Snowball on the Tip of the I's Berg

Analogies Across the Curriculum
(Only Abduct)



The Innateness Theory (universal grammar):
This notion stresses the Nature part of the
Nature/Nurture dialectic An innate template
(blueprint) for language is activated by environment,
provides the dynamic rule-driven and structured
linguistic organization of whatever language(s)
surrounds the growing child—moves through
babble, holophrastic (one word) and telegraphic
(several words, no function words) stages prior to
full use of morphophonemic & syntactical operations.

Do you remember your babble? your holophrastic
or telegraphic stages? Even now: are you aware of
morphophonemic and syntactical operations?

What’s wrong with my questions? Assumptions?

Knowing More than One Language

I remember sitting in 7^th grade Latin—joking with my
neighbor over the word RECTUS-a-um. Just squeaking
by in that class. Bored to death with a dead language.
Got D’s for dead & deadening.

I remember being called on in college French, much to
the amusement of the professor and students: my brutality
with the language, and pronunciation.

I remember learning German in 6 weeks, to pass a
language requirement for grad skool: flipping vocabulary
cards poolside in the hot Durham sun, eating a grammar
book, taking the exam and walking out emptied—a deficit,
a hole where synapses had been operating, now a vacuum
never again to be filled or used & abused.

That was my greatest intellectual feat, I’m pretty sure.

Here’s what’s strange about my questions. They turn up
the embarrassment that we easily confuse
systemic KNOWING
(what the whole body knows)
with the highly privileged
ego-conscious knowing.

And you may experience this embarrassment all the way
through this text as the authors describe in minute conscious
and rational detail what actually are unconscious autonomic
and automatic processes--or say: our descriptions of the
economy, or ecology: conscious-centric, true? How could
it be otherwise?

(Ask your self:
how can consciousness KNOW the UN-CONSCIOUS
—which rules—without reducing it to conscious process,
like talking about sphere in terms of a flatline.)

Am I aware my voiced-to-voiceless alveolar fricative
plural-variations depends upon—is governed by—the
environmental conditions of the final segments of
the noun I unconsciously pluralize?

How do I do this? What does it take to lift a finger?
tongue-tap the alveolar ridge? maintain the valved hum
of a low-back vowel? the glide of a voiced glottal?
How do I sustain such unconscious capabilities
& environed mentalism?

[Once Faulkner & Joyce exposed their streams of
unconsciousness offending my linear habits of
beginnings, middles, & endings; and then MTV,
damnit, began generating constellations of imagery
non sequitur to whatever lyrical sequence was going
on & on, and my sense of Show & Tell took a hit,
ambushed by internal providential explosive devices
until it became clear to me what a merely convenient
truth a sequence is—& because & affect.]


Consciousness:

Shrink
Shrank
Shrunk

the whole iceberg;
and then merely
the tip & now
only a snow
ball squat
on top
the tip is
how I’ve
come to see my

consciousness;

or sitting in a plastic
kiddy seat beeping
a rubber horn as
if driving the auto-
mobile: a convenient
toot.

Watch out:
Consciousness
Coming thru.

Aiming
to save the
world with Buick
intentions, I’s berg
aspirations, & a
snow ball’s T
chance in
hell.

Consciousness:

a miner’s lamp;
me: assessing
the true nature
of dark.

Consciousness

this little lite
of mind: I’m
gonna let it
shine.
my
total eclipse
of the sum.