In this past winter, I was walking early morning through willow bushes as high as my shoulder and head, bushes with individuated particles of ice on all their branches, twigs, and twiglets. Light of the rising sun was glistening through them. There were millions of minute bits of ice clinging to the branches. Such beauty. I wondered how I would describe them if I were to write about them. I declined words such as diamonds, sparkles, crystals. I kept walking. What word could describe? The path was uneven. So, I began to watch my bootsteps as I walked. An image-memory flashed through my mind as I watched my feet––millions of migrants on mud paths like mine fleeing war, oppression, starvation, and burdened with fear, hunger, wounds. I stopped and slowly raised my head, looking around and taking a deep breath, remorseful of my privilege. The sun was higher. The millions of ice particles were radiating brighter. Concentrating on the beauty I then knew I was seeing millions and millions of tears––each tear was carrying sorrow, yes, but this sadness of sorrow was commingled with the waters of compassion. Overwhelming relief came upon me in that instant.
1
A word is a vibrant object. As vibratory as the matter that makes our body and all other physical things––the living bodies of all other species, and tables, and chairs, and stones. I am not referring to the sound waves of words, but rather to their electromagnetic waves. Electromagnetic waves are composed from changing electric and magnetic fields as they interact with each other. They transport energy. As energy they can travel through air and solid materials, and the vacuum of space.
2
The electromagnetic signatures of words may be more powerful than their linguistic meaning. F. Healey, M.A. Persinger, and S.A. Koren have demonstrated that electromagnetic field equivalents of spoken words applied to the temporoparietal lobes of our brains yield control of “choice” mediated by emotional meaning rather than linguistic dimensions. Yes, words are vibrant objects, as are our word-full thoughts vibratory in our brains before they appear in print or auditory form. Further, words have their own operations within the physico-chemical matrices of our brains and bodies and in the brains and bodies of those who hear or read them.
3
The neuroscientist Todd Murphy theorizes that consciousness is the subjective experience of the brain’s electromagnetic fields. Thus, language as vibrant matter forever guides the reforming of our existential tasks. I have written about living bodies as thresholds for all the electromagnetic vibrations that pass through them. I speculate that it may be the interbeing between all these electromagnetic vibrations where discoveries form a re-hearing of words with which we are familiar.
4
My relief at re-seeing the ice particles differently, after simultaneously naming them with a re-understanding of the word ‘tear’ differently, overwhelmed me because sorrow and grief thread through all the writings I’ve attempted and, in that instant, I received my sorrow differently. I didn’t plan to re-see/re-feel my sorrow––my grief for the planet, all species, including humanity and myself under the weight of living. In that instant, in my body I felt with absolute intuitive certainty all sorrow everywhere and all grief everywhere were braiding with compassion––a compassion greater than mine. This recognition had been offered to me by the resonances of whatever had gathered itself in my imaging body’s electromagnetic brain. And I had felt this gathering in every cell of my being.
5
When we write, we need to order word objects. Before writing, words were understood as sound vibrations of life carrying meaning for humans and some words were sacred sounds––OM. The Korean poet Lee Seong Bok wrote “…you don’t do the writing, language does”. He also wrote that “writing is about life speaking of itself through you.” Words also are a record of their time. Given all the above, then what is the task of words? The task of words is to continue the evolution of human thought and values for the sake of our human survival. Their ultimate task is to shift perceptions and understandings away from usual habits of thought and usual frameworks of knowing.
6
Hopefully, “new” words will shift us toward a way of helping life to survive on our planet better than we, as a species, are so far accomplishing. This is the infinite potential of words, be it in any genre of writing––expository, narrative, descriptive, persuasive, technical, poetic. However, they can only do this if the words are personally significant for their writers and are not merely echoes of others’ voices who are writing about the same subjects. In the 12 th century, Hildegard von Bingen wrote “we cannot live in a world interpreted for us by others.” Since then, so many others also have emphasized to let our words be our own. I am in accord with the immense
significance of this dictum.
