The Origin of Words And How Thoughts Develop In Our Minds
FINE: ‘Within The Best Of Us Lives Some Good’
There came a moment in time when I, now someone of advanced years and the seemingly ancient writer of words, began to question my motives and even the processes I had become familiar with. Had I somehow lost sight of the real world and merged reality with an amalgamation of ideas, facts, clouded memories and pure fantasy in which I created a place I felt more comfortable in, a place I believed more correctly fit my view of how things might and should be.
When others spoke to me about ordinary events, my mind took bits and pieces from their sentences and merged those words with other stories and my own thoughts to create images. Those images became clear pictures which, when expressed with simple words, turned the ordinary into the unusual and occasionally into something worth sharing with others. The end result became something that more comfortably and perfectly fit my vision of the episode.
Late nights were spent in the company of rivers, rolling Ozarks hillsides, barns and still cemeteries. My mind somehow translated the sights and sounds of the quiet nights into paragraphs and sentences and words. It was as if my mind could not accept things as they were but I rather needed to put them into a form that better suited me and could more easily be digested. This process became instinctive and needed no prompting or independent thought.
The sound of the water flowing within the banks of the small river was instantaneously transformed into descriptive words describing water, leaves and the smell of the air itself. The trees and slopes ascending to the tops of the hillsides became paragraphs and full compositions alive only within themselves. When the top of the hill was replaced by the dark night sky, the sentences transitioned into thoughts of that great expanse. Barns and meadows became written images that were effortlessly described in detail without the slightest prompting. Quiet and peaceful cemeteries brought to mind reflections of lost ones and old memories not recently recollected within my memory. Words were easily transformed into lines of print that flowed so effortlessly onto blank pieces of paper.
Sleep didn’t come easily to me, this aging man. My eyes would quickly open as thoughts and ideas raced through my mind. As I rushed to gather writing materials, more words began to push into this crowded mind. Before I could write about the sounds of the rivers, images of the hilltops were there. While recollecting images of stoic old barns and the long-ago departed ones who built them, the stillness and cold blackness of cemeteries also came to mind. So too did warm July mornings remind me of you.
I couldn’t recall the last time I thought of a sight which wasn’t, at least within the confines of my mind, transformed to better fit my own comfort. I soon found it difficult to distinguish ideas from factual accounts of events and I often wondered if I had changed or embellished the stories and images to better suit myself. Nothing whatsoever might be thought of as ordinary and I believed there were unseen and unheard bits and pieces only I could find and more properly assemble.
When ideas were put to paper, there were times when I couldn’t write quickly enough. The words in my mind were so far ahead of the moving hand, and they were bursting, gushing to get out. The hand moved almost robotically and without thought. The paragraphs, sentences and words flowed over and fell onto the pages and most often, and even before I stopped to read what was written, there were pages and pages. I never completely understood how the words came out so effortlessly, and where the ideas came from, and I had a dark and haunting fear of someday finding that place.
It came to pass that the words became my best friend. As I abandoned sleep, the solitude of dark nights crept into my mind while I wrote those words and then, and only then, a feeling of comfort and belonging came over me. I immersed every fiber of my being into the writing; it was in many ways a manner of therapy. The words were alive. They were a part of me and came out so very naturally. The sentences and paragraphs and compositions reflected, in many ways, how my mind viewed the world around me. Those words needed to be placed just perfectly, and when they were correctly positioned, everything was as it should be. Only then could the words written after midnight speak to others.
Resplendent, if for nothing more than their purity, the words which were written while the still of darkness lay over the land could only be severed from the ink starved paper that beckoned them by the genesis of yet another day but the meaning of the words, those beautiful words, will surely last for a time and a moment greater than forever.
Night after night, I sat
“When ideas were put to paper, there were times when I couldn’t write quickly enough. The words in my mind were so far ahead of the moving hand, and they were bursting, gushing to get out.”
alone and wrote, “My best and oldest friend, I write these words only for you. I remember so very well the touch of your hand as it lingered in mine. I loved you so much but I also hated you. I hated you for leaving me. When the spoken words won’t come, then and only then, shall they find their way to paper; and only then from the pen’s ink.” There was a time when I thought I was unique, unique within my species, but now I know that just isn’t so; none of us are. We all share feelings of happiness, sadness, remorse and loneliness. I have tried so very hard to put my feelings, my emotions, into the written words I have shared with you and I hope those sentiments let you know that you are not alone; you are not as unique as you may believe. It’s hard to explain how I know this but indeed I know it with all my heart. When I compose a story, a part of me goes with that bit of writing, a part of me that can never be recovered. After a time, a night will surely come when, as I sit alone in the darkness and type the final few words of a story, those words and the whole of me will be forever gone. When every day has had its say, I am confident that the story written that last night will be my best story ever for all of me will be in it. Postscript: I would like to share with you the most important thing that I have learned in the past seven years. It is that we are all flawed creatures. Within the best of us lives some bad and within the worst of us lives some good. Words should document life but must never be given more importance than life itself for those words, those beautiful words, are born from the world and the people around us. STAN FINE IS A RETIRED POLICE OFFICER AND VERIZON SECURITY DEPARTMENT INVESTIGATOR WHO, AFTER RETIRING IN 2006, MOVED FROM TAMPA, FLA., TO NOEL, MO. STAN’S CONNECTION TO NOEL CAN BE TRACED BACK TO HIS GRANDPARENTS WHO LIVED MOST OF THEIR LIVES THERE. STAN BEGAN WRITING AFTER THE PASSING OF HIS WIFE ROBIN IN 2013. OPINIONS EXPRESSED ARE THOSE OF THE AUTHOR.