Lately I’ve been mulling over language and its limitations and in doing so, for one reason or another, I’ve started to connect it with my most recent romantic endeavor.
I know with certainty that she understands the value of words. She understands their power and she understands the kind of meaning they wield and how that meaning can be shaped and twisted and misunderstood. Her understanding of the power of language became very obvious especially when the word “drenched” on a sushi menu would invariably give her pause—something I interpreted so endearingly as the intersection of her understanding of words and her chosen career path of dietary science.
But her understanding of words and language was also something that always troubled me. There was this pervasive sort of fear of language. That she was so deathly averse to any kind of verbal profession of outright affection was indicative of this. So too in her distaste of the phrase “God damn” and the name of Jesus spoken aloud in non-reverential situations (i.e. the taking of the name of the “lord” in vain).
In retrospect, it’s hard to tell whether or not it is her understanding of language that in some way contributes to her fear of intimacy. The difficulty lies, I think, in trying to sort out whether the two inform each other and build to what you might describe as a character trait. And I wonder how much that would inform her other aspects of character: her propensity for blunt up-frontness; her back and forth kind of regard for emotional sentimentality; even perhaps her seemingly strict sense of responsibility to parental figures (which perhaps was also what informed her deep-seated religiosity). What I kind of see developing is this infinitely complex web that you’d I guess call personhood (which, generally, I mean to suggest lies in all of us), the spider at the center of it all weaving the whole convoluted thing being language.
I’m not convinced even still that she wants to be alone, though she says she doesn’t want a relationship at this time in life. While this is a totally legitimate claim for anyone to make at any time in their life, it’s simply not the overall feeling I got from her and from the situation I was in this summer. But then again perhaps I am misreading the whole bewildering web of personhood, the words and letters intertwining and colliding—perhaps completely unreadable in any situation. Maybe in another language even. That seems an easy enough answer. But that, in effect, is I think what so irks me about it. I don’t want the easy answer or the easy solution.
And so I guess what I really do want—my deepest desire—is to be hurt and to be in pain and to have something to complain about all the time. Because if I simply explained away my pain by way of misinterpretation and misunderstanding and misreading the language of personhood, I’d just be empty. There’d be nothing else. And I guess that emptiness is just more fearful than ambling through life feeling like I’ve been gut-punched all the time.
Language and Personhood
Lately I’ve been mulling over language and its limitations and in doing so, for one reason or another, I’ve started to connect it with my most recent romantic endeavor.
I know with certainty that she understands the value of words. She understands their power and she understands the kind of meaning they wield and how that meaning can be shaped and twisted and misunderstood. Her understanding of the power of language became very obvious especially when the word “drenched” on a sushi menu would invariably give her pause—something I interpreted so endearingly as the intersection of her understanding of words and her chosen career path of dietary science.
But her understanding of words and language was also something that always troubled me. There was this pervasive sort of fear of language. That she was so deathly averse to any kind of verbal profession of outright affection was indicative of this. So too in her distaste of the phrase “God damn” and the name of Jesus spoken aloud in non-reverential situations (i.e. the taking of the name of the “lord” in vain).
In retrospect, it’s hard to tell whether or not it is her understanding of language that in some way contributes to her fear of intimacy. The difficulty lies, I think, in trying to sort out whether the two inform each other and build to what you might describe as a character trait. And I wonder how much that would inform her other aspects of character: her propensity for blunt up-frontness; her back and forth kind of regard for emotional sentimentality; even perhaps her seemingly strict sense of responsibility to parental figures (which perhaps was also what informed her deep-seated religiosity). What I kind of see developing is this infinitely complex web that you’d I guess call personhood (which, generally, I mean to suggest lies in all of us), the spider at the center of it all weaving the whole convoluted thing being language.
I’m not convinced even still that she wants to be alone, though she says she doesn’t want a relationship at this time in life. While this is a totally legitimate claim for anyone to make at any time in their life, it’s simply not the overall feeling I got from her and from the situation I was in this summer. But then again perhaps I am misreading the whole bewildering web of personhood, the words and letters intertwining and colliding—perhaps completely unreadable in any situation. Maybe in another language even. That seems an easy enough answer. But that, in effect, is I think what so irks me about it. I don’t want the easy answer or the easy solution.
And so I guess what I really do want—my deepest desire—is to be hurt and to be in pain and to have something to complain about all the time. Because if I simply explained away my pain by way of misinterpretation and misunderstanding and misreading the language of personhood, I’d just be empty. There’d be nothing else. And I guess that emptiness is just more fearful than ambling through life feeling like I’ve been gut-punched all the time.