The Dream of a Common Language
The Dream of a Common Language
truth telling + words as transmission
A little note on timing and resisting the capitalist industrial complex.
As a recovering work and accomplishment addict (i still cringe as i write this) i struggled a great deal to have this to you on Monday morning, which is the day i intend for these to land in your inbox. Needless to say, it didn’t for various reasons, however what i wish to note here is beyond the obstacles and Resistance (hello, old friend!), i felt the strong invitation that just as i wrote to you last week, humans are not commodities, and my body and mind are not goods and services to use. It took me a very very long time to realize this because the nature of my evangelical upbringing emphasized being used and counted it as a virtue.
While this is a more nuanced issue to which i will return, i chose not to treat my being as something to push beyond limitations for production’s sake. I let sickness, grief, and all the interruptions of life that are, in fact, life lead me to this moment when i could complete this in integrity with the rest of me. Thank you!
Dear Soul,
We are wired to tell stories. Our ancestors sat by fires, in caves or the open air. Beside rivers and hollowed out trees. In deserts or fecund valleys, moss cradling their bodies into rest, or the hardness of rock and ubiquity of sand keeping them awake into the night. The dance of firelight creating the conditions for this act, this so very human act, of making sense of our experiences through language.
It is why i am here in your inbox or feed, the ache of my being orienting itself like an arrow toward this ancient art of storytelling. It is part of how i connect to my essential humanity. How i anchor myself in what is real (by which i mean beyond the ongoing stream of my thoughts), by (re) membering, reworking, retelling until in the act of traveling this spiral the truth emerges -- a truth that is less about the facts or the sequence of events, a poetic experiential, ever unfurling truth. Perhaps like the practice of midrash, or Chinese poetry. Lived experience drops into the frame of words, but also invites us to notice the absences, the spaces between words. What is felt and pointed to in another way.
Telling stories involves our whole being – first and foremost our compassionate witness to our or another’s experience. Dropped into our three intelligence centers – body, heart, and mind – this rare quality of attention creates something akin to magic. I call it transmission.
I often experiment with how words can become a bridge from one person’s experience to another person’s perception – how they can have this transmissive power. Not merely share information between cognitive faculties, but create reality, as if each word is a missive, a thing, as in William Carlos Williams’s famous phrase “no ideas but in things,” hence the red wheelbarrow by the white chickens which will baffle the mind each time unless the imagination gets involved.
When you let yourself see, there it is, the transcendent meaning (not that there is only one, but there is a core) of the poem avalanches over you, touching another kind of intelligence and knowing, transforming you with the power of image into symbol into felt sense – this is a trajectory of sorts, the way of deep learning and the way of the soul.
I am currently working on an essay called Poetic Crossings, and I’d like to share a couple of paragraphs here to show you what i mean about words:
1. I often look for words to guide me – not their meaning per sé although meaning reverberates through whether I want it to or not, more so words as objects, as substance one can sift through one’s fingers, like threads of gossamer or wool. Words like boxes to set upon one’s desk or nightstand, to set fire to, to watch burn, to watch turn to smoke and dissipate. Words to start over and over again like small engines puffing away their wild and crooked hearts.
2. Because I was born into the Romanian language and English colonized me in my teen years, because French, German, Spanish, Italian, and Latin wrapped themselves around my neurons early in my development, words have swirled through my imagination like leaves blown by wind, constantly rearranging themselves into piles and patterns. I would watch them fall around me at night, rivulets of stars. Sehnsucht, yearning, craving, indescribable longing for the unknown or indefinite. Tournesol, a sunflower. Or doux, soft-- the whispering of it is silk through my fingers. Serendipity. Zany. Apricus, full of sunshine. No one really speaks Latin anymore, they call it a dead language, one I aim to resurrect, at least in my dreams.
So, here with your companioning, i wish to keep playing with transmissive words, the truest words, meaning forgers and keepers. I wonder if you might pause, and ask yourself, what are the words that are true for you right now, that reverberate into your bones, that came as an utterance from your womb, your belly, your spine, your heart—the essence you beneath all the layers and parts of a constructed you?
And, when do you notice yourself using words that aren’t true? Not necessarily saying things that aren’t true (though getting curious about this is useful and interesting) but using language that lives in the realm of cliché, slogan, over repetition, and loss of meaning. Language that isn’t organically or intrinsically yours.
I ask because our world is saturated with meaningless words, with language so polarized and nervous systems so dysregulated (in fact language and nervous systems can become part of a mutually activating loop) that often we don’t /can’t understand each other or touch one another’s humanity.
Our evolution into language was largely initiated by practical concerns, although linguists trace some of our first utterances to something akin to the overtures of friendship and allyship. More music than negotiation. The yearning for safety intermingled with curiosity. And, isn’t it still the same? We speak so we might let each other into our internal landscape, or walk tenderly inside another’s way of seeing. Where touch, gaze, gesture, or action do not suffice, we turn to utterance. Words cannot replace presence and energy — the body speaks louder and more concretely than words can. In fact, recent studies posit that body language makes up 55% of communication, tone of voice 37%, and actual words 8%. However, when words are undergirded by an alignment of voice, nervous system, and intention, wowza!! Transmission occurs!
The poet Adrienne Rich wrote a collection called The Dream of a Common Language, and when i first discovered her as a young student of writing, i bought the book with the meager money i made as sophomore largely because of the title. Although $12.50 was a luxury for my part-time compensation, it didn’t matter. I had rather done without food than books.
Initially, i couldn’t get past the title. Each time i read it, a well of longing akin to pain opened up inside my 19 year old heart and i didn’t know why. I only knew that i had to have the book, and for years i returned to it regularly. Now, i see that nearly everything i pursued in my life can be summed up in this title. Sometimes i tell this story to myself, whisper it when i feel lost … i live my days in search of a common language.
But before your mind (and mine) wants to get involved, pause and feel the longing with me…
a common language, what would that do for us, for our fledgling humanity?
Close your eyes.
Breathe.
Let the question live you.
“This is what I am: watching the spider rebuild - "patiently", they say, but I recognise in her impatience - my own- the passion to make and make again where such unmaking reigns…” -Adrienne Rich The Dream of a Common Language
For paid subscribers, stay tuned for an imaginative journey practice to accompany this essay which will help you access where you most long for a common language and where to begin in building these bridges. The recording will drop in over the weekend and be available in Archives.