God has a sense of humour

I vividly remember my first visit to Paris and the first time I stood at the Place de l’Etoile (which has been renamed Place Charles de Gaulle) - the crazy intersection surrounding the Arc de Triomphe.  There are no less than 12 straight avenues which intersect at this point – hence the historical name which translates as Square of the Star.  The apparent absence of distinct white lines to regulate the flow of traffic, with ten cars abreast seems like madness to me.   Crossing seems like definite suicide – hence the subway for pedestrians.  Today the Arc de Triomphe and the Place de l’Etoile seems to be a fitting metaphor for another very complicated crossroad in my life.

Sometimes life seems a lot like the Place de l’Etoile to me.  There is so much hustle and bustle and flow of activity around me and the disturbing thought occurs to me that unless I know where I am  going – I am sure to get lost if I take the wrong avenue.  Trust me, I know – I’ve been lost in Paris and ended up in the Pigalle district! 

And life is never simple is it? I really think God has a strange sense of humour at times.  Why not just place me at an intersection with just four intersecting avenues where the options are limited and therefore simpler:  A, B, C or D?  But no – life is more fun when it is has a buffet of complications  – a pastiche of no less than 12 intersecting and intricate issues and avenues (A to J?) which is enough confuse the hell out of a simple-minded woman like me.

I wish it were possible to disambiguate life and people as we are able to do in computational linguistics in which word sense disambiguation aims at identifying which sense of a word is used in a sentence when the word has multiple meanings.  Wouldn’t it be useful if we could use the same process to figure out what people are actually saying when their words and actions are infused with a variety of dissonant meanings?  Wouldn’t it be bloody marvellous if we could devise an algorithm to figure people out?  But I guess it would come with its own caveat – people can speak in metonymic terms which screws up the whole discourse all over again. 

 

In fact, people are far too much like their words – infinitely variable and very context sensitive.  Just like words, people do not easily divide up into distinct or discrete sub-meanings.  I find myself empathising with the bleary eyed lexicographer in the dungeons of a library, who frequently discovers in corpora loose and overlapping word meanings; discovers their standard or conventional meanings extended, modulated and exploited in a bewildering variety of ways.  The same applies to people… I have come to the conclusion that some people are simply impossible to pin down and figure out.  Even when you think you know them better than anyone on the planet – trust me, you haven’t scratched the surface to the Pandora’s Box within. 

Which begs the question – can you ever truly know someone – who they are, deep down - there where the Disprin dissolves? 

I am beginning to think that it is not entirely possible.  We are all palimpsests – ancient scrolls of parchment which have been written upon twice, the first writing having been erased to make place for the second.  The first writing is our usually tormented and twisted childhoods, past experiences, memories, defeats, victories, history.  The second – seems to be like the etch-and-scratch magic slates we used to play with as children – with what seems to be written on the surface so easily removed by sleight of hand.  And the text keeps changing, the discourse is discordant, fluid and at times meaningless.  And unfortunately, in many instances the first layer of writing is etched too deeply to be erased entirely.  It still rises to the surface in the most annoying and inconvenient ways and no matter how hard you try to erase it, it permeates the second layer and any other one after that.

I have found myself with the same sense of bewilderment and exasperated confusion as the lexicographer in the dungeons of the library.  Unpredictability, instability and chaos seems to be the order of the day these days.  Nothing seems to fit the way it should and as soon as I think I have the corpora down pat, I find another layer of meaning to this tear inducing mascara haemorrhaging onion of life!  Lately, my favourite three letters of the alphabet are W.. T…F. With good reason.  Even the calendar agrees after Tuesdays…

Lately, I tend to feel like the confused tourist at the foot of the Arc de Triomphe all too often.  I look around me at the bewildering ever metamorphosing life I have and sometimes I wonder  which of the twelve traffic lanes I should jump into first. The challenge these days is merely crossing the street – without getting hit by a bus or worse.  Perhaps I should try to Forrest Gump my way to the other side.

It seems like such a fitting image for me today – at the centre of the chaos is the Arc de Triomphe which stands as a spectacular monument in honour of those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars.  The names of the French victories and French generals are inscribed on the inner and outer surfaces of this spectacular monument.  

Aren’t we all a similar monument to our own victories and casualties as we struggle through life?  I am a monument to what I have survived and conquered but like the Arc de Triomphe, the names of the casualties are inscribed on the inner walls and the apparent emphasis on Victory belies the sadness of loss and death entombed within.  Underneath its spectacular vault, lies the forlorn Tomb of the Unknown Soldier with the flame that is kept burning day and night.  I too have a Tomb for my Unknown Soldier and he too is unaware of the devastation he has left in his wake.  Like the fallen hero beneath the Arc de Triomphe, he is blissfully unaware of the loving care that is taken to tend to the lantern – to keep the flame burning.

I recall watching the crazy maelstrom of traffic at this bizarre intersection for a while and I have come to realise that there are two options here:  step defiantly and confidently into the lane of oncoming traffic (in the face of disaster defiance is often the only recourse) or find the subway – it is there – you only need to read the signs to find it.  Then again, my French has always been just enough to get me into trouble.  Perhaps that explains it.  So, for now, I’m scouring the landscape for signposts which will lead me to the magical subway to get me from my point A the elusive point D or was it E, or F or…. Dammit!