Only Words

    I've always liked words, and stories, and what they leave us with.  Some fairy tales were scary when we were little, with  menaces such  a kidnapping dwarf, a big bad wolf, and a hunter with a gun.  I remember crying over the suffering of Ginger and Merrylegs, feeling sad for the lost and lonely Lassie trying to find her way back home, and my heart breaking over Old Yeller and the Red Pony. The images are forever etched in my memory.
    I remember being fascinated, though, by a story from a much less respected genre, the American folk tale:  I was never much impressed by those stories nor by Paul Bunyan, who I considered an unreliable blowhard, yet one of his tales left an indelible mark.  He is describing how cold the weather was, and he relates that it was so cold that words froze as they fell out of people's mouths, and no one knew what was said until the spring thaw.  I was intrigued by the concept of words having a solid form.  It seemed right to me that they should. You could write words down, which gives them substance, why then shouldn't they have a physical counterpart as well. 
   During my adolescent religious period, I got into what may have been a type of passing trend, because I don't hear much of it anymore, though I suppose that could be because I am no longer in that theater. Mental prayer was what they called it, and that meant you were supposed to be able to pray in a higher form without using words, not even in your mind.  This was in direct contrast to what the "migrant nuns" taught when they came to our neck of the woods--- that praying doesn't count unless you move your lips.  TBC---my eyes go to sleep before I do nowadays--more's the pity