I wrote this post nearly a month ago today - on August 11th -  but never acutally posted it.  The truth is I am sometimes terrified to ask for what I need.  Here's one of those things...

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This is Merrell.  He's the real deal.  People say I'm a Meryl fan.  This is true.  I am also very much a Merrell fan. This Merrell returns my calls, though he does sometimes ignore me when i call his name.

He also makes me laugh.  This is his costume display and we laughed our heads off trying to take a photo.  He was more than happy to play along.

Several years ago I went to visit my friends Gail and Mary at a house they were staying in near Brighton High School.  The living room ceiling was at least two stories high with lots of natural light streaming in.  I remember this room because I talked with Mary - a writer - about how difficult and disappointing it is to write.

"What comes out in words is never as good as what I imagine in my head," I said.

"It never is,"  was her pitched answer.  The tone may have been from her own experience and also partly from exasperation.  Whatever the reasons, that sentence has stuck with me.

This evening I fell asleep on the livingroom couch while watching an episode of Parenthood on my iPad.  My nephews were playing a video game called Ghost Recon.

i woke up and felt a great wave of loneliness, a feeling I am acquainted with.  More than I would like - this I know for sure.  

I had to go sit in the bathroom and let the weepy out.  

Then this - 'words are the clothing of consciousness' came into my brain.

It isn't that I am actually unloved.  It is that words are very important to me.  It is that I need to hear the words.  My sister and brother-in-law let me stay with them whenever I come to town.  Their children love being around me.  My other sister contends to have me stay with her.  I know that I am loved.  But as I said, I need to hear the words, formed and released into the universe, to actually feel it.  It's very petty of my, I'm sure.

I know it is possible, and often practiced, to say one thing and do another.  We weave lines and worlds or deceit up and down and all around.  But it's also written that God was the word and the word was with God.  That God created the earth and the heavens with words.  Now God may have used hands and his feet and ankles, too.  For all I know, God put on Marx Brothers mustache and eye brows to do the deed.  But the word was definitely involved.

We call the universe into existence with the words.  Otherwise existence is merely a mess.  We organize and define.  We give shape and give meaning to everything, literally everything, with words.  
 
Of course when I say that words are the clothing of consciousness, I understand that clothes cover up.  Which is true of words, too.  But we also uncover.  We reveal what is important.  We define.  Sometimes we embrace.

Here's my point.  I need to hear the words.  If you are out there and you are a loved one of mine, I need to actually hear from you the words "I love you."  I'm willing to bet there are others in your life too, who feel the same way.  Feeling loving arms around me and hearing the words "I love you," makes all the work bareable.  It makes the practical, day-to-day of life possible.  

At least I think this is so.