Pretenders, con artists, liars: they are dressed up in costumes, make-up muddied from long neglect, wigs ratted up conveying their madness. Words. We dream of the clarity that evades us. We imagine a vocabulary that will not cut the tongue. We rely too much on the imperfection of words. We ache to understand, to be understood; but language is a lavish approximation of the communication we crave.
From a distance, I can hear my father speaking. Somehow--perhaps transmitted on the persistent wind--his quiet (masculine) voice reaches me. But the content is trivial--"I love you, blah, blah, blah"--trite, typical, it is the tone, the emotion, the music that I will hold onto.
The dead also rely on the sloppy duplicity of words: they are easily agitated and playful, demanding we buy their reputations, participate in fabrications made of rumor and praise. They absolve themselves through the shorthand of negation. These connections are limited. Still, there is the perverse entertainment found by sinking deep into your seat so that the fire illuminates some flesh-wound hidden under her skirts...
and in your pajamas.
From a distance, I can hear my father speaking. Somehow--perhaps transmitted on the persistent wind--his quiet (masculine) voice reaches me. But the content is trivial--"I love you, blah, blah, blah"--trite, typical, it is the tone, the emotion, the music that I will hold onto.
The dead also rely on the sloppy duplicity of words: they are easily agitated and playful, demanding we buy their reputations, participate in fabrications made of rumor and praise. They absolve themselves through the shorthand of negation. These connections are limited. Still, there is the perverse entertainment found by sinking deep into your seat so that the fire illuminates some flesh-wound hidden under her skirts...
and in your pajamas.
