Charles E. Burchfield:
The Back Street [Two Houses under a Viaduct] (1931)

"It might be inhuman to learn this obvious lesson."

Language seems to be a means by which we represent by misrepresenting. There's nothing especially earthy about Earth. It's just a label, and dirt by any other name might smell every bit as musty. This can't become a problem as long as we hold the translation key. It becomes interesting when considering internal conversations where one encodes and decodes exclusively for oneself. We all employ little phrases to describe our experience to ourselves. These phrases are not necessarily meaningful to anyone else, but they only need to contain meaning for ourselves and nobody else. I continually characterize what I intend in ways that materially misrepresents my intention. I plan, for instance, to do things I should know I won't do in the way I describe them. I might insist that I'm going to jump right back into my everyday activities of daily living after laying low with a cold, though I might better describe what I'll do as Easing back into. I won't resume at cruising altitude or speed but will need some time to regain my previous momentum.

Two hours back into work after a few days of laying low, I felt as though I'd just swam a marathon. Every muscle in my body ached. I sensed myself slacking, though, so I continued pushing myself until I felt even worse. I was discovering long-lost muscle groups and starting to pride myself on my fortitude when lunchtime came, and I crashed and smoldered for a spell. This Easing into isn't anything anyone gets to sidestep. Once a rhythm has been disrupted, some restart time seems indicated. As a veteran of many, many planning efforts, I can report, based on my vast experience, that plans tend to presume essentially instant resuming. A process tends to get characterized as operating at volume almost from inception. In those rare instances where a learning curve gets contemplated, it, too, tends to be presumed to be more perfunctory than necessary, imagining that skill acquisition occurs without very much struggling. This, of course, seldom happens.

I jump right in as if I remembered how to swim when I might be reasonably sure that I will have to learn all over again. My brain most resembles a sieve. It seems leaky. What I once knew, I no longer retain. Worse, learning again usually seems more painful than the first time through. I apparently lose whatever innocence improved my ability to learn that first time, so I get to wrestle with experience the following times through. Easing in helps, though, in those rare instances where I can muster the patience to consider before engaging again. Completion tends to occur only after a series of starts, stops, and restarts again, each with its accompanying Easing into dance. I should anticipate it now, but I don't. It might be inhuman to learn this obvious lesson.

Every morning, I seem to need to learn English all over again. I ease myself into this challenge by repeating simple rituals that haven't materially changed in decades. I doubt that I ever really learned anything. My knowledge seems tenaciously contingent; when immersed within some context, certain patterns tend to seem familiar or obvious and I can claim to remember how to engage in there. Absent that immersion, though, I probably could not have described the actions I would take, certainly not in any detail, for I seem to retain patterns, disembodied without immersion in a context. I write facing West, which makes these stories very different from those I wrote when facing North or South. Even tiny aspects seem to make a significant difference.

Earlier in the week, I engaged in a brief social media interaction. Someone asked if I wanted to become a best-selling author. I responded that I already was. He then asked what I intended to do with all those books I'd been writing. I replied that I might want to publish some of them. He then wondered why I wouldn't want to publish all of them. I responded that I hadn't decided which ones wanted to be published. He then asked who copyedited them, backhandedly volunteering for the assignment himself, except his English hadn't quite been up to our brief exchange. I asked him if English was his native language, and he responded that it wasn't, as if that hadn't been obvious. I suggested that before he agreed to take on any copyediting assignments, he might want to parse our brief exchange and maybe learn some more English. He replied that he didn't understand what I was implying. I responded that I knew that already.

©2024 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #iAlogue , #PureSchmaltz