(no subject)
How much of table is in the word 'table'?
How much would you miss it if it was gone?
The vase ('vase': vessel, urn, jug) wouldn't crash through onto the floor, ruining the carpet and ideas of sentiment, if the world was without the word 'table'. Four legs or two, wood or marble or plastic or metal. Words for the things they are or words for the idea of the thing.
How much of the body is in the word 'body'? If the arm bends, if the cheeks flush, if the eyes close, if the lungs expand, where is the word 'body' inside the notion of it? The separation of body and body, knowing mine through experiencing yours, or: forgetting that I have bones and blood and muscles and water until I wrap my hand ('hand': palm, fingers, fist) around your warm wrist or press a kiss against your hair. Left alone, how can we be sure that we are what we say we are? "Left alone, unattended, how is a person to remember that they exist?" Living inside, the hands are no better than the blind men with the elephant, grazing and gracing limbs and acres of skin that are not equal to the whole; fractions of a thing that can only ever fool and never reveal. Say 'body' and it does not appear.
Putting the semantics back into romance
(a rose by any other name)