I have a shamefully introverted imagination. I can't always guess what someone else feels or thinks; I have trouble defining my own emotions and swings. This makes fictive authorial attempts particularly difficult, for every character I create is merely a projection of one of my selves-- I can't think someone else's vocabulary or dialogue. For that reason, I make it a point to define intangibilities with the immediately accessible.
If your stomach rumbles, you know you're hungry. But quite often, you can delve further than this. You've routinely said "I could really go for a pizza/curry/beer tonite." I can tell you which of my headaches will only be run off by a can of coke, and which require 12 hours sleep. We understand ourselves physically, we are intimately comfortable with our five principal senses.
But what about our ethereal needs? How do you explain the psychological requirements you feel in terms that will still make sense once they're out of your mouth? I've no idea. I can't think like you. I thought I'd covered this. While you mull it over, though, here's a few things from my short list that I think ought to be readily grasped by anyone who already thinks I've lost it:
I've known no feeling of peace greater than ending a harmful relationship seated upon the metal solidity of a farm implement in the westering sunlight of an August evening with a slight, warm zephyr pragmatically drying my tears and whisking my hair out of my face.
If I ever find myself in a relationship again, I want it to be with someone who brings me as much comfort as clean sheets, the reassurance of new socks.
There is no day so trying, ill-spent, or bodily exhausting that cannot be balanced by the olfactory bliss to be found in the bouquet of a snifter of Lagavulin 16 year old Scotch.
"So fill to me the Parting Glass and drink a health whate'er befall.
I gently rise and softly call 'Goodnight! And Joy be to You all.'"
