12 March 2007

greg on the typewriter

so small
his fingers
could not
put enough
pressure
on the keys
to form
language.

1 comment:

Stephen Imperato said...

this makes me think about an interesting conversation we had in my experimental fiction class the other day about infants and the formation of language. since without language or motor skills, there is no evidence of thought, do pre-speech infants think? are sensations thoughts? sensations are what govern the behavior of infants. baby gets hungry--baby cries. baby wets himself--baby cries. baby is gassy--baby cries. surely, if the baby had the agency to manipulate his or her vocal chords, the child would simply say, feed me, change me, burp me. but they do not, they are simply reacting instinctually to a physical impetus that makes them uncomfortable. therefore, it is my contention that babies who do not speak, but are not deaf or mute, cannot think. in the deaf or the mute, the speech centers of the brain are turned off, while the general intelligence gathering ability of the brain proceeds in a different course, bypassing speech. speech requires language, but language does not inherently require speech.

so, thinking about greg being unable to push the keys on a keyboard, does that mean that he cannot type. because if he were sitting at a computer, it would probably come a little more easily. taking the weakness of his fingers figuratively, making it out to be a weakness or undevelopedness of the brain, is language present in a person even without the ability to express it--physically or verbally? sign language is as much a language as spoken language and pantomime and body language is a rudimentary or abbreviated form of sign language. an infant's cries might therefore be a rudimentary form of spoken language. a mute or deaf person can make gestures to say things because they know that the gestures mean. babies do not cry because they know it will get them the attention that they require, they simply do it automatically and eventually learn that crying brings help. crying is a reflex, not a form of communication.

i just wrote at least 500 words about your 15-word poem. i should go.