When a Wiggly Monster Was My World

My mom used to take me to a Presbyterian church whose minister was vocally Pro-Choice. For a time, parishioners from nearby churches, convinced of the absolute correctness of their own religious discernment, stood outside our church and protested it on Sunday mornings. They yelled at us as we drove into the parking lot. They held up signs that said things like: "Your church believes in killing babies!"

Of course, our church did not believe in killing babies. To say something like that would be to use language incorrectly. Even if you considered an "embryo" or a "fetus" a "baby" it would be a fundamental mistake to say that our church believed in killing them.

***

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.

The act of writing is inherently flawed (and libel) and the errancy of law (and bible), with it's many versions and glosses, is the only thing we can divine precisely. Words are symbols for expression. They are stand-ins for thoughts and feelings. Thoughts and feelings are elusive things to know, even when they are our own. Sometimes the best way to describe a thing honestly is to use metaphor.

Thoughts and feelings are elusive things to know, even when they are our own

Take a word like lógos (Λόγος), Greek for "word." It appears 330 times in the New Testament. When it is translated into English for the King James, it is translated as "word," but also as "saying," as "account," and as "speech," among several others. John's use of lógos is translated into English as these words too, but he stands out among the other authors of the Gospels in using the word lógos as a metaphor for God.

In the beginning was the Word. And the Word was with God. And the Word was God.

***

Fifteen weeks into a much-wanted pregnancy, my wife and I terminated. It was unplanned and involuntary, this termination. It was unwilled and yet it was something we did completely of our own volition.

Here are some of the words she and I used to describe the fetus she had inside her, which stopped being on an otherwise pleasant afternoon in July:

Peanut.

T-Rex.

Wiggly Monster.

For a few weeks one summer, these words were our world.

***

Our language is our truth. It is our world. It is our god.

Is there thought—is there anything—without a word to describe it? Has there ever been?

Words are how we understand one-another.
They are how we love. And at the same time,
they are how we lie

Words are how we understand one-another. They are how we love. And at the same time, they are how we lie. They are how we misinform. They are how we hate.

Here is the most honest thing I will ever say to you:

I have loved everything in my life, absolutely.

And yet I have continued to live when everything absolute and true has left me.

And so I worry that my only absolution need be for the sin that I have never truly loved anything.

—

Watch the animation

Watch Efrat Dahan’s animation to 'When a Wiggly-Monster Was My World' below, as part of a collaboration with Arts By the People.

Animated & directed by: Efrat Dahan
Written & narrated by: David Olimpio
Sound: Rob Badenoch

Art & Animation by Efrat Dahan

Efrat Dahan is an independent illustrator and animator from Israel. She works on both commercial and personal projects as well as few projects of poetry and animation mix, something she loves doing since the first time she discovered it while working on Wiggly-Monster.