mostly nonfiction and bakersfield news | November 5th, 2009
On Writing, Words and Pity
Author Sunny Singh discusses realizing the true meaning of words at www.RedRoom.com. -Erika Rae, Irresponsible Editor
For the first time in my life, this past week I felt pity. It may sound strange as the word is so commonplace and yet it was profound experience.
As a writer, I am fascinated by the near impossible challenge of capturing human experience in words. It is the ultimate paradox: to attempt to capture the subtleties, complexities and vastness of human experience with materials and tools that are inherently inadequate and ill-suited to the job.
This means that I am always astounded when I grasp the meaning of a particular word. That is always an exhilarating moment of epiphany, when a commonly used word or phrase takes on new and powerful emotional resonance and understanding. It is a flash of insight into a word’s original use. Those moments are like an instant journey through human history into the very dawn of time, to that first moment when that emotion was felt and expressed by some anonymous human ancestor.
It is also a strangely mystical experience: as if for that instant I am connected to the entire unfathomable spectrum of humanity, from its very origins to my own. In that instant there is magic: of sudden understanding of how extraordinary the human mind is, and how extraordinary our journey through time and space has been as a species.
And while mysticism and evolution are not two words that normally go together, [...].
READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE at RedRoom.com!
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