Saturday, August 04, 2007

Design Flaw

Why is it that we humans have to COMMUNICATE to one another? Why is it key?

Why can't we just read one another's minds?

Because our thoughts are way too loud.

I just realized this when I was on my way to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer. Oh, the effort. I was aware that it had to be moved -- it could not wait -- because the laundry consisted of our bedding, upon which Clara had just peed. Right in the middle of it: Our bed.

"You just read my mind," David said. I trudged toward the closet in the living room, where the stacked washer/dryer unit, the one that ruined the previous tenants' floors, and therefore ours (though we took the condo "as is"). I had been thinking, I don't want to do it, I don't want to move the laundry from the washer to the dryer, because there are so many other things I want to do, things that take time, things that exhaust me even more, but that I want to do even more anyway. Everything takes time. And it's the only thing that there's just too little of.

"I was just gonna do that," he said.

"I love you," I thought. And I knew he knew that I did love him, because he had moved to the laundry for the same reason I had, because love takes time, and because it's also the only thing that there's just too little of.

"She's an animal," I say to David. "Peeing on our bed is so territorial. It makes total sense though. Right in the middle of it."

"Yeah," he says. "We're all animals."

Yes. We are.

I understand the idea of communicating "with" someone; communicating "with" someone has to do with living side by side, melodiously ideally, but if not that, then at least tolerably. But I wish there were more ways of communicating "to" someone than "using Language." Verbal and Body, inclusively. Regardless, using language is hard. Why can't we just pee on the bed to describe what we're feeling? Why isn't that an option anymore?

Why can't we just read each other's minds?

Because we would die from the loud of it. We might die from the amplitude of thoughts. Many people have; many artists specifically. Nevertheless, it isn't only artists who struggle with surpressing their sensitivity to thought in order to survive alive for a while. It's everyone, ever human animal. It's the consciousness that kills us. It's the human in us that's flawed.

1 comment:

cake said...

brilliant, you are.

i sure know that feeling of not wanting to do things that take just the tiniest amount of time, because it is just too much! i hate using the bathroom while cosmo naps. i need ALL of that time, i don't want to waste it on the TOILET for crying-out-loud!