Naturally, I can’t read very well. Despite this, I (somehow) manage to write various things. Because of this, you may assume that I am making the assumption that people can read. Your assumption would be incorrect, but I would consider it a noble, if misguided, effort.
Now consider: to understand a word as it is meant to be understood, you should be able to find the definition of said word (still assuming you can read) and form a more comprehensive idea, i.e. : ‘The post was stupid’ could be translated to: ‘Used to mark a proper noun as something well-known or unique. Text that is placed on a Web site. Past singular first person. Tediously dull, especially due to lack of meaning or sense.’
It will occur to you (to me, since you can not read) that some of those sentences were not actually sentences. It may also occur to you that the substitution of empty spaces for periods is required in a reverse ’translation’. More to the point, each of those definitions can be further reduced to the definitions of each individual word. This break-down could be further ‘broken-down’ and so on, and so on, until one very exasperated writer would be able to say, ‘Why the fuck did I do this?’ and proceed to cross-reference definitions. In this case, I would give each definition a little number and insert these reference numbers instead of the actual sentences. If the writer were to do this, he would be making his ‘break-down’ ever so pointless since, in essence, the reference numbers bear a striking similarity to the original sentence the writer endevoured to dissect.
The main objective is to hypothesize that the written (and spoken) word is, in itself, flawed and incapable of translating human thought as it is supposed to. To communicate, I propose we all dance at once another, gesticulate with our eyebrows, eyes, mouth, nose, flailing of the arms, legs…other places, grunts, and obnoxious screaming. We may also include various instruments and drawings. I believe it would take so long to do anything, that nothing would be done, and we would enter into an age of peace and failures of epic proportions involving everything we now associate with anything.
Traversing a similar vein of thought, if one had no eyes to see, then one would not be able to read with one’s eyes. One would be somewhat sad. That is, until one discovered braille. However, if the same ‘one’ had no sensation in their fingertips (or anywhere else for that matter), and if he/she could not hear, he/she would be in a very poor situation indeed. Throw in muteness, and you will have a fair concept of what I envisage anyone who ‘reads’ this to be.
Love,
Adam
xoxo
