The derivations of language were once flowers found in isolation, continent from continent, valley from valley. Here (and there) the grunts and whistles evolved with specificity to the place and its need for names. Like the flora and the fauna, the language evolves to match the land, giving shape to the ape's amusements, the ape's aspirations, the ape's fears. Horizons are given histories and mysteries that both invite and inspire mortal trembling. And when, at the frontier, two tongues did collide, the lack of vocabulary was overcome with arrow and sword; new words (and thus new concepts) arrived at other camps on the lips of the conqueror or the lips of a slave.
The Internet has accelerated this transmutation. What once was limited by climate, seed and soil (the indigenous being the only offering in flower or fruit) is now bound only by imagination. One can plant anything from anywhere: Persian numerals, Chinese philosophy and from France, elaborate gardens that rejuvenate against a book of hours, nightly, daily eternally, the flowers opening and closing, resuscitating their perfume. And in this modern, heretical garden, the census is taken and the population of words is revealed to be half a million, 500,000 promiscuously articulated moans. You want to believe that this profusion provides clarity, but there is no proof.
Words force us to take sides or at least take positions. Their failure lies in the fact of the filter in the individual mind. The subtlety of 10,000 mots is lost on the reader for whom every fourth word finds estrangement instead of meaning. This gluttonous crowd is loud and diverse, a rave spilling into the back alley and through the crumbling wall out into the open country and beyond, up into the ancient cave. The Ecstasy adjusts my hesitation and--at the top of my lungs, from the bottom of my belly--I begin reciting poetry:
"Should you ask me,
whence these stories?
Whence these legends and traditions...
With their frequent repetitions,
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?"
Longfellow
And their wild reverberations
As of thunder in the mountains?"
Longfellow
