scrap language part one
i used to talk a ton. not that i loved the sound of my voice or anything like that. it is just that i truly believed i had a lot to say. as i age, it has turned out i don't really have much to say, or maybe i have learned to say more with less.
my language is %%red%%scrap language%%.
sometimes non-verbal, non-literal, and gesticular-based, or fragmented, aphoristic, idiomatic, composted, and recycled little something's. nada fancy.
my forties have seen a great quieting. my louder revolutionary youth has transformed and aged into a quieter well-considered insurgency. i used to confuse meaningfulness with how many words i could express it with. now meaning is derived through action, through doing.
scrap languages are composed of small distinct pieces. slowly and over a lifetime, all these fragments quilt together. this is what gives meaning.
while writing this, i thought of tolstoy. so many words! if you haven't read anna karenina, one of its most famous lines does most of the work of summarising the book and story for you.:
all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
— leo tolstoy
i am not arguing for minimalism or any sort of that nonsense. i am celebrating scraps of language that transcend their own pointedness. it's just that some folk say a lot to say very little, and i don't want to be that type of person. so here i am, scrap language and all.