His description of reality made it sound so fragile; He had designed it to stand only for as long as He had a chance to make it a place of love. Systems that turned dark with no chance of being saved had to be extinguished more easily than a candle in a gale; He loved his creations too much to allow the soul of even one single creature to fall into the hands of His enemies. Every time He created it was "all for one and one for all," no soul left behind. We win together or we are deleted together, one "switch" that lies in His hands only.
His description said nothing about the person he was describing and everything about himself - his paranoias, fears, prejudices. It spoke of his anger and misogynistic tenancies. Every word he said betrayed one more thing about the man, but the crazy thing is hardly a person in a thousand heard it.
Though the boy described a fantasy adventure, he gave away his troubles without realizing it. He eluded to what ailed him in a way his conscious mind could never express. The child felt lost in the world, grasping for meaning without even knowing it. He craved everything that was bad for him like we all do, addicted to the trauma society imbibed in daily but at the same time searching for something solid to pull him from the mire.
A description is a conveyance of meaning, often on more than one level. We layer symbolism into our work as fluidly as we dream, often the subconscious speaking when we believe it to be silent. There are times I write and believe it to be nothing more than a work of fiction, yet on closer analysis it speaks to me more clearly than factual language.
I could describe my face, my hair, my body, and still you would know nothing about me. The description would be functionally the same as that for a vase or perhaps a doll, yet I am neither. I am the person inside rather than the packaging: the love, the spirit, the spark of life. So should you ever make a description of me start there, with what my heart was driven to do, how I sought to heal spread light.
The description flowed like treacle over dry rocks. Every noun was preceded with no less than two adjectives and hardly any of them were punctuated. The tense changed unexpectedly and the writer wasn't sure of the difference between gout and goat. Mr Tracey took off his half-moon glasses and rubbed the ever deepening lines at the bridge of his nose. This new class was going to be tough, but he'd never failed to turn a group around yet and now wasn't the time to start failing.
The description taken at the scene was brief to the point of uselessness. Every other man in the seaside town was caucasian with brown hair. Mac rolled his eyes, let out a slow breath and counted to five before saying a word.
The lady's description of her love, the man she adored for fifty years, was more like a gentle hymn than simply words. None were sung, yet there was a melody to them, one more beautiful than any ever put to an orchestra. Leon sat, mutely spellbound, feeling the slow thud of his heart. So that was love, that's what he was looking for, and after hearing her tale he felt like he'd been given the tools to find it.
Upon the pages not aged by years but by frequent wear, were the descriptions Magdalena cherished. Buried in the words she walked the Italian olive groves of her childhood and heard the sweet phrases they used to say in her village. The book was her escapism, a salve for her homesickness and next month, like clockwork, she'd order a new copy.
Her description was almost too raw to read, too vulnerable and exposed. She had laid herself utterly bare for the eyes of all and it was all the casual reader could do not to hide the book back on the shelf and never return. Turning the pages felt like peeking in her windows and learning things one should never know unless it is about someone you profoundly love. Yet by doing so so told a tale that couldn't fail to invoke empathy in all but the hardest of hearts.
It was the kind of description that didn't seem like one at all; it flowed through the eyes the same way a mountain range does in the soft light of a new dawn. The words took the reader away, let their surroundings dissolve and the sounds around them ebb into the background.
His words were to descriptions what nails are to a horses feet. Instead of carrying the reader forwards they punctured in a way that made them wary. They littered the page demanding attention rather than promising excitement. Until he learned to scatter them more sparingly, more gently, they would never be the candy he needed them to be.
The description didn't do the man justice, it was little more than a cool detailing of his achievements. It spoke nothing of the man inside, the one who loved with his soul on fire yet faced the world as a warrior. It failed to capture the guy who was honest when it counted, only flexible with the truth when defending the weak. A list of academia and career says something, telling of the ideas and concepts that drove his curiosity, but summing him up that way was shallow, lazy, and frankly he deserved better.
Descriptions can transport you to places unknown, take you deeper into the ordinary, or even deeper into the self. Well crafted words are the means of conjuring rather than the object or idea brought forth. When skillfully done they are like the frame of a tasteful mirror rather than the glass, sitting in the background, visible to all, yet their purpose is to enhance the beauty of the picture rather than to draw attention to themselves.
The descriptions in the brochure were like icing on a stale cake, prettily hiding the substandard resorts among the gems. To read them uncritically was a one way ticket to a lacklustre vacation at a tired resort. The hired wordsmiths waxed as well as they could about lagoon pools, saunas and spas; next to the bright photographs who was to tell the good from the bad. The reviews were some help, but too easily manipulated to be trusted. Emma sighed, at this rate they'd be booking the same place as every other girl at work.
Descriptions can be casually underplayed or embellished to the point of becoming a lie; Ted, as rule, leaned toward the latter. The effect was to continuously disappoint people in his life with the very same things that could have brought them happiness. He never learnt to let the event sell itself, always bringing a level of hype it could never live up to. His descriptions were never more warped by hyperbole when it came to his four children, but that at least came over as endearing for the most part.
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