Friday, January 26, 2007
tears
another set of words from mr huxley.
He stood there motionless, gazing, gazing through a timeless succession of mounting intensities and ever-profounder significances. Tears filled his eyes and overflowed at last onto his cheeks. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped them away.
"I can't help it," he apologized.
He couldn't help it because there was no other way in which he could express his thankfulness.
bodies have myriad ways of expressing negative emotions, and these methods are often (or at least can be) emphatic. but positive emotions are much harder to express in extremes. smiling is just so *common*; a smile that truly expresses happiness is of course possible, but it can be hard for an onlooker to gauge the degree emotion being expressed. disgust is easy to display; joy is much more challenging.
the beauty of tears is that it is the one instinctual positive reaction that a human has available to demonstrate positive emotion--the one way that a soul can force the body it inhabits to show joy--and that it is a demonstration of emotion that is almost impossible to feign.
He stood there motionless, gazing, gazing through a timeless succession of mounting intensities and ever-profounder significances. Tears filled his eyes and overflowed at last onto his cheeks. He pulled out his handkerchief and wiped them away.
"I can't help it," he apologized.
He couldn't help it because there was no other way in which he could express his thankfulness.
bodies have myriad ways of expressing negative emotions, and these methods are often (or at least can be) emphatic. but positive emotions are much harder to express in extremes. smiling is just so *common*; a smile that truly expresses happiness is of course possible, but it can be hard for an onlooker to gauge the degree emotion being expressed. disgust is easy to display; joy is much more challenging.
the beauty of tears is that it is the one instinctual positive reaction that a human has available to demonstrate positive emotion--the one way that a soul can force the body it inhabits to show joy--and that it is a demonstration of emotion that is almost impossible to feign.
# posted by orange @ 12:45 PM 
