acquiring knowledge

Sundog Rising!

Reflections on living the life literary by the Urban Sundog

Acquiring Meaning

My wife likes to sew, but it’s hard to find the time. However, during what was finally officially logged as the worst winter in Winnipeg’s recorded history over 2013-2014 — which is saying a lot — we were trapped in the house pretty much every weekend for close to six months. So she got a lot of sewing done. Kept her sane.

She’d owned a particular piece of material for quite some time she’d never had the chance to do something with until this unholy winter. It featured a beautiful pattern. Bright white characters from the Japanese alphabet on a dark, dark blue background. However, as neither my wife nor I read Japanese …

She called me in for an intensive consultation at one point, just before making the commitment of cutting the material into the pattern of the pants she wanted to make. Which way should be up?

Not knowing any Japanese characters, we had no idea. No point of reference. But we both finally agreed one orientation looked better than the other, so that was how she cut the material to read.

The pants turned out great. When summer finally came — much to everyone’s surprise, by that point — she could actually wear the pants, as they were too lightweight for winter. As it happened, she had them on when a Japanese friend came to visit.

First off, we were extremely pleased to discover we had called the orientation of the characters correctly. What we decided was up actually was up. The next amazing thing was our friend could read what was written on the pants. It turned out to be a Buddhist prayer for serenity.

What a transfiguring moment that was! Seeing our friend suddenly deliver meaning, and a rather sweet meaning at that, to images that had been only appealing as design to that point. The entire garment abruptly took on much deeper significance.

Photo by Renee Beaubien

Reading is an acquired skill. Some skills in life we develop by instinct — like language and speaking. But others we have to consciously apply ourselves to learn. Like reading and writing that same language we acquire by instinct. Or other languages we’re entirely unfamiliar with, such as Japanese, in my wife’s and my case.

I remember the day I officially acquired reading as a skill …

I was finishing Grade One, was seven years old, and had been taught the rudimentary skills necessary to master phonetics. It was a hot spring Saturday morning, and the whole family was driving out to the cottage at the lake for the weekend. I’d been given a new Aquaman comic before we set off on the trip to keep me happy and quiet for the voyage.

By this point I was having no problem with the Grade One Dick and Jane Reader at school, but I didn’t consider that real reading yet. Oh no. Real reading was when I was going to be able to read a superhero comic book by myself! That was what was really important.

And I realized, as I started looking through the pictures at the beginning of this comic, hey … something was happening here.

So I applied myself and worked through it. God knows how long it took me, but I read the entire damn comic. And then announced proudly to my mother what I had just done.

She didn’t believe me. So I demonstrated — read whole pages out loud to her to prove I could do it. She was absolutely thrilled. Not only proud that her son was proving so precocious, but revelling in the freedom she knew this meant. She would never have to read another one of those damn comic books to me again!

Given the amount I’ve read since then, this was obviously a seminal moment in my life.

To this day I recall the feeling of the world opening up to me through my acquisition of this skill. I literally felt my brain expand in that moment. I had not only acquired a new skill. Having access to the universe being able to read properly opened up to me also meant having access to so much more meaning in my life. I grew up significantly that morning. And gained a hint maybe for the first time what growing up might really be all about …

There’s a lot more to the skill than suddenly recognizing what appears as random marks upon a page or fabric beforehand as holding comprehensible designation. The concepts those marks represent compose themselves into even deeper significance than their literal meaning alone connotes.

You have to use your brain in an entirely different manner than merely comprehending interpretation of a code to come to a resolution concerning what the deeper implications of any written statement might represent. Which is an instinctive skill you have to develop with spoken language as well. You learn to think critically, dammit.

Meaning may well be open to interpretation, within the given context the words are presented to you. So you’re missing a lot if you don’t apply what should be your instinctive capacity to think about language to the acquired skill of being able to read language as well. You don’t want to be fooled — plus there is so much beauty in language, you shouldn’t want to miss out, just because you’re not certain which way up the letters should go.

So, like the Buddha, we should all pray for the serenity to make sense of this world in the fullest capacity we can.

*****

Photography by Renee Beaubien, at Beyond the Prism

on Flickr, at:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/128997372@N08/

*****

REALITY FICTION AND BEYOND!

Confusion! I mixed up last week’s blurb. The Electric Detective Chapter Fifteen ran Friday, July 10th, and Shelley-Ish, Episode Sixteen, runs this Monday, July 13th and Friday, July 14th. Reality Fiction Three: The Interrupted Edition continues in some kind of order at:

http://realficone.blogspot.ca/

So one more time, if Victor Coffin ended up with Dr. Henry Jekyll’s old notes, who ended up with Victor Frankenstein’s? And don’t miss Tunguska’s cameo appearance, complete with description of what she’s wearing. Including shoes, of course.

Episodes to Date:

Episode One: Dante-Ish — Mak’s Inferno

Episode Two: Chaucer-Ish — The Hermit’s Tale

Episode Three: Malory-Ish — Le Morte de Mak

Episode Four: Doyle-Ish — Mak the Kipper

Episode Five: Carroll-Ish — Madelyn in Wonderland

Episode Six: Stoker-Ish — The Down For The Count Shimmy

Episode Seven: Tolstoy-Ish — Anna Makerena

Episode Eight: Lem-Ish — So there is …

Episode Nine: Hoffman-Ish — Dr. Hoffman’s Happy Gene Machine

Episode Ten: Shakespeare-Ish — Hamlet the Barbarian

Episode Eleven: Poe-Ish — The Usher Motel

Episode Twelve: Kafka-Ish — Metamorphos-Ish

Episode Thirteen: Finney-Ish — The Invasion of the Hotel Detectives

Episode Fourteen: Miller-Ish — Tempering the Cauldron

Episode Fifteen: Stevenson-Ish — Dr. Coffin’s Kindly Concoction

Episode Sixteen: Shelley-Ish — Prometheus, the Hard Way

All with illustrations by the author. The complete roster of 34 Contestants have now appeared, so we move on to the supporting cast, the Judges, and the Guest Judges.

After this week, only 2 more weeks and 4 instalments to go!