The Moment I 'LOL' Is The Moment I've Given Up

I love words.

I am thrilled by the art of them - by the way they can cast feeling like the sun casts a shadow - the way metaphor can spell scent - how the mere arrangement of letters can churn feelings that manifest in bursts of laughter, weeping tears or haunting sentiment. I love their look upon a page and the strength of their power when rightly concocted into a message that feeds an eye hungry for sustenance.

Without words we are thoughtless.

Without thought we are dead.

I mourn the loss of flourish and grieve for our hurry-up-and-get-it-done humanity that forgets that slowing down sometimes reveals the most beautiful truth.

Stop and smell the roses.

Contemplate the texture of hope.

Revel in the mastery of a well-thought satire.

How far we have fallen!

I don't expect you to share in my loss. Perhaps I am old fashioned - stuck in some utopian dream of hazy romanticism that the twenty-first century just doesn't need.

But I refuse to fold.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty is one of the most beautiful (albeit disquieting) fictions I have ever read. What if he hadn't cared for the shaping of his words? What if he hadn't let his heart spill out that which could touch another heart?

“We mourn the blossoms of May because they are to whither; but we know that May is one day to have its revenge upon November, by the revolution of that solemn circle which never stops---which teaches us in our height of hope, ever to be sober, and in our depth of desolation, never to despair.” 

What if he had simply written: 'Don't give up'?

How empty. How devoid of soul.

I and the other few lovers will swim in our alphabet of synonymy, basking in the glory of the perfect word picture, finding poetry in the bark of a tree and lyric on a subway car...all this while the world eats Big Macs and LOL's at cat videos.

The day I 'LOL' is the day I've given up.

Expressing my delight over something that has moved me to laughter cannot - nor should it - be reduced to three letters.  I refuse to insult my own love of words with such triviality.

So, let us not go quietly into the night. Let us hold tight to the art that is language. Let us be old fashioned in a new light. Let us say what we mean and mean what we say and when the moment is right, let us laugh out loud and be brave enough to say it.

[NaBloPoMo Day 27]