Fruitful frustration

Day Three
November 22

Today was the day of aggravated silence. I felt repressed and cut off, frustrated by my desire to join into the conversations around me and knowledge that I could not. Though I was on edge, I realized that this sense of defeatedness was important. How many people experience this in their days and have no control over it? How many are trapped in a landscape of language they do not understand and cannot connect to? I thought of my time spent in South America, stranded from my native tongue. I imagined the populations of immigrants and children stuck in schools in which the symbols on the blackboard are meaningless to them. I imagined the individuals that are deaf and poor at lip-reading and must bear moments without an ASL translator. Language is a privilege of the geographically dominant, and divides.

I started to prefer to tune out the message of the sentences spoken and focus instead on the strange sounds they were built with. Dull and sharp, guttural and scratchy. Without the pre-existing mental framework of significance, words are but sounds, the spaces between barely identifiable.

I also began to notice the strain in conversation between some individuals. The dead zones and static moments, the affirmative statements that are not in agreement but are enough to allow the conversant the comfort to continue. I wonder the ratio of spoken expression to private mental commentary. I wonder how it varies from individual to individual, and how differing degrees of openness are learned. I suppose frustration can be fruitful.