Babel once more.

​ Babel once more.*  

Uncle Albert has given up writing maximes. He no longer has the brain for it, he says. But this morning he brought me this one:

 

     There are any number of things we think we understand but do not: each other, for example.
Addendum: That’s my opinion, of course, and I could be wrong. But if I am right, wives understand their husbands no better than husbands understand their wives; voters understand politicians no better than politicians understand voters; the oppressed understand their oppressors no better than their oppressors understand them. Moreover, they are all making the same kinds of mistakes. Mistakes, plural – only one of the mistakes is hubris.

 

“What do you think?” he said.
     “I don’t think it errs on the side of political correctness,” I said.
     “Oh,” he said. He sounded like he wasn’t sure what I was saying.

 

“Well, I’m not planning to publish it,” he said later.
     “Good,” I said. Then, “I’m not saying you’re wrong.”
     “No,” Uncle Albert said.

 

I’m not saying he is wrong because I think he is right. Of course, this is my opinion and I could be wrong, or it is my experience, which is limited:
     I had a dream two nights ago. My dead sister Moira was in it, but she may or may not have recognized me; she was madder than Ophelia. My sister Hannah’s husband Ike was there, too, in a house and on grounds whose architecture and plan kept changing. Now he was leaving Moira and me alone; now he was telling us we needed to come in so we cold take our medicines. And Roz, it felt like – and Hannah and Uncle Albert – were hovering invisibly and what they were thinking was invisible, too. Everyone in the dream was impenetrable. There were no clues I could discern to what any of them was thinking. I was utterly confused from one fey minute to the next.
     Like in real life.
     I have just as much trouble reading clues awake as asleep. Maybe I’m not paying good enough attention, but I don’t think that’s it. I find others impenetrable in either state. At least in the present I do. I may look back and think, “Oh that’s what he was thinking, that’s what she meant?” But then I think: “Or was it?” In the now I don’t know what to respond from one mad, elusive moment to the next. I live from one to the other by simultaneously waiting and making wild guesses.

 

“Are you better at understanding me than I am at understanding you?” I am asking Dr. Feight.
     “Well,” he said, “I have more information.”

 

03.10.21

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 * See here.
Dramatis personae: Uncle Albert, who is everywhere. Click links to learn more about Moira, Hannah (and Ike), Roz, Dr. Feight.
Illustration: Ausonius at the Jellyfish Bar, June, somewhere between 335 and 2035. You know what he is thinking. Of course, you do.