talk to me

I handed her a scrap of paper with a line from Shakespeare on it written in script. The letters said, It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing. I asked her, "What does that say?"

She read it to me. I shook my head and took it back. "It doesn't say anything," I said. "It's just lines on paper. I'm not saying anything. Just making shapes with my tongue. It's just words."

"You are saying something. You're talking to me."

"When I was a kid, I remember seeing cursive writing and thinking that it was just a lot of curvy lines strung together. They were shapeless to me. Just lumps. Somehow those lumps spelled out words and sentences and phrases. Then I learned to write it and it all made sense. I don't see it like that anymore." I crumpled the piece of paper and tossed it aside, then stared at the ground in front of me. "But that's all it is, isn't it?"

She nodded. "I get it. It's just curvy lines strung together. But when you learn to read you learn to give it meaning. Now we can talk, and share all that. It's all contrived and artificial. Without us, that's no more than curvy lines."

"Doesn't that bother you?"

"Not really." A dreamy look entered her eye. "That's humanity, isn't it? Making things up, giving them meaning. I like it more that way. It's like writing you a letter, or talking to you, or whatever, is the most human thing I can do. I think it's words that make us human."

"But they don't mean anything."

"That's right. Until you learn how to make them mean something."

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing--except to the storyteller and his audience. To them it signifies everything.