And words are all I have
I went to my sisters' school yesterday to take them out of class for a piano exam. This morning, I was rather vicariously informed by both sisters that one 8-year-old boy and two 11-year-old boys in their respective classes have "crushes" on me. I'm not against dating younger men, but this is just taking it a few steps too far...in the direction of pedophaelia. My fabulous luck with the opposite sex rears its ungainly head again.
I think it is quite funny that when I look up a word in a dictionary to learn its meaning, what I find is more words. Understanding something almost always means correlating a word or phrase with other words. Everything we experience exists as language in our mind; if we can't explain what we've experienced, it is almost as if we never experienced it; if we can't form a word or a string of words for our encounters or experiences, it's almost like they don't exist.
I only thought about this because there is apparently a Dutch word for something I do/am...that doesn't actually translate into English. Immediately when told this, I felt at a strange kind of loss: because I did something which couldn't exist in my head as a word or a string of words, I felt somehow...like it didn't exist. I felt disconnected. I don't know. Ironically, I can't really describe how I felt about it :P Suffice to say, there is a Dutch word that apparently describes something about me precisely, but there is nothing in English for it. Therefore, I do not know what it is; it means nothing to me. This is frustrating.
Anyway. Our lives are ruled by words. How did we learn what the words meant in the first place?
[Update] Why don't they make songs like Build me up Buttercup anymore? That song is absolutely classic. And if songs like Britney's Oops I did it again or anything by S-Club-7 are destined to become "classics" in 20 odd years, may I be violated by mad goats.