All that silence did get me thinking, though.

Talk can often feel like action.

Throwing words around, creating shared meaning, discussing terms and plans and possibilities and problems... But talk, primarily, is not action. It lays the groundwork for action. It can, bureaucratically in a sense, create the space for action...But all those things we talk about doing do eventually need to get done. And so much of what we talk about doing is just more talking. Especially in the kind of economy within which myself and my peers function. Words on paper, words through telephones, across the internet, words translated into other words, words to sell things, words to emotionally "fix" things, words to schedule things and manage people... Words alone become our bread and butter. They pay for our food and shelter and clothing and habits and everything else that means anything to anyone. So no wonder words get given so much value despite the fact that they're essentially vibrations in the air, electronic pixels of light, or chewed up trees covered in chemical swirls of pigment.

So if words are not action, what is? When I try to understand action very simply, I think of growing food; planting seeds in little furrows in the dirt, watering them, treasuring them, protecting them into fruition. I think of building houses or shelters; collecting wood or making cuts with a circular saw, measuring things, the sound of a hammer or a power drill. I think of cooking food to eat, teaching children how to cook or build, how to take care of themselves and others... These things do require speech if you're doing them with others... Which is how these things are done, generally. Some even benefit from writing.

When I think about "doing" something, however, especially when I push myself to ask what I WANT to do, deep down, I think about words. I mean, I would love to learn some of the skills affiliated with the doing of things. But to be honest, that's out of my survival instinct, and out of a need to legitimate the amount of time I actually want to spend with WORDS.

Why?

The very root of me knows how hollow they are, how powerless and small and pervious, so why am I so drawn to them? Why, when I feel anything at all, am I driven to write about it, to record it, to understand it through language - a language whose heritage and functions and meanings I also have huge ethical problems with - so much so that I get lost in my own damn words?

As this writing soothes me, so too can I become aware of other things that words have DONE and can DO.

The tricky thing is that line between making something happen, and doing something. If I give a speech that leads to 12 people storming a government building, stealing the acts of parliament and setting them alight, have I done something? If by their symbolic action of torching what are basically more words, 300 people decide to start a squatting cooperative in an abandoned building (or an occupied building, for that matter), 500 decide it's time to leave the country and 2000 people decide to buy the paper the next day, 2000 more than would've before... whose words have done what? The acts of parliament have power, my speech had power, those who acted to destroy previously existing words had power, and now the newspaper has power. No, words can definitely act. Words can definitely do things... But it still comes down to action. Word are a part of that.

I guess.

Ugh. But do you see what I mean?

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about... Wish I knew what you were.