Wednesday, May 6, 2009

No Words For It

What do you do with that feeling that sits inside you, yearning to be let out, but so remote that even you can't describe it?

It's inexplicably unexplainable. Perhaps it is my own lack of words and my own lack of coherency that fails me here, but I do know I'm not alone in feeling it. What is it that words cannot describe? It is a mixture of not one, not two, but several emotions wrapped up in a ball of enigma, though perhaps that's a little too poetic for something that seems lazier than the romantic ideal of mystery and discovery.

In any case, where is the invented word for this inexplicable feeling? Is it unattainable? It surely cannot be impossible, for if it is, it should not exist. For there's a theory that language determines (or so largely influences) one's culture, and if there is no word for it, does it really exist? What happens when one is of more than one culture? I, myself, have each foot stepped into American and Chinese cultures...and maybe another limb dipped into Hawaii culture. I can't say I'm fully grounded in any. There have definitely been times when I strive to describe something that fully exists as tangible as anything else in either language, such as a Chinese concept of a body ailment that sounds completely absurd in English or instead maybe the English word for passion that sounds altogether too romantic for my usage. Perhaps the same problem lies here, when I try to describe that feeling that fleetingly flits away from me when my spiritual fingers try to grab at it.

In any case, I suppose I must accept it for now...

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