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Communication

 

Communication

Of late I’ve become a bit obsessed with the difficulty of communication. I’m not sure it’s what the postmodernists have been banging on about, I think it has ancient precedents. Part of the issue is individualization. We are cut away from the cloth of humanity each by the uniqueness of our own hands. We are each different, separate and opposing. It starts young, they teach you at home, they teach you in school. Under the spirit of competition. The ego is born in battle: I am not you. In love then, one attempts the impossible: to make a truce, to speak as if you and I are the same. Sometimes it holds. But of course truces strain and the warrior ego can easily spring back, sometimes completely unexpectedly. I love you except for this one thing. To some this is understandable, but nowhere is it acceptable. Any reservation in a declaration of love is perceived by the other’s ego as an act of war. You and I are not the same, which the ego takes to be a declaration of war. Things quickly accelerate. Franz Ferdinand goes down and the ruling egos are badly wounded. Eventually the dust settles and the losses are counted. The two go into hiding, separately, until they are able to face each other with their changed faces. Little happy from the earlier years is remembered. But at least the carnage is over. Sometimes a world war is skipped over and a cold war is declared. Sometimes the truce is easier, but it is always a truce and truces strain. We pray for a jazz age when two can join in an ecstatic dance. The lubricated life is the good life, when wars and truces can be forgotten and the two can live in a shared present and lick one another’s wounds back to health.

 ©Malachi Doyle 2021.





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