Bloat is one of the major crimes against understanding.
For instance, a person may make a promise but do so in words, which could be twisted to mean anything and even twisted to be the opposite of what the promise implied.
A simple example.
A man sees a dog, it is skittish and skinny and hurt and at an unreachable distance, but present and in need and quick and compelling.
The man says to the dog, I won’t hurt you.
He holds out his hand.
The dog inches closer, and the man says it again, I promise I won’t hurt you.
The dog inches closer, and the man captures it gently, “I won’t hurt you” as the leash goes around its neck and it growls but doesn’t bite.
The next the thing the dog knows, it’s at the vet being put down for infirmity, the long-term results of unwantedness.
This is a more humane end than the dog was doomed to before the man caught it—so did the man keep or break his promise?
You tell me.
The language problem gets worse with abstract concepts. In particular, I have been trying to understand the meaning of “lonely”. When I say, “I am lonely” I know what I mean. But repeated back to me, I can get confused, because the translation that friends and therapists and books offer back are things that don’t mean “I am lonely.” They mean things like “I have low self esteem”, I am “not my own best friend”, I “fear my own death”, bla bla etc. These ideas have nothing to do with loneliness. Loneliness has two physical components: it is cold and it is hungry. Period. So it is me who is making the language mistake, because I should say in the first place: “I am cold and I am hungry.” My ass cheeks are like hot water bottles someone filled months ago and are now a soft kind of frozen. And I can’t eat because what I have a taste for is a recipe the next man who warms me up knows—it’s something man-food, cheese melted on waffles or some such thing.
I am waning with my tongue glued to the roof of my mouth and my arms crossed.
I was going to make a joke now by applying these thoughts to the repeated suggestion by one of my friends that I register on eharmony because “it was designed by a psychologist.” I find this very funny, and the pictures of whitey-white people would be great with captions like ‘Where Barcaloungers Go to Find Each Other.’
But: The men I kissed on the mouth I only did so after I spent months inching closer to it, skittish itty bitty advances, retreating and inching again, and even after all that it was a bit like hurdles in gym class where it’s make it over or break your neck. When I wake up for my nightly bout of insomnia, in a few minutes I give myself before I put my thoughts away and become my own best kick in the ass, I let desire float from me into the night, and I fill my nose and stomach with that man who smells like himself and soap and who hasn’t tried to put me down (yet). I ache once, and then amuse myself, maybe by writing my imaginary eharmony profile: will pin and mount you like a butterfly for months of seemingly distracted flirtatious frigidity, followed (suddenly) by an instinct to touch you every time you pass by closely enough, like you do with children and your dog and all things good and warm, while I tell jokes at every opportunity. Until you disappear right before my eyes. (And then I’ll save you from the Apocalypse, so not to worry.)
Ane Brun – To Let Myself Go
