Green Tee Readings

The Shadow of the Wind had two sentences that completely threw me out of the text, one which made me realized how much I was unconsciously enjoying the book and interested in the fate of the protagonist, Daniel, and another that made me pull up, full stop, and do a little bit of thinking.

The first one has SPOILER POTENTIAL and I tweeted about it already, so nothing more need be written about it.

The second, though, has been on my mind for a while now.

The nurse knew that those who really love, love in silence, with deeds and not with words.

When I first came to it, I stopped (thankfully the bus didn’t), and did the Introverts Internal Dance of Joy. I’m terrible about saying loving or even flirty type things, but I think I’m a little bit better about doing something to show love, affection, or interest. So eliminating or reducing the role of words in those displays starts off seeming a brilliant idea to me. Then for the rest of the bus ride home, I thought about the implications of that line, should silent, deed filled love be the only true love.

Words are ticksy and can lack precision, sure, but actions aren’t fundamentally different as a means of communication. Should actions become the Supreme Language of Love, they’d be quickly subjected to analysis and subsequent gaming enough to render them an obvious equal to words in ability to mislead, misinform, misinterpret.

Giving a gift or forgetting a task are already actions with much potential to be (over) laden with meaning by any of the involved people, and that’s in a culture that doesn’t supposed the primacy of deeds over words in an expressionary toolkit. I don’t even want to think about the potential for forgetting to unload a dishwasher in a world where “I’m sorry, I totally forgot” would carry no weight. It’d be passive-aggressive’s paradise.

And yet, even having thought through all that, the shiest, most anti-social part of me still wants the nurse’s world to be the real world, or at least more strongly show through. There’s a good reason All My Little Words is one of my favorite songs.

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