orwell

George Orwell says this so well. I often feel like this when I've come off some experience, and struggle with words to describe it as he says he does:

I suppose that I have failed to convey more than a little of what those months in Spain mean to me. I have recorded some of the outward events, but I cannot record the feeling they have left me with. It is all mixed up with sights, smells, and sounds that cannot be conveyed in writing: the smell of the trenches, the mountain dawns stretching away into inconceivable distances, the frosty crackle of bullets, the roar and glare of bombs; the clear cold light of the Barcelona mornings, and the stamp of boots in the barrack yard, back in December when people still believed in the revolution; and the food-queues and the red and black flags and the faces of Spanish militiamen; above all the faces of militiamen...

Homage to Catalonia

This is in the closing pages of Orwell's book on his experience in the Spanish Civil War, and right now I am trying to write a simple explanation of the latter, which is proving to be nigh impossible.