry vengeful parent. Is he internal or external? Then we can talk about love. I love you. Do I mean by that that I feel affection towards you and am trying to elicit whether you feel affection back? Do I mean it in a general sense that I love all of mankind and since you are part of that you share in my love? Does it mean I want to make love to you? Does it mean I would lay down my life for you or put your needs above my own? What if I’m not sure and it just seems like a good thing to say at the time? It always seems somewhat miraculous that any of us are able to communicate with each other at all. I guess we should thank god (or gods or goddess) for small miracles.
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

Butterfly TrailsButterfly Trails by G A Rosenberg

 

Dark DreamingDark Dreaming by G A Rosenberg

A New Vantage Point — Serious Word Play

 

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
― Terry Tempest Williams

 

When you look at words running forwards forming sentences then thoughts then constructs, can you turn them around and find new patterns? Can patterns turn you around and construct thought sentences, forwards running? When thoughts construct you can you sentence them and pattern new words? Patterns running forwards find new words constructing formed thoughts. Can form turn you around?
Rearranging words may seem like child’s play but then anything looked at from a new vantage can yield insights into both our thought processes and ourselves. A child’s insight can play like anything and yield word vantages that process our thoughts. Insighting words may seem like play but a child’s vantage can yield thoughts.
What do you do to shift your point of view and create?
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

Night FearsNight Fears by G A Rosenberg

 

As She Feels Her World Melting AwayAs She Feels Her World Melting Away by G A Rosenberg

 

A New Vantage Point — Serious Word Play

 

“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a different way.”
― Terry Tempest Williams

 

When you look at words running forwards forming sentences then thoughts then constructs, can you turn them around and find new patterns? Can patterns turn you around and construct thought sentences, forwards running? When thoughts construct you can you sentence them and pattern new words? Patterns running forwards find new words constructing formed thoughts. Can form turn you around?
Rearranging words may seem like child’s play but then anything looked at from a new vantage can yield insights into both our thought processes and ourselves. A child’s insight can play like anything and yield word vantages that process our thoughts. Insighting words may seem like play but a child’s vantage can yield thoughts.
What do you do to shift your point of view and create?
Blessings, G

 

Click on images to see full-sized:

 

Night FearsNight Fears by G A Rosenberg

 

As She Feels Her World Melting AwayAs She Feels Her World Melting Away by G A Rosenberg

 

Mythic Vocabulary

 

“A mythological order is a system of images that gives consciousness a sense of meaning in existence, which, my dear friend, has no meaning––it simply is. But the mind goes asking for meanings; it can’t play unless it knows (or makes up) the rules. Mythologies present games to play: how to make believe you’re doing thus and so. Ultimately, through the game, you experience that positive thing which is the experience of being-in-being, of living meaningfully. That’s the first function of a mythology, to evoke in the individual a sense of grateful affirmative awe before the monstrous mystery that is existence.”
— Joseph Campbell

 

Mythology gives us a language. We hold these archetypes in our heads and dream of them. We imagine kingdoms won and lost and the spirit power behind all natural and unnatural phenomenon personified and named. If we can give these form and tell true stories about them than we have gone a long way towards the visceral understanding of deep truths. Myths and stories provide the vocabulary to express truth. Of course what we do with the truth and where it takes us is up to us.
Blessings, G

 

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A New Place I VisitA New Place I Visit by G A Rosenberg

 

In Strange TunnelsIn Strange Tunnels I Travel by G A Rosenberg

Current Jargon — some silliness

 

“If you leave the pool you have dug for yourself and go out into the river of life then life has an astonishing way of taking care of you, because then there is no taking care on your part.”
–Jiddu Krishnamurti

 

Swimming in a river of words
I tend to fill my pool with familiar textures
and phrase, the better to feel at ease
but what if i was to let go
venture outside acceptable parameters
into dark swells of under-utilized expressions
warm touches and feels unknown
I tread and I trust
and let befuddlement steer my passage
strange cadences
in unfamiliar rapture
my existence caught up
by eerie linguistic spectres
yet still i stay afoot
baptized in new jargon
beholden to the weaver of words.
— G A Rosenberg

 

Blessings, G

 

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Soul CompanionSoul Companion by G A Rosenberg

 

Gothic EveningGothic Evening by G A Rosenberg

 

Curling Words of Smoke

 

 

“When I cannot see words curling like rings of smoke round me I am in darkness—I am nothing.”
― Virginia Woolf

 

It’s fascinating  searching through quotes about language and discovering example after example of brilliant wordsmiths who mistrusted the tools of their trade. Perhaps mistrust is not the correct word. Perhaps its that they realized the inherent limitations of language that so often can become arbitrary and what good craftsman does not? Then once we realize the limitations of the tool we see just how far we can stretch to transcend those limitations.

 
Virginia Woolf in the above quotes feels that without her words she is nothing and yet isn’t that nothingness, that space between words where true creativity comes from? Tho it does sound like a pretty awesome meditation, visualizing our words and thoughts curling like rings of smoke and then dissipating leaving us in stillness..
Blessings, G

 

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Mindfield 6Mindfield by G A Rosenberg

 

Flowers and FlamesFlowers and Flames by G A Rosenberg