I grew up in Paris. I went to French school, learned to read in French, and when we moved home my parents said Hilary and I were mostly playing together in French. Point is, I spoke fluent French. These days? Not so much. I can barely remember any words, and I certainly can’t read it or follow conversation. I’m not one of those people who picks up languages easily. I struggle with them. I’ve been thinking lately, though, about how languages can be understood much more conceptually, much more broadly. Language, really, is a way of communicating, right? That can be more than English, French, Spanish, Mandarin.
On Friday morning I went to yoga for the first time in over a month. I was reminded, again, of how my body can flow through the vinyasa series, no matter how long its been. My body speaks that language, by heart. Some kind of powerful spirit and muscle memory takes over and my body just knows what to do. It’s not easy, of course, and I find that it is always, always my shoulders that give out first. Is this because they are so worn out from carrying the weight of the world or a further example of how they are too weak to do that? I don’t know.
The language that I fell seamlessly into on Friday morning is just one manifestation of the myriad ways the body speaks. I know the language of the physical female body, though I can lose touch with it easily. I’ve written before of that sense of something true deep inside my body, something “soaked in blood, and tears, and milk,” something that is one way that intuition expresses itself. This is the language that whispered in my ear through Grace’s long, difficult unmedicated labor. It is a deep dialogue between my soul and my body, some message about truth that beats alongside my heart. I speak it, and though I don’t understand it fully I suspect that this language exists beyond the realm of conventional “understanding.”
Another language that operates on the far side of logic is poetry. I speak this language too, where words can be untethered from their ties to the traditional sentence, out past the border of rational thought. Sometimes when I read poetry my heart soars in a way it never does otherwise. The words of Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Sharon Olds, and my thesis poets, Anne Sexton, Maxine Kumin, and Adrienne Rich have all done this. Poetry can skirt around my brain and access my spirit directly. I appreciate this, especially because of all the ways that my head gets in my heart’s way
There are many languages I don’t speak. We’ve covered that I am lousy at traditional foreign languages. I also can’t read music. I’m tone deaf, and music was always something I was terrible at. I remember in grade school trying desperately to figure out how to interpret those little black ovals riding up and down the pleasantly symmetrical horizontal lines, but I just couldn’t and still can’t.
I can’t read financial statements. This makes me a truly pathetic MBA, but there you go. I truly cannot understand what the line items on a balance sheet or income statement are, and I recently embarrassed myself mightily by confessing that I thought “credit” was the opposite of “debt” – in fact apparently they are the same thing. So a credit fund is a debt fund. Which is bonds. Hmm. Who knew. (Who cares?) You learn something new every day!
On the whole I’m pleased with the languages I do speak, and comfortable with those I do not. For someone as concrete and dogmatic as I sometimes can be, it is heartening to note that I am more fluent in the more abstract, soulful languages of the body and poetry than I am in the specific languages of finance and music. The black symbols on the white page may escape me, but the more colorful, more diffuse expressions speak to me. In truth, this distinction surprises me, and I embrace it.
A great post filled with awareness and realization. Thank you for putting yoga and poetry in the same bucket… As you know, I just started yoga and think I will love it. Also, I have recently felt an odd desire to not only consume poetry, but to create it. Now I am thinking that all of this makes sense…
(And I would wager that you are not “bad” at anything!)
As mothers, I think we also speak a very different language, the language of motherhood. I think it’s different than parenthood, deeper, comes more from the core. It’s the hardest language I’ve ever had to learn, and I don’t necessarily think I’m fluent in it yet. I think it evolves, the dictionary changes, as our children get older. I think this “motherspeak” or whatever you want to call it, is the perfect example of a language that where our head “gets in [our] heart’s way”. I love that phrase!
For the record, I was also fluently French as a child, I lived in a mixed language household. Unfortunately when my mother passed, French was no longer spoken in our home. The point is, I’ve had to pick it up again in my career. You might be surprised how naturally it comes when you are forced to use it!
Lindsey, what stands out most for me in your post is that you are completely comfortable in your skin and that is exactly why your writings are so powerful.
Despite most people’s ignorance surrounding quadriplegia, I am able to speak the language of my body because I know my body better than anybody else and I’ve come to accept and appreciate it for what it is.
Amazing how we can all speak many different languages from foreign, to poetry, to music, to exercise. We are all just so different but with one common thread… human! We have the ability to connect with one another if we want to.
I’m so glad I’ve connected with you across the ocean!
YES – wow I can’t believe I didn’t even mention the language of motherhood. Maybe it is its own post! 🙂 You are utterly right, I think this is another language whose meaning is out in the fields beyond rational thought, where understanding is subordinated to a deeper knowing.
Wow, thank you – I often feel distinctly uncomfortable in my skin so it is really nice to hear that maybe that is not always true. Thank you for this generous comment. xo
Wow, what a great way to look at communication on the levels too deep for words. I’ve felt these things sitting across from someone, trying to intuit deeps needs and fears, and knowing words would not be enough. I also think sometimes we understand fluently languages we do not speak so well. Music is that way for me. It’s language moves me so deeply, and I understand it so intuitively, but I speak it like a toddler learning to count in Spanish. Reframing the deeper, intuitive ways of knowing in this way helps articulate something important and reframe it in a way it can be more conscious for all of us. Thank you in all of the languages I only dream of speaking!
I’m glad I’m not the only one who can’t read financial statements (not that I have any need to, thank goodness). I’m quite good (naturally) with picking up languages, but I’ve lost almost all of my (not quite) fluent Spanish of yesteryear. But our bodies…our bodies have a language all their own take takes them through labor and marathons and everything in-between, and that is beautiful…like a language purely of song.
