Ballicatter

Politics and Shame

What Language Speaks

by

A freshly baked key lime pie sitting atop a table with white linen cloth.

No one knows where it came from, what it is doing sitting atop a table with white linen cloth.

No one knows, no one asks. Instead, statements regurgitating out of mouths at a rate accustomed to, resulting from patterns of socio–economic, dysfunctional family training. Language chucking along the trails of repressed thought processes and self denied traits. Critical judging statements to distract and control or relieve. Recognizing in others what we don't want to own in self. Just like a train in which all the passengers know damn well will only stop at assigned drop–off points. Predictable.

Some comments overheard:

  1. “This pie is begging for me to eat it”.
  2. “This pie doesn't look like the pecan pies I'm used to, and therefore, it must be weird”.
  3. “Honey, call the realtor, we're moving before another key lime pie arrives and ruins the neighborhood”.
  4. “This pie desires nothing more than to star in its own personal remake of the pie scene in that movie American Pie”.
  5. “I hope that pie feels embarrassed, sitting there like that”.
  6. “This pie looks exactly like I feel”.

Listening to these defining comments, we, as the audience, the over–hearers and observers, could conclude some very distinct assumptions about this freshly baked key lime pie sitting atop a table with white linen cloth…

This key lime pie is:

  1. Begging for someone to eat it—Who's going to eat it?
  2. Different and therefore damaged or weird—Why can't it just be normal like the pies in the mass market grocery stores?
  3. Responsible for the declivity of otherwise decent neighborhoods—Why can't it just stay where it belongs, with its own kind?
  4. Simply a sexual object recapturing the sexual morals of the movie industry—Are you ready for its close up, Mr. Goddard?
  5. Should feel embarrassed for sitting there like that—What pie in its right mind would dare act like that?
  6. An extension of the feelings of the speaker—Will the speaker seek relief of his or her own projections by fixing the pie's feelings?

For all literary and deep thought processes of instruction and growth, this pie is simply a fresh baked key lime pie sitting atop a table with white linen cloth.

What would you say? Would you define, or inquire?