Bark

There are words I don’t know. I would tell you what they are, but I don’t know. I don’t what words, precisely, I don’t know. I just know that one day, one moment, one tiny tear in the fabric of time, and I will experience something and then try to find a word, or words, for that thing. That phenomenon. Or phenomena. But what if the only words I can find to best describe an experience – a smell, a texture, a sprain – are in another language? What if it lies in a sprawl of words, too obscured by words, to be witnessed as anything other than a flap of New Jersey, or a slow emergence of awareness during an emergency in an emerging country on the night of an important election? Do you see what I mean? Do you know what words I’m talking about? I don’t even know what words I’m talking about. Maybe it’s these words. Are these the words I’m looking for or are these the words I’m using to catch the other words, the real words, the authentic words, for an experience I haven’t had yet, or the time to note it down?  I have thrown my net in a sea I don’t know. Maybe it’s the Black Sea. The Dead Sea. The Sea of Love. Or the Sea of Sassafras, which awaits on a plate in the key of F minor, which begins Chopin’s Nocturne in F Minor, which is lovely as the perception of percolation, which happens in percale, or cotton, depending on one’s predilections. And the song-like opening returns, dissolving quickly into triplets that take us to the top of the keyboard, before harp-like chords bring the piece to a close. As you can see, there are words scattered everywhere throughout this perambulation, this penumbral forelock of goat hair, this little world, this precious stone set in the silver sea, this kaleidoscope twisted by the hands of fate, these chunks of color, this cylinder of silliness, this expedition through thick underbrush, through mental and physical exertion, don’t worry, your check is in the mail. In space, one can be another person. You don’t have to sit and wait all day for the right word to come along, the word you were going to use for the next thing to happen, which will be a surprise, and you’ll need a word, a few well-chosen words, to describe your experience, but to whom, and for whom, and whoever you choose to be when this thing occurs. When it pops out of the air. When it crawls across the floor. When it sits down and lights a cigar. When it voyages to the right of you, smiling as it goes by, on its quest for experience, and the sheer joy of moving around in space, which all words love to do, they love to get out there and reveal things, invent things, phrase things, freeze things, matriculate ejaculate and spurt things. This is the key to their energies. This is how they appear when they appear, apparent as bark, and quiet as sin. It's that easy spray in the torso that spreads to the fingers, to the swirl of emotion slinging around in the system, the thrill of breaking a logic and finding a way out of the known into the unknown.