10 Years After

Do Not Go Quietly Unto Your Grave

A short time back I picked up "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly" by Jean-Dominique Bauby from the shelf of free book at the campus library. It's a wonderful true story about a French editor who inexplicably becomes paralyzed. There is a chapter that tells how he was able to write this book since he was paralyzed:

The Alphabet
I am fond of my alphabet letters. At night, when it is a little too dark and the only sign of life is the small red spot in the center of the television screen, vowels and consonants dance for me to a Charles Trent tune: "Dear Venice, Sweet Venice, I'll always remember you . . . " Hand in hand, the letters cross the room, whirl around the bed, sweep past the window, wriggle across the wall, swoop to the door, and return to begin again.
E S A R I N T U L O M D P C F B
V H G J Q Z Y X K W
The jumbled appearance of my chorus line stems not from chance but from cunning calculation. More than an alphabet, it is a bit parade in which each letter is placed according to the frequency of it use in the French language. That is why E dances proudly out in front, while W labors to hold on to last place. B resents pushed back next to V, and haughty J - which begins so many sentences in French - is amazed to find itself so near the rear of the pack. Rolypoly G is annoyed to have to trade places with H, while T and U, the tender components of tu, rejoice that they have not been separated. All this reshuffling has a purpose: to make it easier for those who wish to communicate to me.

It is a simple enough system. You red off the alphabet (ESA version, not ABC) until, with a blink of my eye, I stop you at the letter to be noted. The maneuver is repeated for the letters that follow, so that fairly soon you have a whole word, and then fragments of more or less intelligible sentences. That, at least, is the theory. In reality, all does not go well for some visitors. because of nervousness, impatience, or obtuseness, performances vary in the handling of the code (which is what we call this method of transcribing my thoughts). Crossword fans and Scrabble players have a head start. Girls manage better than boys. By dint of practice, some of them know the code by heart and no longer even turn to our special notebook - the one containing the order of the letters and in which all my words are set down like the Delphic oracle's.

Indeed, I wonder what conclusions anthropologists of the year 3000 will reach if they ever chance to leaf through these notepbooks, where haphazardly scribbled remarks like "The physical therapist is pregnant," " Mainly on the legs," Arthur Rimbaud," and "The French team played like pigs" are interspersed with unintelligible gibberish, misspelled words, lost letters, mottied syllables.

Nervous visitors come most quickly to grief. They reel off the alphabet tonelessly, at top speed, jotting down letters almost at random; and then, seeing the meaningless result, exclaim, "I'm no idiot!" But in the final analysis, their anxiety gives me a chance to rest, for they take charge of the the whole conversation, providing both questions and answers, and I am spared the task of holding up my end. Reticent people are much more difficult. If I ask them, "How are you?" they answer, "Fine," immediately putting the ball back in my court. With some, the alphabet becomes an artillery barrage, and I need to have two or three questions ready in advance in order not to be swamped. Meticulous people never go wrong: they scrupulously note down each letter and never seek to unravel the mystery of a sentence before it is complete. Nor would they dream of completing a single word for you. Unwilling to chance the smallest error, they will never take it upon themselves to provide the "room" that follows "mush," the "ic" that follows "atom," or the "nable" without which neither "intermi" or "abomi" can exist. Such scrupulousness makes for laborious progress, but at least you avoid the misunderstandings in which impulsive visitors bog down when they neglect to verify their intuitions. Yet I understood the poetry of such mind games one day when, attempting to ask for my glass (lunettes), I was asked what I wanted to do with the moon (lune).

* * *

It reminds me of the Sherlock Holmes' case where he deciphers the underworld code of dancing men in part based on which characters are most repeated.