Letter From the Editor BY JACLYN TRUSS
Words For Everything
As someone who spends so much time with
words, it is only a matter of time before you learn
that there simply aren’t words for everything.
Emotions, the language of the soul, birth from
unknown places, places where words have yet to
form and may never. We may like words, we may
crave explanation or excuse, but all the things
that matter most - the things that break us, exalt
us and change us forever - carry no syllables or
syntax. Just because I know a lot of words does
not mean I am not at a loss for them constantly.
But just as constantly, I am searching for them. I
love to read because, often, others have the words
for the things I do not. The words I cannot find
the means to muster, cannot divine or claim for
myself, but endlessly long for. There was a time when it wasn’t uncommon to use
a piece of string to guide words that otherwise might
falter on the way to their destinations. Shy people
carried a little bundle of string in their pockets, but
people considered loudmouths had no less need for
it, since those used to being overheard by everyone
were at a loss for how to make themselves heard by
someone. The physical distance between two people
using a string was often small; sometimes the smaller
the distance, the greater the need for the string…
“So many words get lost. They leave the mouth and
lose their courage, wandering aimlessly until they
are swept into the gutter like dead leaves… —Excerpt from—
“The History of Love”,
by Nicole Krauss
Sometimes no length of string is long enough to say
the thing that needs to be said. In such cases all the
string can do, in whatever its form, is conduct a
person’s silence.”
May you always have a piece of string and the courage to make it sing.
Please e