Alison wrote:

Your point is very well taken Natasa, and perhaps sums up for me why I could never describe myself as a 'character junkie' because I simply don't enjoy reading passages like the imaginary one you gave.

Thank you, Alison. Unfortunately, it's not an imaginary passage, but an existing one, by a rather well-known author. I keep this story on my hard disk hoping that one day I will muster up the nerves and courage to read it to the end. My apologies to the author, but it's really unbearably pathetic.

On the other hand - who knows what people are like 'inside their heads'. I have a problem in that most of what I do inside is non-verbal, which is why I am so often groping for terms and names. However many linguistic philosophers claim that thought is entirely couched in verbal terms, and perhaps this is for them an accurate representation of how they experience their own internal life.

This is perhaps the mainstream linguistic philosophy, but it's not the only one existing. Try reading 'Myth, Truth and Literature' by Colin Falck and you will find a lot of interesting ideas about how language originates in bodily gestures and still has its bodily dimension which is essential to its relation to the objective world (quite opposite to what Derrida et al. say). And since you once mentioned you liked me quoting poetry, here is a poem about non-verbal communication, written by my favourite Irishman:

THE GUTTURAL MUSE

Late summer, ant at midnight I smelt the heat of day: At my window over the hotel car park I breathed the muddied night airs off the lake And watched a young crowd leave the discotheque.

Their voices rose up thick and comforting As oily bubbles the feeding tench sent up That evening at dusk - the slimy tench Once called the 'doctor fish' because his slime Was said to heal the wounds of fish that touched it.

A girl in a white dress Was being courted out among the cars: As her voice swarmed and puddled into laughs I felt like some old pike all badged with sores Wanting to swim in touch with soft-mouthed life.

N.