Dumb Ass Move #5
Remember — I’m always reflecting on memories because my own memory lacks so much clarity — how hard it used to be to organize your thoughts into words — sentences — paragraphs — monologues — conversations — ? You would struggle, paw around your mind to wade through single letters, single words and confusedly arrange and rearrange. Language was one enormous billion-piece puzzle and even before you knew how to fit one to another, there always seemed to be those obnoxious two or three missing to complete it.
Yet — and yet, there was always, ALWAYS so much purpose to the words, sentences, thoughts you were trying to convey into coherence. You had a single-mindedness to what you meant, what you wanted, and nothing was going to stop you from reiterating your meaning, even if it meant using crazy hand-gestures and your own extreme pattern of body language to put your point across and gain understanding. Like lighting a little spark to the candle of someone else’s brain or finally connecting the dot-to-dot to form a picture that clearly visualized your meaning, the end was satisfying.
But now, today, you have in your possession a well-oiled, well-worn maching of language making. You can spew the finest-formed string of adjectives, nouns and verbs the world has ever seen. At the top of your tongue lie tiny modules of sound just waiting and ready to create the beautiful syllables of structured sentences, refined words, luminous monologues and meaningful conversations.
And yet. Even with all the purpose, meaning, WANTS and NEEDS battering against the back of your skull to tell me with all these beautiful and refined tools of language that you struggled so long and hard to grasp — can you — can I – find the right words to tell you what I think and how I feel?
