Articulate Snarls

I have been reading so much lately that I have begun to see words dripping off scenery in big wet drops, the most mundane events seem to spiral into important plot points that unfold like a rapidly blossoming flower in my mind (yes, gentleman in the blue Buick Le Sabre smoking cigarettes and carefully balancing a well assembled floral arrangement on your knee, I am talking about you), and my usual emotional snarls have started talking. I know, I know. The point of emotional snarls is that they don’t talk, and therefore they go largely ignored, or get brushed away like annoying but familiar insects. Or maybe children.

But perhaps not everyone is familiar with emotional snarls; well, we are all familiar with them, but we may not know them by the same name. Therefore, in the interest of ensuring that you understand me,  let us establish a common definition of the term emotional snarl. For this purpose, I shamefully offer up a written record of one of my very own emotional snarls:

I was having a conversation with some acquaintances of mine and I referenced an author that I have been reading a lot of lately. I went into great detail about one of the chapters I had read recently, all to support some point I was making, and knowing full well that the people I was conversing with were not familiar with this author. Now, I broke one of the first rules of etiquette and was talking in a way that was self-gratifying – as in, I wanted to discuss this so I was going to regardless of rather or not anyone wanted to listen – so I shouldn’t have been put out when someone responded to my self-indulgent comments with the insincere response of: “Oh, I should start reading that author.”  

Now, don’t ask me why, but I snarled. Inside, I felt a surge of emotion in response to this person that was not positive. Usually, my snarls were no more than a guttural emotional noise, if you will, that I noticed and sensed and then sometimes ruminated over, trying to figure out why my emotions had stood up in revolt before my brain had gotten around to determining the cause and therefore the remedy, which was usually nothing more than a good slap of common sense. But this time, my snarl talked to me. It surged up and seized my brain like a SWAT team from a predictable cop movie. And it was armed with words: “Where does he get off saying he is going to read this author? He would NEVER read this author, he would hate this author. What is the point of a conversation if he is just going to say whatever he thinks I want to hear? He didn’t even fully understand what I was telling him, how would he even begin to understand this author and what’s more if he does understand it, he will think it is stupid and flippant and he won’t see the depth and the truth in it.” I sat there, shocked. No need to send out brain probes like fingers to poke around in my emotions with a stick and see what had caused the snarl; it had just told me. My snarls had been given a voice.


This was disconcerting for many reasons. First, my snarls were mean, which meant I was mean. My initial response had been really, really mean.  I had been judgmental, arrogant, rude, and spiteful for no apparent reason. I didn’t have a single excuse. Second, snarls weren’t supposed to talk, because if they did you’d find out how mean you were. They were just supposed to be there occasionally and more often than not simply forgotten about, pushed aside as your brain pursued other thoughts and your face and body language remained composed, hiding any response to the beast-sounds your emotions were making.

In a way, I liked having the words. I liked knowing right away why I was having that uncomfortable feeling that could never quite be pinned down with a word like anger, annoyance, or pain, but was likely a combination of many feelings, though they were usually never fully identified or realized. It was nice to know what I was feeling, what the snarl was responding to.

But it was also awful, because it meant I had to admit that I was a terrible person. My emotional snarls were better when they were vague because I could still live in blissful ignorance of the meanness of my mind and pretend that my emotional surges and responses were maybe good things, maybe only surged up heroically at the sight of evil or at the infliction of some great wrong. But once the snarls evolved into words, I could no longer pretend. I had to face the fact that while my angry surge in response to the affront made by this person in the form of insincere flattery and a teensy bit of ignorance FELT like righteous anger, it was in fact, just the opposite. I was quite the scoundrel.

And so, words that have taken residence in my brain and seeking outlet at any cost, seizing on the sunrise as a chance to pour forth poetry, clutching at the vehicle of conversation to delve into new depths of wit, and racing to write stories as I pass people in traffic, you have set loose a monster in me. But I don’t want to contain the monster because that will mean containing the words and I will lose the moment when I find just the right way to say something, miss the moment when I realize not that the light is fading, but that the color is being sucked back into the earth, and I would never have known that emotional responses really felt like snarls and should be called snarls because they were animal-like, instinctual, and did not respond rationally.

So I will keep reading and will tolerate the articulate snarls; because it is worth knowing that I am terrible person if I realize that I live in a wonderful world. Maybe I will learn something about myself from these talkative snarls. For example, now I know not to indulge my own interests in a conversation and then get angry with people when they respond insincerely after I have bored them to death with how much I love the sound of my own voice.