six senseless sayings
words are a funny thing (grammar even more so), and i spent most of yesterday in linguistic purgatory trying to make revisions on my thesis. when i first received my adviser's comments, i thought: "oh, this isn't too bad." which, in turn, encouraged my procrastination because – what the hell,
#1: i have plenty of time.
this is the first senseless saying.
what does it mean to have 'plenty of time'? is it really something that can be grasped or held on to? if a clock is unable to contain time, then what hope do the rest of us have? in fact, time's essential quality seems to be its inapprehensibility; without passing, it loses all meaning whatsoever. this brings me to number two:
#2: everything i say is a lie.
there is, i believe, a special name for this type of linguistic construction but i don't remember it. whatever it is (or isn't), the expression turns back in on itself and renders all meaning absurd. in this example, if everything i say is a lie, then the statement itself is a lie, which means i'm telling the truth. the cleverness of human language never ceases to amuse me, but through various experiments and unmentionables i have lost all faith in words ability to convey truth; therefore,
#3: i promise to never tell the truth.
this third senseless saying is a corollary of number two and suffers from the same exquisite paradox: if i promise to never tell the truth, then my promise is untrue, which means that i may, and in fact just did, tell the truth. greater minds than mine have addressed this issue, and one of my favorites is Haruki Murakami, who draws an interesting distinction between honesty and the truth in this book:
he writes:
"Honesty is to truth as prow is to stern. Honesty comes first and truth appears last. The interval between varies in direct proportion to the size of the ship. With anything of size, truth takes a long time in coming. Sometimes it only manifests itself posthumously. Therefore, should I impart you with no truth at this juncture, that is through no fault of mine. Nor yours."
of course the more i read, the more i realize number four:
#4: i know nothing.
by what measure of hubris do we make this judgment upon ourselves, and does not making it all require some unacknowledged source of wisdom? if we truly know nothing, then we cannot know that we know nothing; and if we know something, then we do not know nothing.
(still with me?)
of course the inverse also applies:#5: i'm certain this is true.
this one stands out because it requires such monumental vanity as to perceive oneself immune from the vicissitudes of time. anyone over the age of twenty-seven knows that Monday's credo is Tuesday's regret, and the spiral of time swallows everything we think we know as a matter of course. you can ask Moses, Siddhartha and James Stewart:
image from Vertigo
of course,
#6: all this goes without saying.
then why say it all? i've asked myself question more times than i care to count, and the only semi-satisfactory answer i've come up with is that we do it because we're compelled to, because it's in our nature or our DNA or in some damn-where it can't ever get out. as a wise drunkard once wrote, "Long ago, among other lies, they were taught silence was bravery."
but then again, another of my favorite drunkards wrote this: "The dogs meditated on their paws. We were all absolutely quiet… An absolute cold blessed silence."
in this book
is silence a fiction masquerading as bravery? or is it blessed only for dogs? i don't know how to respond to these questions, but i'm convinced that words can't answer them. it is a thing of sublime beauty: the utter insufficiency of words juxtaposed against our reliance upon them for meaning.
there is an unbridgable gap between signifier and signified, between what we feel and what we say, but our attempt to overcome this distance provides its own justification. the question is the answer, and in this way it is not unlike living itself:
aren't we beautiful in our failure?
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