Jonah sat hard against the table, pressed comfortably between the back of the chair and the edge of the table, moving letter blocks into strings, picking up six-packs bringing one up into his close visual field, inches from his nose, then putting it down and forming a five-string, the middle block held only by compression, and bringing that up into his close visual field. I sat down directly behind him. Martha chatted briefly, standing up and stretching, and she, Mia, and Megan and I rattled off his last-week and today words, and the watch changed. Universal, feature, Tarzan, ... directionless. Left-to-right, right-to-left, middle-to-ends. Jonah kept working his letter blocks. Mia described how she'd filled in the hollow-form letters to match, in form, though not the surrounding boarders, on the sides of the blocks, to make enough "e" letters, and that the yellow full-form letters and their boarders where now either red or blue, colors that Jonah will work with. Then she pointed out something surprising.
Jonah knows that on the other side of an "x" is a "k". When he reaches for a letter block, he reaches for a block showing the letter, or for the block which has that letter on its reverse. Jonah knows rot13, the oldest cypher technique used on the net.
a - b - c - d - e - f - g - h - i - j - k - l - m
n - o - p - q - r - s - t - u - v - w - x - y - z
As we get up to leave one of his teachers remarks on his pants. I hadn't noticed being above and close to him. They were on perfectly ... backwards. My son put on his pants himself today.
Heyoka. Contrary-wise. Reaching though cyphertext to write directionlessly. Jonah quietly amazes me. The melody of meaning is just there, lightly, between the assemblies of letters and the transposition and rotation of blocks, and the sound and feeling of it all, in the close visual field.
How wonderful. I'd always look at Miriam's arrangements when she was younger, trying to find her rhymes and reasons.
Posted by: emily at March 18, 2004 11:26 AM