A Primer on Speaking Flower

We begin with an example:

_____________My mouth said: I'll be fine. It's ok, don't worry.

_____________My mind thought: [ I _a m _d e a d ]

to prove the first rule of speaking flower:

_____________(1) Not what is said, or unsaid, but the relation of.

Shades of meaning. Words can be deconstructed, their parts held up to the light and evaluated in different perspectives. Noun forms and verb forms. In hatred or gentle mocking. A whole infinity exists in even the simplest words. But, but!, our course is not just about words. We are here concerned with how to adapt our meager, tiny, insufficient little dictionaries to something much larger. Another example to demonstrate:

_____________I sat in my seat, and looked around, and could not think,
_____________and could not find the words to say what I meant, and even
_____________if I had, had no one besides me to say them to, so not knowing
_____________what else to do, I rubbed my eyes, and... {sighed}.

The soul does not use words. Not often anyway. Sometimes, at funerals for example, in particular frequencies of wailing, you can hear it. I am convinced it exists in specific intonations and moments of breathlessness when people pray genuinely. Sometimes during love making, during certain eye-stares, one lover will say certain words, a few syllables only, that manage to come from the soul alone, leap out unfiltered. It is rare. An anomaly. Most often the soul speaks in sighs. In howls and wails. In smiles. In hands rubbing together. In the sound of footsteps... and the rhythm and pattern of footsteps. The soul speaks to us, yes (we rarely hear, but let's not digress). The soul has other friends. The soul has been known to understand the advice the trees. The murmurs of grass. The soul has been known to interpret the shades of blue and pink and black and grey the sky can take. The soul has been known to understand perfectly well the language of waves at the ocean. The soul alone, alone, can fathom the magnitude of the distance of stars. Of the loneliness of children, of that novel, primal fear that children alone have, for they have soo many things to fear... and yet, proceed fearless.

_____________(2) All things have a language.

I have made an example of several- ocean waves, midnight stars. 3am has a whole theology. Clouds are a race older than us- they have developed their own theology. Staring into eyes has the capacity to start fires. An old man I met once, you can find the reference here, said to me, that he had spent many years of his life as a rock.

And this is what it means, this is our concern here. The difference that exists between sound and silence. The difference a man feels in the shadow of a palm tree. The way nocturnal colors are a different breed than daylight ones. Why love can be communicated without words, in instants, without the need for time or sight. Why lips can compel the body to action, and why sometimes, an entire body cannot restrain certain words from being said. Why? What language exists that defies bodies?... that exists on the border of sound and silence? That can be transmitted perfectly through a fingertip and not through an entire glacier of words! What language is this? What language is it that can speak to my soul and bypass the rest of me? Who has discovered this language? This language of the invisible. The sensible, but alas, unknowable language. Of love. Of rain (Stravinsky). Of smiles (Mozart). The fear of infinity, that I, for one- I readily admit, have. The disinterested looks of cats.

All this, we are here to learn. To learn to speak to the invisible. To learn to speak in silence. To learn to listen to grains of sand... and to the din of memory (the loudest voice of them all). And... to see how much more we are ourself when we are not contained to just this body.

Welcome all. This class is a new one... we proceed with hope. Prepare thyselves.