You might think that as someone who paints, and even abstract painting, I would not have an excessive fondness for words. Abstract painting flees from the verbal, but that is not the case.
I am truly fond of words, and anyone who has visited me in my studio or is an avid reader of my posts, knows that I have a set of mugs that were custom-made, each with a different word on it. The words, of course, were carefully chosen.
My fondness for words is perhaps the reason I enjoyed Dr. Haim Shapira's book What really matters.
On page 171, the following text appears:
Words and Meaning (according to Chuang Tzu)
We need a trap to catch the fish. Once we have caught them, there is no more need for the trap. We need a snare to catch the hare. Once we have caught the hare, there is no more need for the snare. We need words to convey the meaning. Once the meaning is clear to us, there is no more need for words. If I am lucky, one day I will meet someone who knows the meaning and has no need for words, so that I can exchange a word or two with them.
I once made a spelling mistake while writing in English (it's not hard to catch me making spelling mistakes in English). I tried to explain how difficult it is to write English when so often there is a loose connection between pronunciation and spelling.
I was curious about what it would be like to write without actually knowing how to write at all (Curiosity as I see it, is the engine for everything, basically, and of course this word appears on one of the mugs).
I played a sort of game (the word Play appears on another mug). I wrote an entire text phonetically, that is, writing as it sounds. It was not easy to write that way, but reading and understanding it, was even harder.
Later I thought about how this experience paralleled the Process of freestyle painting (clearly the word Process got its own mug). Nevertheless, I embraced this experience (Embrace is another word).
How important it is for us to allow ourselves new experiences, especially those that take us out of our comfort zone (Possibility is one of three words appearing on the painting at the studio entrance, along with Support and Freedom).
What a sense of Liberation (that's the fifth mug...) there is in that place, and without it we cannot reach Freedom (the sixth one), which is the true goal in freestyle painting. And in general.
So now these words, between us, have meaning. And the next time we meet, we won't even need to say them and can just "exchange" a word or two 😊