How many words does it take to describe something? I imagine that if two people were at the same place at the same time when some amazing thing happened to them both, it might only take one word to capture the whole essence of the thing. If one friend, for instance, were to say to another, "Milan!", perhaps that would be all that would be necessary to convey the entire spirit of the whole enterprise that were involved. Then, on the flipside, there is that age-old question of how to explain the concept of color to a blind man. I dunno. I have something of a heightened faith in words; I think one might be able to do it. But this may be the classic example of where one could write tome after tome, and never get your point across: this is red, this is green, this is blue. Or perhaps words might, here, be the wrong tools to use to crack such a nut.
I recall one sensation back a few years back, reading Crime and Punishment, where Dostoevsky wrote about Raskolnikov being read scripture by Sonia. I remember, still, the effect it had on me, how quiet the world became when I read those words, a solemn epiphany. It didn't take that many pages, that scene, but if you were to ask me how many words it actually took to describe that moment, I would have told you, "a couple of hundred pages worth." There was no way I would have felt what I felt without the whole context, Raskolnikov's murdering those women, his fever, his wanderings; Sonia's history, how she became a prostitute. It was like he got into my head, and he knew to press there would send me flying. I wonder what it would be like if we all could get in each other's heads. How few the words we would need to convey the heights and depths of each other's souls. Maybe just one. Imagine.
