in the vocabulary of wine terminology, there is something called the 'threshold of sensation: the smallest concentration of a stimulus that can produce a general but unidentifiable sensation. lower than the threshold of perception.'
from this sentence i became aware that the imperceptible quality of a thing arises from there being a scarcity of it. just enough to sense it but not enough to name it, to put it into words. the inexpressible is merely the world outside of language. you would think this world would have shrunk into nothingness by now; you'd think the sprawl of language would have spread over every square inch of perception. oddly, i think the reverse is true, as the inexpressible is infinite and the expressible is not. it seems to me at times that language is, at its root, a substitution of what we have for what we don't have.
i think i find myself so drawn to the french language because this idea is somehow innate within its structure. in english, we think 'about' something. in french, we think 'toward' it, away from ourselves as the center of thought, toward thought as a place outside of ourselves. in english we say 'i miss you,' but in french we say 'vous me manquez:,' it is you who i lack. i learned this difference earlier in my french study, but not in the same concentration as i learned it today. i got a very sudden sense of something vast that i could not hold onto. it was only a passing glimpse and then it was gone, irretreivable, like a blissful odor from childhood, or a name that was just on the tip of my tongue.
