One day you finally knew what you had to do, and began, though the voices around you kept shouting their bad advice— though the whole house began to tremble and you felt the old tug at your ankles. “Mend my life!” each voice cried. But you didn’t stop. You knew what you had to do, though the wind pried with its stiff fingers at the very foundations, though their melancholy was terrible. It was already late enough, and a wild night, and the road full of fallen branches and stones. But little by little, as you left their voices behind, the stars began to burn through the sheets of clouds, and there was a new voice which you slowly recognized as your own, that kept you company as you strode deeper and deeper into the world, determined to do the only thing you could do— determined to save the only life you could save.
“Lemon Grove, Sorrento Italy” Photographer Unknown
There is a concerning trend toward the ubiquitous use of the F word by Christians who want to shock, to show they are progressives and not traditionalists. An argument could be made for the idea that the people most demeaned by swearing words are women. Actually though, my argument is based on self-talk, on our inner landscape, our personal environmental space of thinking in ordinary life when no one is around to listen or to impress, or to depress.
Like others, I am sure, the words I speak during the day, come back to me at times during the night. We work out our issues in our sleep. In a way, we are what we think.
If I fill my daytime conversation, (compelled by my daytime media consumption), with the F word, the S word, and every other negative use of the alphabet, these words populate and pollute my mind and propagate and echo themselves.
I was raised not to swear. It was considered the lowest form of communication. I never had to have my mouth washed out with soap but found words on the tip of the tongue.
When I left my parents’ home, I tried out swearing. The freedom felt good but was short lived. It seemed too decadent to me, too risqué, too aberrant. So I stopped just in time to become a mother and a good example.
Years later in art school I learned to swear. It was cathartic. It released me from the swearing of another. I had been wounded by someone’s focused swearing toward me. I carried on but was devastated. This came out non-verbally in my art making. One day at Emily Carr U. in a critique class, I was tasked with explaining my work. Others swore for me. Then they, around the circle of desks, encouraged me to do my own swearing. Against my better judgement, I took their dare.
I said the same words that had been weaponized against me. It felt good and even right, but to continue to use those words as a daily practice would have degraded my conversation. As a visual learner whose imagination can be overactive, the F word and the S word, for example, always bring visuals with them.
In another way, I ask myself, what is swearing, really? Perhaps it is an expression of disappointment with life, of hatred for others, or for the unimportance of special acts and the cynicism toward daily living. Cousins of swearing, after all, seem to be what used to be called dirty stories, crude jokes, loose talk? Can these be good for my mental health? If I demean others, demean life itself and demean the holy acts of life, is that life-giving? What are the holy moments of life, but childbirth, the deathbed, the sex act, prayer, caregiving, true conversation?
So I know how to swear, and at times it expresses the pain and ugliness of living. Can I prove my humility by using low words? In these days of the pandemic and other world crises, swearing is not enough. It is never enough. If I begin swearing as a practice, I would never stop, I think. There is so much to swear about, so much pain and injustice and uncertainty. Will I go there? As a colourist on canvas, will I verbalize in colourful language, or colour toward a horizon outside the lines?
ShellseekerReflections 