Full Heart, Empty Page

The writer's joy is the thought
that can become emotion,
the emotion that can
wholly become a thought.
~ Thomas Mann






The setting: Filled with what I think are thoughts that I want to share, I sit down to write, and suddenly I am staring at a blank page – sometimes I stare at it for a very long time. I type a little, delete some or all, type some more, and edit, edit, edit. At times, I don’t even get that far – it’s just me, my full heart, and my empty page. I have never been concise, but it seems that the older I get, the more difficult it is for me to pin down exactly what I want to say, regardless of the length of my writing. My handwritten letters didn’t get edited, and they seemed to be far more successful than my email endeavors at communicating how I feel. What gives?

Sometimes the things I feel, especially those that I feel most deeply, do not translate perfectly into words. I just don’t believe there exists a measure of words for every feeling. Perhaps there once did; if so, then over time those words have become hollow through overuse, abuse, and/or redefinition – to the extent that they fall short of what I want to say, what I wish I could say, what someone else might long to hear me say.

It’s not that I have not searched my existing vocabulary, ransacked the plethora of thesauri at my disposal, and even prayed. I have wearied myself countless times doing just that; still, despite all of my efforts, I only come close, at best, to finding the words that hold my thoughts. They seem to hover just out of reach like the water and fruit before Tantalus.

[Yes, I know that the analogy is somewhat weak. The comparison begins and ends with the inability to have what is so, so close. I can feel those words, but I cannot reach them. It is maddening.]

Maybe I need music . . .

So, here I sit, writing again . . . hoping that my words represent, at least to some degree, what I am feeling and thinking (about feeling and thinking). At the close of my own meditation, I sought to find what others had to say about my topic . . . something for the header . . . something for the sidebar. I was surprised at what I discovered after I had finished writing.

Enough of me . . . it’s their turn.

~ End Quote


from the sidebar . . .

Words make you think a thought.
Music makes you feel a feeling.
A song makes you feel a thought.
~ E. Y. Harburg

The good writer, the great writer, has what I have called the three S's: the power to see, to sense, and to say. That is, he is perceptive, he is feeling, and he has the power to express in language what he observes and reacts to.
~ Lawrence Clark Powell

Thought is deeper than all speech,
Feeling deeper than all thought;
Souls to souls can never teach
What unto themselves was taught.
~ Christopher Pearse Cranch

Feeling is deep and still;and the word that floats on the surface
Is as the tossing buoy,that betrays where the anchor is hidden.
~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow,
“Evangeline” (pt. II, sc. 2, l. 212)

We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect; we apprehend it just as much by feeling. Therefore, the judgment of the intellect is, at best, only the half of truth, and must, if it be honest, also come to an understanding of its inadequacy.
~ Carl Jung

I love writing. I love the swirl and swing of words as they tangle with human emotions.
~ James A. Michener