7:01pm September 26, 2010

Without words

I know lots of people who can barely do anything, even traditionally nonverbal activities, without translating everything into words and using those words to understand their entire world. I’m the opposite. I can barely do anything, even traditionally verbal activities, without using patterns of sensory information. That is even where my supposed “language skills”, including reading and writing, come from.

But many times, like every single one of my interactions with humans this weekend, I don’t even notice the words, don’t even notice the possibility of language existing. Sure, if I remember back, there is the sound of babble of some kind. But it goes completely uninterpreted and I do not respond with words either.

All of my human interactions were with staff people. But I didn’t notice the words as anything other than a string of slightly musical sounds blending into the background with their footsteps and the rustle of clothing. I took the objects they handed to me, did things with them, and handed them back, or I responded to the position of their hands by moving around, or other things like that. I’m sure they thought I was responding to their words, but I was really responding to their movement patterns. I think the cat picked up more words than I did.

Then I spent the rest of the day, like I am right now, with said cat’s cheek pressed against mine, listening to the purr, or in other wordless interactions with her or the rest of my environment. The only times I have gotten into words at all have been to write here (and two of those were cut/paste jobs). And even now as I am using words, I still am not fully into the realm of words. I am mostly just drawing on my vast store of memorized patterns.

So, by far the largest part of my day is – by necessity, not by choice – spent in a realm where words may as well never have existed. And even when I use words, even when I use them with skill, I am never as far into the realm of words as it may look. Just as people with severe nonverbal comprehension problems can often falsely appear to understand something nonverbal quite well (through the skillful use of verbal abilities), I can falsely appear to use and understand certain verbal things quite well (through the skillful use of nonverbal abilities). Yet they never really leave the world of words, and I never really leave the world of sensory impressions and the patterns they form.

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