Monday 31 March 2008

What it is to be a bat

Well what is it? Not like a bat but a bat. It's unknowable, yes? Unless you're a bat.

It's funny writing this stuff because, from what I can gather, you lot 'hear' the words in your head when you read and write, as though you are talking to yourself or the page is talking to you. What's strange is that although I can write it and read it, I can't speak it and mostly can't understand spoken English. Just the odd phrase like "Will you shut that f**king door, it's f**king cold in here!" You hear that a lot! I can really only understand and manipulate the written word. Can you imagine what that is like? Even remotely? Can you know what it is? The symbols totally divorced from the sounds?

It's like when I'm swimming away from a dolphin pod. I can see and 'hear' the sea, other penguins, the dolphins but in what way does the dolphin see me? It can 'see' me the way I can see it, it has eyes like mine, but how does 'clicking' me change the way it sees me, if it does. You can never know, can you?

It, of course, doesn't stop YOU trying but in the end, you're just talking about humans with a thin veneer of behavioural research about animals layered on top, aren't you?

Does that change the way you read this?

I only mention this because it's not as difficult for us penguins to learn written English (or French, or German, or Latin or 'Scandanavian' in my case) as you might think. We actually have quite a rich language of our own. We don't have a larynx, nor teeth, nor a nice fat tongue to articulate the range of sounds you can but we have pitch and tone and volume and body posture and you'd be surprised at how rich our language can be, when you combine all these things together. We often have to go round the houses a lot to grasp the meaning of an English word, long adjectival phrases, many changes in pitch and tone etc, but we usually manage it.

Well, I couldn't do this otherwise now could I?

I also want to apologise today for some of the things I said during the first blogs I posted. Not for the content, I hasten to add, but for the tone. When I first started this, I didn't think anyone would be interested in the views of a penguin. So I made them a bit more 'human'. I regret that now. Either the penguin has something valid to say or he doesn't and pretending to be human, or being human, is not to be encouraged. So I apologise and trust I have made amends since.

I found the cupboard where they keep the flares, only it's 'combination locked'! Oh well, I'll just need to look for where they've written it down because they will have! Cozy will just have to be patient. Miracles are routine, the impossible takes just a little longer!

Sparky is still crowing, sort of, but I'm not that bothered. I really did want him to succeed and I'm so glad he did it not by being some 'super penguin' but just by a little fortuitous knowledge. One does have to admire his perseverance though!!


1 comment:

  1. This is tremendously diverting. I can't keep reading.

    Sorry Pengy- must get back to college classes. MUST, Must inch closer to understanding half lives and what they have to do with Beethoven and why he only wrote nine symphonies- MUST NOT READ BLOGS WHEN TIRED.

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