This entry is self-referential. And also heavily influenced by Rumi, Douglas Hofstadter and office politics.

I could probably write pages and pages about language. Which might be lovely and meta and self-referential and ironic because, well, I mostly dislike language. During my brief foray into the land of internet dating, I actually spent some time trying to accurately describe myself for the "About Me" section. And one thing I wrote was that I like words but dislike language. Which is so very true. So many things about my relationship with language are paradoxical. I'm a good writer, but I mostly hate writing, except sometimes I have to get the words out and they have to be exactly right and there is something, I don't know, almost cathartic about doing so. Except cathartic isn't really the right word, because when I write, the sense of release isn't quite as intense as the word cathartic sounds. Or I don't experience enough joy at the release or something. Hmm, maybe I should look up cathartic in the thesaurus (or Visuwords) and try to find the exact, right word for what I experience when writing. Except thesauri are often dangerous for me, what with all those lovely, shiny words all nestled together like chickity chick chicks under their mamas feathery belly, just waiting to distract me... but I can probably handle it. Oh! Did you know that cathartic is used medically to refer to a purging of the bowels, so writing is sort-of like taking a shit? Hmm, what an interesting metaphor;I wonder how far I can take it? So the words are what remain of things I can't digest, or that I don't need to digest? And I excrete them through my finger-tips and/or pre-frontal cortex? Digestion itself is such a great metaphor. You can do all sorts-of things with it. Except it is not even really a metaphor, in some ways, because you actually have millions of neurons in your intestines, so that you can actually know things with your gut. For real. Not speaking metaphorically. You can literally know things with your gut. Hmm, I wonder how many neurons are outside of the brain? Because even if it is only like a tenth of the neurons in your brain, it still has major repercussions for how we conceptualize mind and body, so that your whole body, is in a sense, your brain, or your brain is just a part of your body... Wait, why do I have this thesaurus? Oh, right, I was writing something.

The above is why I have turned in every paper I have ever written in grad school late. Usually days late. Because language and I don't really get along. Despite the fact that I write well and love to read and want to kiss individual words, language actually traumatizes me a little. I mean, how the hell am I supposed to pare down my actual, extravagant experience of the world into something I can stuff into tiny, tiny squiggles which I then give to you so you can de-squiggle and un-pare them and arrive back at my original experience so it becomes part of your experience? How? How how how how how? Is what I have to say even worth the time and effort?

Wouldn't you rather go dancing?

The truth is, I am right-brained, dancing mystic living in a left-brained, disembodied, secular world. And I have to write email messages. E-mails! Which people then take seriously and get upset about that one clause I used and take that clause really fucking personally and want to talk to me and my supervisor about the repercussions of that clause (Yes, this entry brought to by office politics). I don't give a damn about that fucking e-mail. I would rather talk to you on the phone. Or in person. Or hand-craft a letter to you, embossed with artistic nudes and decorated with washers I found on the street. Or take you out to coffee and talk about what it is like to be alive. Or teach you to meditate. Or play with you. Or dance with you. But no. I've got to send you an e-mail message apologizing for my last email message.

I've forgotten what the initial point of this post was, so I shall stop. Words no work anymore.