Words

Words.

I own a box full of words.

I keep it under my bed. It contains nearly every card, letter, note I've received over the last 5 years. Whenever I'm given meaningful words from another, I keep them. If they are spoken, I try my hardest to write them down, because for me, there's something different that happens in my ability to remember words when I see them compared to when I just hear them.

I'm an avid notetaker. It takes me far too long to finish books because I write down every quote I don't want to forget. I write striking song lyrics down in my journal. And I've asked friends on several occasions to send me copies of songs, poems, essays they have written. When words create a stirring in me, I want to have them in tangible possession so I can mull over them. So I can see them; so I can keep them; so I can remember them.

Tonight I attended a slam poetry performance in New Orleans. In two hours' time, my ears heard thousands of words strung together by incomprehensible talent. Thirty seconds in to the first performance, I could feel the ache for a copy of the work. I knew my mind wouldn't be able to process the powerful delivery quickly enough to remember the poignant lines. Appreciating the depth and power of the work, I felt deeply convicted that to forget these words would be a terrible shame. "If I could own these words," I thought to myself, "I wouldn't forget the stirring they produced in me."

But even if I could mull over a document of those poems, or copy them down into my journal, could that recreate the emotion with which a young man likened his city to a woman shamelessly raped by "fucking tourists"? Could it produce again the chilling effect of knocks on the door of a flood-ravaged home, its children returning more hopeful to see mama's face where she once lived than at her grave where her dead body lies?

I wish I could have a copy of all those words. But perhaps that would be as useless as the box under my bed, a collection of words which I selfishly hoard, not wanting to forget the stirring they produced at their first reading.

What good is stirring, if it doesn't lead to action?

I offer to myself tonight that perhaps those tangible words are a crutch which inhibits action. Because when I'm no longer able to cling to another's words, I'm forced to find my own.