Old John Teneman Learns Us Language

What he means when he says “the queen has arrived” (not to be didactic) “in a parade of turtles.” Just that something big is going down and our sense of time is slowing for its occurrence.

Or “radiant bunnies rip at the cartilage”: a nymphomaniac’s raunchy ride – how it ravages the body.

He says things like this, like “well, there would be sound,” and believes that “’I’ lasts for instants.”

Drowning the proverbial cat, of course clenching your tongue, and safe in the bag.

Not that we didn’t believe him. Why not? His metaphors came true time and time again. Or we made them so.

I guess that’s what I most wanted to say on this occasion. That “only stars dance naked,” “every surface dons a mask” and so forth, “the purples plop from the fingers.”

Language comes and language goes.

He described the first leg of the journey as “a hopper carrying grain” – we ask for bread and milk and the verbiage carries what it says, like “tumble-toes” and “titty-twist” – learning to walk, fed at the breast. Sound signifies.

Which leads to prefabricated composites: “Tonka takes theos and the dozer digs democracy” – the mind learning letters gained extended alphabets. A=A (a) + all blacks are assholes. B=B (b) buh, buh, b + beauty is internal so you better look your best. C=C c k, k, ss, sss, + candidates against abortion are cool, and so on. In other words, in a world of point and name-shoot, point: “cat”, point: “ball,” at oven: “hot,” etc., it was easy to add a bunch of 2-for-1s, special offers loading the distinct and directive dictionary.

Until definitions didn’t match. “I=you=I=?” and “hippie chic preaches Christ in the death camps.” “muddy waters sing of soul and the light has not overcome it” and so on. The thesaurus of antonyms begins. This-that-the other thing = same color, same alphabet, similar grammars and syntax, and “lilt means love, fricative foe.”

“Gravy made from plastic” starts a new game in the language carnival. “Yes, the correct answer is ‘false’,” the teacher says, waking in your seat shot full in the chest with the news. Know you don’t know, haven’t the faintest, what they mean, what you mean, how it gets swallowed.

“It’s like that,” he says, “bright day, pleasant breeze, scented like ferment or foment, and everything you eat tastes like shit – literal turds gloppy and rot on teeth and tongue, and gagging at the entrails.” Meaning: up for grabs. “Love’s l the blade cutting ecstatic o‘s with that sharpened v-blade, screaming the e-ars.” Or “Hope’s Hell-is-Other-People-Even-Saviors” sort of thing.

“The instant-I shatters, playing jacks with fragments, collage-collage-bricolage,” he sings, “the game of gluing shrinky dinks in sun-ovens.” The remainder. “Long-hauler train they’re dumping coal in the grain cart, fuel on the coal, water on wood and livestock in the dining car, and sometimes you smoke, eat the shit, go up in flames as your structural beams swell and rot.”

That is to say, “it’s a crapshoot, and it splatters.” Still it matters. Each selection, choice, intonation, intention. Can be burned for warmth or fuel, can fertilize the soil, or stave off salespersons and politics.

“Language is a social semiotic,” he quotes, “made by everyone at all times, undone and rejoindered.” “Our paradox pals pebbling our pockets, pick ’em at will with pretension, marble-pop into the chalk-circle while it rains.”

The gleam of his eye – genuine excitement – as he’d intone – “buddy buttress the Babel-babble” walking away in whispers and warble.

N Filbert 2012