the back burner

reaching out

the terrible thing about communicating is that one rarely knows entirely what one is trying to say. one says something with some degree of certainty, and then that thing is handled and examined. sometimes it's thrown out (frightening when we think we really might have meant it) and sometimes it's ingested by someone we love (worrying when we think maybe we didn't, after all). certainty escapes us. even when we feel it, we are also sensible of our capacity for self-deception.

the world spins underneath and our view of the heavens changes from glance to glance. each time we try to say something true, we end up saying something about ourselves as truth-suppressors. once in awhile, if the rope bridge between meaning and saying and hearing doesn't swing too hard or (as often happens) rip apart, we might truly communicate back-and-forth with someone else. we might end up speaking and receiving truth.

if the job is so dangerous, why not find another line of work? why not write our own memoirs and then keep them to ourselves? why express ourselves at all, when it would certainly be easier to sit and watch television? we could start to measure our communications in functional terms. we could use numbers. this business of crossing chasms with ropes sounds unnecessary.

but it isn't. it's vital. it breaks our hearts and feeds our minds and teaches us to fall, the kind of falling where you roll without turning your ankle, or kick right when you hit the water to keep yourself from hitting the rocks underneath. that kind of falling enables us to be bolder and bolder. the other kind of falling, the kind that exists in our minds, charms us with the fear of broken bodies and churning pain. it paralyzes us and we become more and more hesitant to say anything real, ever.