Sleepy blog In this, my

In this, my most active day this week, I have achieved all of two things. No, make that three. I have got up in time to tape a movie - and 9am is no joke in Natalie-Knysna-Vac-Land. I have formulated an idea for today's blog. And I have dragged my lazy self down to my parents' work to type up said blog along with 3 (count 'em, 3) application letters for my 4th term intensive (due on Monday morning).

- aside, I don't actually know why I adhere to Journ's dealines when I still haven't recieved my course results but HEY -

I watched ten minutes of Waking Life, the movie I taped, this morning, before sleep stole me again. It's an animated movie based on actual film shot for the flick, which was then drawn over using some revolutionary tablet & electronic pen animation technique, whose inventor explained and demonstrated it all to us at the Design Indaba in February. It was one of the better lectures, but the finer points of the process elude me - I think it was one of those mornings when all I really cared about was getting out of there and hanging with Ian.
So I felt obliged to watch the damn thing and tape it for my classmates (nice girl, hmmm?) and in the ten minutes I kept my eyes open was pleased to find that I'd taped quite an interesting flick.
A few minor characters go on to talk about their own philosophical beliefs, explaining to the silent protagonist their views on existentialism and the like; but one blonde woman speaks about language, and touched on something I've been feeling.

She speaks about the evolution of language, how the first people who used language used it for 'water' and 'saber-tooth tiger behind you' and how we made the jump to descriptions of abstract feelings, and then she launched into the schpiel of how words are symbols, meaningless and dead. Sitting through three years of semiotics in Ling and Journ and Philos has left me with an intense hatred of the whole 'signifier and signified' relationship, every time I regurgitated it in an essay I'd spit the words out bitterly, angry at myself for ascribing to what is, I agree, a logical notion, often proved, beyond argument, blah.
But then blonde cartoon lady took the extra step, further beyond the point where my lecturers stopped.
Yes, you can never know if your perception of the word 'love' and that of the listener is the same, and you never know if the abstract term you refer to rings true with the same clarity to someone else. But when people connect through words - it's all we have - something almost spiritual happens, sparks fly, we feel validated.
My frustration at the clinical semiotic view of words has been voiced by someone else! Some fictional character in an arb, apparently annoying at later stages, animated film. Hell, the feeling she spoke about, that's what I feel right now - validated that someone shares that feeling. I wonder how many others saw that and felt that too - I wonder if she somehow knows that the sparks flew and the connection was made, between her thought process and mine? Probably not.

Maybe that's the essence of relationships, romantic and platonic. "I get you, you get me." That pointed index finger flying between your temple and mine. Even as I write this, I suffer the concern and frustration that goes along with any attempt to push words out of my mouth or through my fingers. Did I say it right?