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jinian[warning: dog imagery. please substitute "mom tapir" if you prefer.]
Waking up from the nap I just took, I had a thought that brought me most of the way awake all by itself. What if someone were cursed to use only those words which most precisely fitted the literal meaning of what they were trying to say?
My mind framed it as a curse placed on a poet at first, and I still think it would be so. It might be useful, though. I was thinking that the afflicted person could switch to writing pop science or textbooks...
But what would one even be able to express? Getting more deeply into the mechanics of the thing than I'm sure my sleeping mind intended, would the person be able to think the right words and just not say any of them? Or would the right words just not be there, thus robbing the person not just of the ability to make the glorious circumlocutions that are so much to poetry, but even of the rush of images and word-thoughts that sometimes comes unbidden and rolls one around like a playful dog the size of skyscrapers? I don't know which would be more cruel.
Would you get adjectives? Adverbs? More than a basic set of nouns? There is still some pleasure in being able to name a thing correctly, in saying "borage" instead of "plant". Maximal clarity would include that precision, but would the victim break down over time and stop trying to distinguish?
Without your words, would you be able to know what you had lost?
If anyone wants to play with this idea in a story or anything, please do, and let me know. (Don't anyone actually go cursing people, though, okay?)
Waking up from the nap I just took, I had a thought that brought me most of the way awake all by itself. What if someone were cursed to use only those words which most precisely fitted the literal meaning of what they were trying to say?
My mind framed it as a curse placed on a poet at first, and I still think it would be so. It might be useful, though. I was thinking that the afflicted person could switch to writing pop science or textbooks...
But what would one even be able to express? Getting more deeply into the mechanics of the thing than I'm sure my sleeping mind intended, would the person be able to think the right words and just not say any of them? Or would the right words just not be there, thus robbing the person not just of the ability to make the glorious circumlocutions that are so much to poetry, but even of the rush of images and word-thoughts that sometimes comes unbidden and rolls one around like a playful dog the size of skyscrapers? I don't know which would be more cruel.
Would you get adjectives? Adverbs? More than a basic set of nouns? There is still some pleasure in being able to name a thing correctly, in saying "borage" instead of "plant". Maximal clarity would include that precision, but would the victim break down over time and stop trying to distinguish?
Without your words, would you be able to know what you had lost?
If anyone wants to play with this idea in a story or anything, please do, and let me know. (Don't anyone actually go cursing people, though, okay?)
