communication breakdown

when i taught creative writing, i was a hag for precision in language. never say tree, make it oak or ash. avoid the word angry, instead write blushing necks and the tightening of a shoulder. i was intent on the idea that words had to be exact to communicate what is felt, known, or believed. only in detailed language could we ever convey the truth in what we are.

last night destroyed that.
i sat at a bar with a man. and in our language, there was no miscommunication. everything we said was what we meant. politics. reading. family. city. all clearly defined.

but at the same time, we did not communicate.
the noise of the bar was a constant distraction.
the basketball fans on espn inexplicably wore yellow shirts.
the bartender tossed me the crown from a bottle of chambord, as though all women really want to be a princess. no matter how precise my words, the truth in that moment was that i not was even there.

and then.
on the way home.
i attempted to communicate with someone else. and the words would not come. stuttering lead to a change in breathing patterns and silences heavier than a house.

so i realized. that the truth in what i am is not in precise language, but in snapshot moments in my digital mind.
a text message at 10pm.
a cookie saved until 9.
the chatter of rain on a window.
and a door opening for one last good-bye.

this morning i stood in the street and watched May winds pull silver maples the way that sheets billow around a body; a buick travelling gallatin road, saying puddle spray, new muffler, and i'm late to work.

and the truth of what i was in that moment had no language but a quote in a book at 2am.

i'll leave you with this poem by Jack Gilbert

The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart

How astonishing it is that language can almost mean, and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say, God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write; and the words get it wrong. We say bread and it means according to which nation. French has no word for home, and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people in northern India is dying out because their ancient tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost vocabularies that might express some of what we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would finally explain why the couples on their tombs are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated, they seemed to be business records. But what if they are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light. Oh Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper, as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind's labor. Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this desire in the dark. Perhaps spiral Minoan script is not a language but a map. What we feel most has no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses and birds.