Sharing a tiny video with you today, sent from the heart….
(with special thanks to Eppie Ozen for her inspiring art)
Words are small. They seem to be delicate at first glance, slight and flimsy, even breakable. If you hold them inside your palm and listen attentively, you can hear their beating hearts.
But in truth, words are neither small nor delicate. If anything, they resemble silk—spider silk, to be more precise. They need to be woven with patience and determination. They swirl like gossamer in the midst of our lives, shifting our perceptions, reflecting the light.
Do you know that spider silk is the strongest biological substance?
Thinner than a human hair, insignificant to the eye it might be, but it has tremendous power, resilience and elasticity. It is composed of protein molecules that can align tightly together and show remarkable sturdiness. Surprisingly, it can be assembled and reassembled.
Weight for weight, pound for pound, silk is stronger than steel.
Letter by letter, breath by breath, words are stronger than sticks and stones and swords.
For writers, nothing is too small, nothing is insignificant.
Literature gives voice to the voiceless, makes the invisible a bit more visible and brings the periphery to the centre. The margins. The forsaken, the forgotten.
Literature rehumanises those who have been de-humanised.
This is why authoritarians attack poets and writers.
This is why authoritarianism hates the arts.
The love of words is interlaced with the love of freedom and the love of humankind.
Mahatma Gandhi.....You may never know what results come of your actions, but if you do nothing , there will be no results
Thank you Elif! Your words are magical and meaningful!
Timely.
Timely for me, just now, in this day.
Timely for us, all, wherever we are in the places and times we may each, perhaps even severally, come to first read or subsequently re-read.
Timely, truly so, being simply truthful: Words and the Story lands they take us to are Magic.
Thank you Elif.