I saw a sign that said, “Far Would 4 Sail.”
At first I didn’t know what it meant, but then
I figured it out and laughed. It was the good kind of laugh, like when you
finally get a joke.
The sign brought to mind many things I have
known that seemed good and were good, only they were spelled wrong. But perhaps
they weren’t wrong at all, at least not in the important ways of being wrong.
Perhaps in some other place or time, they would have been
right.
Me? I loved that sign from the moment I saw it.
I get the sign. There is a
gentleness to the word Far – so much nicer than fire. And Would looks like a
little reclining couch. You could rest your head on the W and your feet on the
LD. The 4 is delightfully playful, isn’t it? Like a little girl winking at you. And
Sail tells you all you need to know. You could take that sign, hold it tightly
to your chest, and leap off a mountain, couldn’t you? Wouldn’t you, if you could?
There is a reality to Far Would 4 Sail that
feels very old to me. Older than standardized spelling and silly rules. Because
the person who made that sign chopped all that would. Every blessed stick of it.
Every piece of that farwould came from life and work. Every stroke of the axe
was a real labor of muscle and flesh. Real living. Real life. Real work. Real
love. Dammit, this person wrote it as it sounds and
said it as it is. The far would person feels the reality of chopping would and
stacking it in the bed of a delightfully old pickup and sailing it on the side
of the road.
And what am I doing that’s so damn important?
Driving by at 70 mph in my fancy car? Running a spell check on my latest essay?
This is a secret: sometimes, when I'm alone at
night, and the church feels far away, and there are no nice people around, and the
rules and obligations are out of my mind, I wish that I
could write like the far would sign. Misspelled and brave and the hell with
anything except for what is clear and obvious and right in front of my face. The
stuff my body and my heart tells me is real and good.
Sometimes I imagine myself stripped to the
waist, chopping away, living straight and full and with muscles flexing and
straining. Laughing away the ghostly unrealities of religion and syntax and
every other thing that denies the flesh. I would live only for the
beauty of the moment, and I would know the eternal that lives at the cutting
edge of the present. There would be no time for spelling. Hell, it wouldn’t even
be on my radar screen. It wouldn’t exist.
But that is too ancient and good a way for me
to live. And it would cost me too much. I sold my soul long ago, left the
garden, and moved on. I live in a world where everything must be spelled
correctly or no one will read it or even try to understand it. That is my world,
and there is no escaping it now.
But I see the Far Would sign. I look at it
shyly, like a little boy who is afraid to get too close. I see the sign and I
can read it. I understand it. And I love it.
I wish for Far Would - sort of - maybe - from a safe distance.
rlp
