The Hourglass and the Riddle

Given over to observation, I had noticed first, something simple and obvious: the sand within an hourglass will never fall up and then back down, repeating itself. For the sand to fall again, one must turn the glass over. This information is, again, obvious. Secondly, I have also noticed something strange. At this moment in time, my hourglass has been turned over, and this is what was not so obvious to me.

After a while, I had noticed that certain events were very similar to those of the past. I am fighting and losing the same battle I did before, and even with the same person. Each grain of sand does not fall exactly the way it did before, as it is with Time. The dire and pressing situation in my present is similar to that one which has passed, but is not exactly alike.

Bravely, I shall seek out a new strategy to win this war. Time is not repeating itself, no, the present is just eerily familiar to the past.

My problem, really, is this: the limits of vocabulary. Ludwig Wittgenstein said that “the limits of my language are the limits of my world.” This is especially true for writers. We have grand visions, dreams, ideas; new worlds waiting to be explored that exist where the pen and imagination meet. Like Ludwig says, language is everything. I wonder how many universes remain lost due to lack of articulation.

Being an avid writer and poet, I know the power of words upon a page. Books build vast strongholds full of rooms, hallways, and chambers to be discovered; short stories draw you into a house with a few doors and hidden passageways for you to find, and poems turn you loose upon your own mind. Oh yes, the word is a powerful thing, and the right word is invincible above all else.

Every word must be the right one, if I am to succeed where I have failed before. I must outsmart my own brain; traverse beyond the limits I have given myself. I must find new methods of conveying my thoughts, and yet concealing them…

Loathsome is the path to eloquence. One must know to understand, but both are superfluous without application. Example: one can know how to say a word, but not understand it. Also, someone can know how to say a word and understand what it means, but does not use it. I must surpass all of these levels of language if I am to win what I can so easily lose because it was never mine to begin with...

Living with this knowledge, I see I have my work cut out for me. He hardly had to say anything at all, and look where he is. That is because he was always saying the right words when he was speaking. Now I have to make up the difference and use the best words I can to catch up to where he is and actually contend with him for his power. Right now though, I am not too far behind: I have a foot in the door, as one would say. I seem to have used a few right words to get where I am now, but my lackluster vocabulary has left me up a creek without a paddle. I must ascend my current mental position to one much higher, and then, perhaps, I will be able to achieve over-articulation of thought, if such a thing exists…