"I am not yet so lost in lexicography, as to forget that words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven. Language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: I wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote." Samuel Johnson

I've been thinking about words lately, thinking about them in the same way I used to think about clouds, or smoke. It's my job to think of them, in them.

Yesterday my father told me that the fact that a person's employment could be terminated because they were gay was, quite simply, the "way it should be." So, now I'm thinking about words ... and although I excel at MY employment because I have an ability to manipulate words into an acceptable, if not pleasing, justification - I can't spin those. I can't manipulate his thoughts and it occurs to me that I only ever mold the end result, I never change the preceeding facts or the arguments, just like I can't change the feelings preceeding those words.

I'm bored by clouds, skies and sunsets now. I ponder over tense, comma, and wordplay. "the way it should be" and I'm not allowed to diminish the power of words in my head, in my heart, in my hand ... their insignificance would diminish me. and so, I've begun to think about words.

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