A person's mother tongue as defined in literature and as understood and used by him or her is a complex and ingenious means of recording, expressing and even enhancing life. However I have come to believe that even the most powerful language, due to life's unpredictability and due to our short-comings in expressing or understanding life fully, can never describe accurately and completely even one person's whole life experience. Words can be used to convey a singular notion, or perhaps to serve as a filter for viewing and describing a collection or selection of phenomena, but spoken Ianguage cannot fully represent the minutae of one's miraculous life. Moment by minute moment, the details of the miracle of a life unfold, and, although many experiences and sensations within that life can be described in words, many will never be and many of those could not ever be. Like the infinite number of minutely different musical tones that exist between two adjacent notes on a piano keyboard, whose sound the composer can perhaps imagine and some of which the singer can sing, but which the pianist cannot voice on his instrument, there exist experiences that are never expressed, feeIings never expressible, and many not even noticed by us at a concious level. Some ideas may be able to be conveyed in another tongue, just as a pianist can use another instrument, but much of even one person's life and life experience will never be outwardly expressed, in words anyway. Such unspoken, unshared mysteries within us are like undiscovered treasures and an important factor in what makes each one of us unique.
Wayne Carter.
12/11/04
