I wrote yesterday that images (or crying) work better than words to express grief. During the aftermath of learning of the death, it was interesting to see how pictures helped (well, “help” is not accurate–”spend the time” is closer to it).
I found myself organizing and refining images of the cats, knowing that my blog was themed around the cats. “Picturing cats and languaging life” is the subtitle of my blog. Why do pictures, sounds, or hugs work more than words?
A young and vibrant member of our family died on Saturday. Those words feel like lies, and it cannot be true that Bjorn Nielsen is not alive. I cannot understand, and writing about it does not help.
Writing seems to be a cathartic, but at the moment, only screaming or crying feel real. Which points to the fact that words alone are woefully inadequate to express one’s life. I say that we “language” in order to do life. And while that is partially true, the part for which it is untrue is a huge gap in communication. Images, maybe, might also be better than words. Here’s one, for instance, that a friend of BJ’s cross-stitched (how delicious that a man cross-stitched a motto for another man). Hmmmm…on the other hand, it DOES use language to express itself. Ah-ha! And there we see the wonderful value of “taboo” words to say what normative and conventional words cannot.
I wrote a scholarly paper once, arguing that the language level of the word “fuck” had changed from obsenity to slang.
The video below is not a metaphor. Ralph, the sweet-natured cat by day, is a demon by night. Just like the cat with the baseball bat. Last night he jumped on Kevin’s head around 3:30 am. Kevin was so furious and tired–and sleep deprived from this happening night after night–that Kevin grabbed the cat and put his head under the spigot. Unfortunately, Ralph didn’t seem to mind too much. The cat kept tormenting. Kevin got up again and threw the cat outside and closed the cat door so he couldn’t get back in. Ralph sat freezing and scratching, and Kevin worried. An hour later, Kevin let Ralph back in. Ralph won. This morning, of course, Ralph is gentle and sweet and endearing. Jeckyll and Hyde.
Don’t you love cultural sayings? “The cat’s meow” makes me think of my parents and grandparent’s generation. You never hear it today, of course. Why not? It’s a cool way to say that something is cool, rad, sweet, phat, etc.
Here’s what I think is the cat’s meow:
Note her application of body language to the materiality of text.
Or getting into the computer and printer, at least. When Tiger Lily hears the printer start, she jumps as if an electric shock just went through her body. She dashes–and this cat does NOT dash very often–she dashes to get at that printer. It’s almost as frantic as when she sees a bird outside and says: “Ack ack ack ack,” which, translated, means: “But Momma, I HAVE to kill that birdie NOW.”
What is it with cats and printers?
We were gone for most of the day today. Ralph gets lonely in the empty house and misses human contact and interaction. When we came home, he acts nonchalant but needy at the same time. Right now he’s standing on Kevin’s keyboard, just hoping for some attention. He doesn’t know quite how to ask for the petting he craves. Or to receive it when he gets it. I try to pick him up and just hold him tight. He melts into me and purrs, but just for a moment. Then he squirms, as if he notices that he’s being loved. Doesn’t know how to handle it. Then he comes back and bumps, kinda’ casual-like. Not wanting to make it obvious that he needs time and attention and love.
Just like some people I know…
But then, language snobs usually DO have strong opinions.
Okay, if you are a cat fancier, you know about icanhascheezburger. Love it. Hate it. Do I read the images and enjoy? Or read the words and get ticked?
http://icanhascheezburger.com/
The pictures are, of course, dazzling. The words are IM speak. To me, it’s a classic demonstration of discourse. Language is a sign system shared by members of a community who understand not only the meaning of the words, but how to use them in nuanced ways. Language has identity, culture, and belief systems invisibly embedded in it. I don’t understand IM dialect, I’m not in that community. So when I have to read it, I feel frustrated (can’t understand the meaning), left out (communities privilege insiders and exclude outsiders–and nothing shows who’s in and who’s out as much as language use), and ticked–”Why don’t those people just talk right?” (anger is, of course, a common reaction to being excluded).
Language is about power!
I’m not a cat person. At least, I didn’t think I was, until Tiger Lily came to live with us. She’s a rescue cat from the Humane Society with a mysterious past and breath-takingly blue eyes. Scary smart. Opinionated. Very vocal.
And then a year later Ralph joined our family. He was also rescued from a situation where he lost his first home-of-origin and had spent part of a very hard winter outdoors looking into a new home that (for legitmate reasons) couldn’t let him come in out of the cold. We gave him an indoor home with lots of love
No one likes to be on the outside looking in.
