Translation

     You cannot really call it duplicity. It’s not that one is speaking truth and the other a lie. They are simply speaking their own truths in the only language they know. Unfortunately, they speak different languages which can disguise the similarities and the unison of their truths. No, one cannot call it duplicity when one compares the words of the mouth or pen with the words of the heart. One has learned to speak in the constructs, structure, slang and metaphors of their environment and education. The other has no such shackles.
     Trying to hear their different dialogues can, at times, be like trying to carry on an intimate conversation at a sporting event, a bar, a convention hall or a rock concert. You can’t hear above the other voices competing to be heard. You strain, you yell or you lean in turning your ear to their mouth so you can hear not just the voice but the words. You feel like you are in a commercial repeating those infamous words “Can you hear me now?” Language, or words, has learned to write which gives it home field advantage over the heart trying to be heard above the static.
     Poets, mystics, sages, philosophers and romantics have long struggled with these two different conversations and dialogues. A poet’s heart explodes trying to use language to describe love. And how, wonders the mystic, can words describe the partner in this conversation – the heart? So, when I sit and try to hear, translate and reconcile these different whisperings, truths and nuances I’m not sure I believe I can discern the answers where they have not.
     Perhaps, just a tiny little perchance, a chink in the armor of disbelief raises its head. Maybe it’s not the translation, the interpretation, the reconciliation that is required. Maybe it is simply the recognition of the two languages, to see the shackled and unfettered that is important. For if we fail to wake up and see that the two exist, different, unique, and indescribable what need would we have of poets, mystics, sages, philosophers and romantics? What reason would we have to stop the rhythm of life to stand speechless and watch the sunrise or a full moon?