You speak from the heart masterfully. Every day. That, truly, has to be enough for anyone… glad you are able to let the other stuff go.
Thank you…
I feel like I’m usually so much more aware of all the languages I do not speak — finances! foreign! real estate! oh my–than the ones I do. I guess we all do this, harp on what we’re bad at rather than celebrating our fluencies.
I too speak the language of yoga, and no matter how long I’ve been away can pick up the rythyms. I like to think I am fluent in Children. I sometimes have an easier time talking to kids. And often, even when I can’t articulate thought aloud, my fingers go at the keyboard faster than I can formulate a thought. Thanks for inspiring me to ponder the languages I DO speak for once!
Another beautiful post, delighting my senses. (You grew up in France???? I’m mystified by France.)
Well, lemme tell ya, my body does NOT speak yoga. At all. I’ve been to yoga twice, and both times I fell all over the place. It was humiliating! My body speaks couch.
I always wonder how much of our ability to “speak” certain languages depends on which hemisphere of our brain is dominant. Is it nature or nurture? As with so many things, it’s probably both, though I imagine most of us spend an inordinate amount of time trying to master languages we simply can’t be successful at, like financial statements (you and me both!). Good for you for embracing and exploring the languages that come naturally.
Thank you for this clever explanation of something I too feel to be true.
Reading these comments, especially Christine’s suggestion that we might be able to pick back up foreign languages we once knew, I wonder if the same is true of the other types of language you reference. I suppose it must be if we consider your reference to your body’s memory of the Vinyasa series.
I will be the lone wolf here so far and admit that, although I have always preferred language and history, I do speak numbers and find in them a comfort I don’t always in words. Maybe I shouldn’t fight it – try to become a CPA instead of a writer?
This makes me think of reading certain writers who I didn’t “get” but then would experience shifts in consciousness, revelatory dreams, snychronicities after letting such ideas wash over me non-comprehended.
This has been particularly true for me of Lacan, who strikes me as both pretentious and brilliant, the wonderful mix of sense and non-sense.
He draws upon the ideas of the most primal archetypes emerging via phonemes—the pre-motherese babble that all humans emit before shaping into differentiated languages; in this sense Bonjour, Om, Shalom, red ink, black ink, etc. all do stem back to the same mysterious creek that we now experience as the often confusing cacophany and subtle body poetry that is the river of our world and our collective lives.
Thanks for this post today.
Salutation as signifier
I’m with you on the numbers, and the music. Could never get either one very well.
But the language of the body, that is one to be so thankful to master, to learn and receive it’s blessings.
I’m actually quite numerate, so I misspoke – Math was my favorite subject for a long, long time, and then Science took over … I just don’t do balance sheets and income statements! 🙂
I loved this post Lindsey. I never really thought about the different forms of art as language but they absolutely are. Traditional languages come very difficult to me. I never did well studying languages and stopped as soon as I passed AP French in HS. But, music is something I studied all my life and although I haven’t taken a lesson since I was 20, if i sat at a piano today, it would come back easily. Accounting/Finance also, something that clicks with me. But poetry? Visual arts (scultpure/painting/etc)? It’s a language I don’t speak. I can stand in front of a famous work of art at the MET and have no clue what to say about it. I can read even simple poetry and shake my head in shame that I don’t get it. Our brains are wired in different ways I guess… it’s what makes us all individuals and unique amongst one another. I’ve always wished I could draw or write poetry but knowing that I would struggle so much with it makes me not even want to try. I’ll stick to what comes easier to me and accept that many of the incredible poems that you post here on your blog, although sound beautiful, will mostly just fly right over my head!
Love this post. For oh-so-many reasons. All the “languages” of the mind and body and spirit. Yes.
Poetry, yes.
Financial statements, um – not so much.
French? And other spoken languages? My yoga… my music… add a little AbEx, and it’s contentment.
Me too! I’m slow to learn languages, music, number stuff. But words, poetry, body and soul, yes.
I just love these connections with people like you, across the miles and connected by sameness.
Again, my friend, beautiful. And this:
“It is a deep dialogue between my soul and my body, some message about truth that beats alongside my heart. I speak it, and though I don’t understand it fully I suspect that this language exists beyond the realm of conventional “understanding.””
As you might imagine, I read these words and leap immediately to this beating truth of the Sacred Feminine; this manifestation of language beyond understanding. No less real. In fact, more so. We speak it. It speaks to us.
Indeed, a deep dialogue between our souls, our bodies; between one another.
I loved this post Lindsey. I never really thought about the different forms of art as language but they absolutely are. Traditional languages come very difficult to me. I never did well studying languages and stopped as soon as I passed AP French in HS. But, music is something I studied all my life and although I haven’t taken a lesson since I was 20, if i sat at a piano today, it would come back easily. Accounting/Finance also, something that clicks with me. But poetry? Visual arts (scultpure/painting/etc)? It’s a language I don’t speak. I can stand in front of a famous work of art at the MET and have no clue what to say about it. I can read even simple poetry and shake my head in shame that I don’t get it. Our brains are wired in different ways I guess… it’s what makes us all individuals and unique amongst one another. I’ve always wished I could draw or write poetry but knowing that I would struggle so much with it makes me not even want to try. I’ll stick to what comes easier to me and accept that many of the incredible poems that you post here on your blog, although sound beautiful, will mostly just fly right over my head!
Oh, I love this! What I love most is your appreciation for both the languages you do speak and those you don’t.
And I’m pretty sure that if you ever moved back to France, your french would come back in a heartbeat.