Lolly Jane Blue. Worms. Video: Sil Van Der Woerd. 2007
When my husband and I were still in the fledgling stages of our relationship and I had yet to graze my knees on the gravel road of 'real life', I spent much time critically analyzing, objectifying and theorizing life, the universe and everything. In fact, I made a living from objectifying, theorizing and analyzing. It was the way I had come to process the world. Like a courtier ever seeking Royal favor, I haunted the halls of those Ivory Towers of academic brilliance unaware that the higher one climbed, the more conflated the perspective and without doubt, the less perspicuous and commensurate one's views in relation to the actual world.
Imagine my horror then, when my husband turned to me mid-conversation and said:
"You think too much. Don't."
'Thinking' was my one achievement. It was what I did well! And yet here, in this place where my guts has dragged me with my heart manning the compass, my intellect had no home.
I spoke in tongues only a few could understand.
But then I remembered something I read once:
It reads like this:
" ...people shorten their thoughts so that they so not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow..."
Here there is no space for idle wanderings of the mind, or useless thought. Freud, Lacan, and Foucault are shelved while Darwin reigns supreme.
And I gag on the weight of the silence in my mouth, while the noise in my brain deafens me.
With time I have learned the language of this land. I manipulate my way through the turbid mess of incorrect grammar, lost 'u' 's, racial incongruity, and map my way through the physical actuality of each day, but still I am lost.
Still I am silent.
I should be patient, in time I will learn to speak again.
Lolly Jane Blue. Worms. Video: Sil Van Der Woerd. 2007
Alice.
*The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, is a MUST read. It is a hauntingly beautiful novel focusing on a cast of characters each of whom have to choose how to face their socially assigned life failures. You can buy this book through my bookstore (click bookstore tab on the navigation bar - find it on page 3). All purchases are internet safe and go through the official Amazon site.
