Two fifteen. That's what time it is. I read the clock but the numbers don't make any sense. I say them, "two fifteen"...I might as well be saying bacon sans hockey puck. Those words sound more or less the same for all it means to me.
"Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams and he found himself transformed in his bed into a gigantic insect-like creature."
I get that. Kafka wrote, of course, in German which might as well be Greek to me. If someone said that the Metamorphosis begins with this sentence: "Ich bin ein Berlinner das der Fledermaus eins strasse nein brauhaus," I might protest that it sounds a little implausible but really I would have no standing to say it wasn't truly how Kafka began the story in German with any real certainty, not speaking German or ever really having had any prolongued exposure to the language itself, spoken or otherwise. Well, I guess I would know enough to say that it sounded LIKE German, knowing enough about the sound of the language to ID as such but not really enough to know what any of the words meant, or if the order of the words made any sense grammatically. But now, even the English translation sounds wrong to me. I awoke this morning feeling finally like some transformation had finally been completed.
I have the first sentence memorized of course. It's Kafka for God's sake. It's all up here in my brain. The words in my head sound like they make sense. As I sit here thinking about the first sentence I know that it's about a guy who wakes up as something very different from the thing he went to bed as. Human into insect. I also can grasp the metaphor, the irony, the plot device so cleverly at work in the story. Is he actually an insect or does he just FEEL like an insect? What does it mean to be an insect to Gregor Samsa? What has he lost? What has he gained? I can sit here and speculate all these things inside my own head. The thoughts are something somehow disconnected, I see now, from language itself. But when I try to say the first sentence out loud: "Bedbug Lagerfeld don frank bend poolside, chick spleen blond glandular hours condition isthmus cloister."
I listen to myself. It is my voice. And I can sense that the words are English. It is the language I know I used to speak. I even can think about what some of the words mean, if I focus on them as separate from the rest of the sentence, such as it is. "Chick" is a baby bird, or a derogatory word for a woman. "chick spleen blond glandular..." means nothing to me.
And I get too the inconsistency that you may be thinking about now as I write this--he's writing in English, he's communicating...I understand what he's saying so what's the difference? The thing is...I only understand this as I write it. As I am typing the words, because I'm such a capable typist, I can set down the thoughts in my head as they occur to me. There is little or no interference between my thoughts as I have them and the words as they are typed virtually by my fingers because there is no thought required by me, consciously, to shape the words using the letters of the english language. I think them and they come out here. If I go back and read them, as I did just now? Gibberish. Plank ink spot driveway clock by mechanism. That's what I read when I read what I typed. What the fuck?
Perhaps those of you more enlightened than I could explain this...maybe it's a psychological problem, yes? Something perhaps well cured by the administering of a mild anti-depressant? Something to ease the complications, narrow the pathways, tamp down the high-grown weeds and suppress the unhappy memories that cloud the otherwise well-adjusted marginalia. Maybe its glandular. Maybe it's a tumor. Who's to say? Not me of course. I don't speak English anymore, right?
I heard about a woman who lost the ability to smell; the "sense" of smell, that was what was lost. She retained the memory of smell, like she felt that she knew what beef stew would smell like, say, if she could "sense" it in the air...but she also knew at the same time that if she were to stand over a stewing pot of meat and vegetables that there would be...nothing. What kind of way is that to live you might think? I don't have the answer to that.
I can't get this tune out of my head...Gene Kelly singing...singing..."Singing in the Rain." You know it right? Images are conjured up just by me saying it, referencing it...you can see in your mind's eye, can't you? Gene Kelly's face upturned, enraptured by the pure joy of water on his face. Water from the heavens. Bestowed one might say. And as I wade into the psychological implications of this memory springing forth for me at this particular juncture in my life, the water is warm, as it were, it seems inviting...I think I get the point(s).
It is a profound little bit of musical theatre (cinema, more accurately,) because the underpinnings of the song, psychologically speaking, are so fraught with meaning, subtle and otherwise, as to make ones head spin. First, the simple statement of fact: "I'm singing in the rain." Seems simple on its surface right? It is what it is. He's just saying what it is that he is doing. Something about the statement seems to preclude interrogation too. It's a bold statement. It's more like "I'm singing in the rain and fuck all if you think you're gonna do anything about it." And then the re-statement of fact, reinforcing the first statement of fact: "Just singing in the rain." And then the real gist of it all: "what a glorious feeling, I'm happy again." You see the point? No? It is a profound metaphysical state that Gene Kelly's character has reached. One beyond ordinary language and expressions, whether through words or music, sights, smells or the most tender touch. Physical fact equals metaphysical state. I am singing in the rain and I am happy again. Words fail me. Well, clearly.
All mine schadenfreude island ich nick spray nickle nipple chip.
What would I say if given a lifetime to say it? Who would listen?
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