7
Words name and interpret things. Paul Ricoeur has pointed out how interpretation is less a function of observation than of our personal involvement. I add to this that interpretation also depends upon how the electromagnetic fields of words are resonating and organizing themselves in our brains. Usually, we are unconscious of these fields. Yet it is possible for one to become aware of a deep part of our existence that requires an expression/understanding differently from that to which we are accustomed. By this I mean we can arrive at a place within ourselves wherein we hear words existing within us which are independent from our socio-psychological-political surround and structures: by this I mean we can hear and use words that are not dependent upon our identities as belonging to any shared group. These words, discovered anew, may require us to be vulnerable to truths within us that have remained unsaid.
8
Above, I have offered how I came upon a new understanding of the word ‘tear’. While I have offered word-lines of compassion in my writings, I had never felt-linked compassion and sorrow as One. They are. My epiphany with this common word ‘tear’ brought a small evolution in my life. This transformation is one that is beyond my personal history, beyond my personal narrative. It is beyond my habitual felt sentiment: I am lighter. By appreciating the word differently, I have been invited to step into a different reality.
9
We can discover this unsaid aspect of ourselves in different ways: through listening to others’ words when we re-encounter them within ourselves or, perhaps, when we read a word, a phrase, on a page or a screen, or through another person sounding it before where we are standing. It is also possible to hear or use a word with which we are familiar within a context that turns that word into an entirely new phenomenon for us (as in my personal example above.) Then, the new vibrational resonance of this word regenerates us. It precipitates in us a genuine insight that enables us to evolve beyond what we have recognized and accepted before. Yes. No matter in what genre one attempts in writing, it is possible to discover new word vibrations in the depth of one’s own life that interface with our typical reflective thought around writing, speaking, or around anything else that we are doing.
10
I have written these musings fully aware of the evolutionary threshold humanity has crossed during my lifetime. (I have 83 years.) We yet do not understand what the consequences of information technology (IT), artificial intelligence (AI), and the havoc humans have wrought upon the planet will yield for concepts like truth and justice and the actual survival of life. Especially, we do not understand how AI will affect what we read and are able to write. Though we already dimly grasp that life and languages will not be as we know life and languages to be today.
11
Language is evolution. Each word of every language is evolution. It is said that more than 7,000 languages continue to sound across our planet. Nevertheless, in the next century it is estimated 90 percent of these languages will become extinct. To me, it is impenetrable that the loss of endangered languages correlates so perfectly with the current and future loss of biodiversity. Both began their precipitous decline in the 1950s. (Of course, new words are being added to languages. The Global Language Monitor estimates that in the English language a new word is created every 98 minutes. And, now and then, a new language may be discovered.)
12
Words carry information and knowledge. Information and knowledge are not the same. It is knowledge that is crucial. As electromagnetic vibrant objects words carry more than their definitions. We ought to listen in to our words and realize our knowledge more closely. Better, may we become aware and sensitive enough to linger and become intimate with our words and the words of daily life that we encounter, to feel them, to care for them. May we not become lost in a separateness from them, especially from words that can hurt or tear apart. Recall the homograph ‘tear’, how ripping apart to divide and separate can cause tears.
13
All humans have the experience of the vibrations of words as objects changing their realities. The unique truth of words that truly are ours also are the words that make us further susceptible to all that exists in the world. Yet it is our unwavering openness to all that we experience which will contribute to our capacity to respond and say what our life context needs for making a more merciful world. Every word, just as does every other thing, makes the world.
14
blue crows dazzling in flight cross an inky sky
they’re flying to the moon, cries a child
s/he picks up a golden trumpet to sing them higher
unfathomable enchantment the horn’s sound
electrical flashes tremendous caaw-s caaw-s caaw-s
a dark river glinting with jubilance reflecting back
the child golden horn the crescent moon
the bliss of iridescent wings and stars:
black feathers layer the ground in morning
black feathers––truths that must rise––and the child loudly
promising: they’re on the moon, I hear them, I hear them
Vivian Darroch-Lozowski has authored several books. Her writings and visual works cover different genres. Her recent book (2023) is Searchlights in People’s Hands. She continues create various other traces and markings in her efforts to understand human nature. She is Professor Emerita of the University of Toronto and lives in Moose Jaw, Treaty 4 Territory, Saskatchewan.
minor literature[s] 