signs & signifiers

“In the morning, I open my window above a plump and tiger-striped lizard, and she opens her blue mouth wide in return. Nature is an idiot savant, profoundly gifted at the mathematics of being, but damned if she can make a single reliable word come out of her mouth.”

— Mark Tredinnick from Fire Diary (2010)

Yes. Or, turn the coin over:

I want to tell what the forests
were like

I will have to speak
in a forgotten language

— W.S. Merwin, “Witness” (1988)

por ejemplo:

“Con un hisopo entintado marcó cada cosa con su nombre: mesa, silla, reloj, puerta, pared, cama, cacerola. Fue al corral y marcó los animales y las plantas: vaca, chivo, puerco, gallina, yuca, malanga, guineo. Poco a poco, estudiando las infinitas posibilidades del olvido, se dio cuenta de que podía llegar un día en que se reconocieran las cosas por sus inscripciones, pero no se recordaba su utilidad. Entonces fue más explícito. El letrero que colgó en la cerviz de la vaca era una muestra ejemplar de la forma en que los habitantes de Macondo estaban dispuestos a luchar contra el olvido: Esta es la vaca, hay que ordeñarla todas las mañanas para que produzca leche y a la leche hay que hervirla para mezclarla con el café y hacer café con leche. Así continuaron viviendo en una realidad escurridiza momentáneamente capturada por las palabras, pero que había de fugarse sin remedio cuando olvidaran los valores de la letra escrita.”

“With an inked brush he marked everything with its name: table, chair, clock, door, wall, bed, pan. He went to the corral and marked the animals and plants: cow, goat, pig, hen, cassava, caladium, banana. Little by little, studying the infinite possibilities of a loss of memory, he realized that the day might come when things would be recognized by their inscriptions but that no one would remember their use. Then he was more explicit. The sign that he hung on the neck of the cow was an exemplary proof of the way in which the inhabitants of Macondo were prepared to fight against loss of memory: This is the cow. She must be milked every morning so that she will produce milk, and the milk must be boiled in order to be mixed with coffee to make coffee and milk. Thus they went on living in a reality that was slipping away, momentarily captured by words, but which would escape irremediably when they forgot the values of the written letters.” 

— from Cien años de soledad/One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel García Márquez (1967)

kin: the witness, ciphers, another way