when I was four

The Bent Wheat Daily
Post Serial
January 8, 2002

When I Was Four

It doesn’t matter what you say, it matters what you do. This is not a surprise to me, I knew this when I was four. Adults said a lot, sometimes I didn’t know the words, because I did not have the definitions for them yet. It was what they did that was important. Like that statement they make just before they spank you, "This is going to hurt me more than it hurts you." Hardly.

Adults taught me to say words that did not necessarily express my own feelings, like please and thank you. After a while, please and thank you did not have an emotional meaning, it was something just to be said. That went for I Love You too, it did not have an emotional meaning. If my face was stinging from a slap, I Love You was not a comfort.

So somewhere around four I could follow my feelings, and ignore words. Somewhere after that, it got turned around. Maybe in school where they teach you the twenty-six letters of the alphabet by the corresponding sound. Make the sound of A, like in A B C. And then magically all those letters go together to make words, but the sounds of the letters change, like the a in cat. So I had to learn the words, in spite of what the letters said to me. The words became more important than my own natural impulses.

So sometimes I would wait too long, almost wet my pants, because I was so engrossed. I was learning to deny myself, that is what obedience is. But I willingly learned it, because I wanted to know about the word.

The Word was also religious, if it was written it was important. Print anything you want in the newspaper, because it is written it can become authorized history, no matter how distorted. It doesn’t matter what I write, for what I write may not be what you read. But whatever you read, is your own distortion, your own perspective.

And it passes that way, person to person. Distortion to distortion.

But beneath the word is a feeling associated with that word.

You can feel the word courage, you can also feel the words coward, dishonest, unloyal. And they hurt, and I wondered why? But every one of those words is just a distortion. Loyal is a great one for perspective, as it depends on which side of the fence you are on at the moment.

I spent a lot of my life saying words that I thought I knew what they meant, and they always meant the same thing to everybody. Like "in sickness and in health, till death do us part." But I remember on the way home from my second marriage, my new husband said that if I ever got fat, he would divorce me. Obviously, "till death do us part," did not make it home, much less the honeymoon.

I guess now, I really look hard at words because I never lost my fascination.

Words have a myriad of meanings. Sometimes we forget how very much one word can mean. How it is written is important, for the word may sound the same when spoken. And one word can have many different feelings. It depends on the usage.

Hateful words can become fun words, like bitch, which jumped right out of the closet and became enjoyably flamboyant. The same with fuck, it’s a great word to poke fun at. I guess what I’m saying is that to expand the definition of a word is to expand its feeling. Coward, dishonest, and unloyal don’t have to always feel bad sometimes they can feel funny. And I get to choose how I feel.

My vocabulary of words associated to feelings may be different than yours, like the jokes are not funny to you. But it doesn’t matter what I say, it only matters what I do.
If the part of my self that writes, or says, is in alignment with the part of myself that acts. And if they are in alignment, there is a recognizable tone to it.

The part of myself that acts, is the movement of me.

And it moves as it desires, in spite of what I say.

But when they are in alignment, the words spoken or written take on an aspect of sincerity.

It is a tone, and I can hear it, I can read it, and I can feel it.

Feeling sincerity is of great benefit to me.

I remember it from when I was four.


Wit Love – from the Editor,
The God of Sharon