Talking Out of 3 Sides of My Mouth At Once

   
Dear  Language’ers. & Colleagues ATC
 
  Failures to Communicate
 
When I ask if I’m making any sense,
it’s never rhetorical like know-what-I-mean
&  know-what-I’m saying or  Right? (as my
next door office mate Dong Ping says every
other point he’s driving home to me), or OK?
as some lady-economist was saying last
night on local tv— merely punctuating
expostulation, huh? in order to fill in space
maybe, ok?  and yet hold on to the  talking-stick.
 
No: I really am asking to know if I’m making
any sense or not—and I always  feel I got
lucky if I am.
 
Because I’m trying to talk out of 3 sides of my
mouth at once. Often.  Trying to doing justice to
1) the clarity of some thesis, and also
2) the significance of  its antithesis as well as
3) the complementary ratio & rational  relationship\
between the two: thesis and antithesis.
 
It’s counter-intuitive. It goes against the conventional
and practical grain of  Just Clarity Please, don’t
need to be factoring  in confusion.   Just FIGURE ,
please: no need to include the BACKGROUND;
just TEXT for crying out loud: can’t handle the
Context.too at the same time.
 
I can’t say what I mean and mean what I  say without
trying also to be saying what I don’t mean  & can’t
mean because it interferes with what I mean which
I know is always inadequate and so I’m  trying to
include that inadequacy which goes against the
Convention of Clarity, know what I mean?
What I’m saying? 
 
This is “school mode.”
 
I wouldn’t be talking this way  running for office or
addressing inner city problems.
 
This is talk that talks about talking while it’s talking
and you can see how  that screws up the straight
linear lines of conventional communication.  It’s
not practical. It’s counter-intuitive to immediate
practicality. And Loopy, yes?
 
Repentance: literally—to turn back.
Recursion:  to loop back on itself.
Self consciousness:  a system that
can repent: turn back, loop back on itself
talk to itself,  tell itself jokes and stories,
scold  itself, turn itself on.
 
And when I apologize at the end of class: that’s not
merely rhetorical either. I’ve just  exposed my self in
converse-action (apo – logia: words of opening,  the
logic of revealing or revelation)
 
It’s de-moralizing to talk this way. It exposes the practical
minded conventions of clarity and purpose and goal and
aim and planning and mapping a territory  which  by virtue
of the exquisite utility of the map eclipses it’s inadequacy
and how “damaging “ it is to the whole.   
 
So I apologize intuitively. It just comes out. I apologize for
what I do and don’t do. An apology (an explanation, an
unveiling) is is literally not the same as an “I’m Sorry”
but maybe you can see how they hook up.

Best, Sam