Word Limits

There are word limits

Where I work, and where I play

When I encounter them, they inspire a range of responses

I am generally outraged that I must obey them

I am a free range logophile by nature

Sesquipedalian verbiage is my stock in trade

There is never enough language to allow me to achieve my goal

Which is to take pleasure in using language as I pursue some loftier aim with its aid

Making an argument or deciding when a haiku has stopped impressing silence or describing the lunar curve of a clavicle, exposed

Just enough to entice the observer, but not so much as to alarm the throng

Like a question that you enjoy posing, even if you do not know the answer

Or perhaps, because you do not

Most of those I play with have the same attitude

They grudgingly concede the technical utility of the harness

Even as they worry the bit with their teeth as they run

Hoping that they can reach the goal

Despite the conditions, the limitations, the constraints

Reaching the goal is all that matters

It must be done properly and poetically

What I will make despite your having complicated matters

Sadist

When I encounter word limits while working with students

They are resented for the opposite reason

When you do not know or care what you are writing about

When words do not fail you, for you are busy failing them

When writing is exercise you resent, because you do not know you need it

The limit is an outrageous demand

That you carry on writing

Despite your lack of any will to do so

Long after you have grown bored

Or in spite of the fact that it causes you miserable distress

Trying to arrange the pieces of a puzzle you can't solve

For you see only parts, and can't spell whole

Then, the word limit is a line you must drag yourself toward

Sweating, groaning, resenting each step

You do not want to take part in this event

But there are goods external to it that might be won

Should you persevere

Better food, fewer lashes

An end to the reminders that it must be done

How readily we allow our words to be limited

By cautious discretion

By fear

By doubt

By custom and habit

By the scolding censor

By the clenched puritan

By the impatient and the illiterate

By greed

By vanity

No cap

What a remarkable expression that is

"No" has such an array of grammatical costumes at its disposal

"No hope": a determiner, modifying the noun to indicate the lack of whatever it names

"No amateur": adjectival assignment accepted: the noun is modified to indicate that the party it names does not belong to a particular category or have a particular quality. This is especially useful when hunting quail:

"No!": the interjection that refuses the injection, or the rejection, or the infection

"No, I did not!": adverbs sometimes seem so adversarial, don't they?

Cap is not possessed of the same acrobatic alacrity when leaping between modes of usage

But it does feature some surprising properties nonetheless, lowly noun

"No cap" is typically an exclamation that means that the preceding utterance ought to be acknowledged as true, appearances to the contrary notwithstanding

"I really enjoyed writing this essay for class, no cap."

This is not a literal claim about an actual cap

This is a metaphor

My head is not covered, nothing conceals my true nature

I stand before you, naked and unafraid, prepared to stake my life

My good name and my considerable reputation

Upon the truth of the foregoing claim

Imagine me without a cap in your mind

Get the idea

I will not practice to deceive

That last message you ought to receive

As you would a precious gift

No lies lurk here

For it corresponds to some state of affairs

In the public domain of objectivity

Or the private precincts of subjectivity

In fact, if the private is revealed in public

In a way that gives disinterested pleasure to all who hear or read it

Some art is mixed with the craft

As the truth is told

No cap

The limits are sometimes uncomfortable

The pen cannot write with the cap on

But without a cap, it would soon dry up

Limits can seem onerous, but what we can reach, submitting ourselves to them

Ripples with exotic beauty on the sun kissed horizon

If we can make it

You can meet or exceed the word limit in a blink

With your robot's help

But if the robot lifts the weights

Will you grow stronger?

If the robot cooks the meal

Will you become a more talented chef?

If the robot writes the text

What will be revealed about you

Unique as the vein patterns on a retina

Seemingly as ordinary and casually discarded as a cigarette

When what you have written is read?

What about your thoughts

What about your feelings

What about your beliefs

What about your doubts

What about your prejudices

What about your tastes

What about your love

What about your hate

What about your bashful dreams

What about what it is like for you to be yourself

Thanks to the world

Or despite its best efforts

To treat you like a thing among things

As opposed to what you know yourself to be

This age is sweaty with excitement about superheroes

There may be good reasons for that

Having nothing to do with profit or loss

The superhero is typically possessed of a secret identity

To the idle passer by, in most cases, the superhero can appear unremarkable

At the day job, or the bodega, or in line at the ATM or the DMV

But beneath that generic, beige exterior

Terrible power throbs

Muscles made to master monsters mutter

You just wait

I will show you what that spider made of me

The word limit

Is the costume that allows you to pass unnoticed

Until the reader starts to pay close attention

And you turn out to be a grim, green goliath

No cap

Why would you resent the opportunity

To follow the old track

In the traditional way

Reigns and bridle and all

And leave the competition choking with rage in your wake

While the onlookers gape with thrilled incredulity

No cap

Capture the cosmos on the face of a coin

Turn a nanosecond into a numbing, nasty novel

Make the content so perfectly suited to the form

That they seem to have been born as conjoined twins

Make how you do it and what you do one and the same

And you will bless and keep the word limit

At work and at play

For language is a domesticated animal

With liberty looping through its lungs

You cannot win without it

But you must know where you are going

And show it the way

Then hold on

It is no ordinary beast

It can carry you beyond yourself

Into everything and everyone

Go