It took us about 40 minutes to get through the security line at Dulles last week. Not the longest line I'd been in, but not exactly short either. As we got closer to the metal detectors, a TSA agent made an important announcement. Her hands cupped over her mouth, at full voice, she shouted what seemed to be a set of instructions. And when she was finished we were all very impressed. And we knew - this was not somebody to be trifled with. These were clearly important instructions and we would follow them.

If we could only recall a single one.

"Did you understand what she just said?" asked C.

"Well, yeah. Sure I did," I offered. "Of course. She said . . . you know, for people to go over there, I think . . . and then . . ." I scratched my head. The instructions had seemed so absolute. So clear. And yet I was having difficulty bringing them to mind. "Strange," I said. "They seemed pretty obvious a second ago."

Then it happened again. More shouting. And sounds coming from her mouth, sounds which had all the qualities of speech - tone, distinct syllables, vowels, consonants - and yet these sounds brought to mind no particular words, no real language.

"Amazing," I said.

"Is that a language?"

"I don't think so."

"But I sort of understand it."

"I know."

We were witnessing a great and wonderful thing: the conveyance of meaning through lingual sounds completely disassociated from any recognizable language. It was incredible.

Roughly translated, this was the overall message:

You folks there - go over there in that line!

Okay now. Move, move, move. Let's go!

Now you folks - go to that line!

Have your boarding pass in your hand!

Only liquids in 5-ounce bottles are allowed!

Laptops out of cases!

See? We understood. We got it. The thoughts were planted in our brains. And yet when we tried to reconstruct the exact way they had arrived there, the means by which they had been rooted, we were at a loss. It was as if the barrier between language and meaning had been momentarily knocked down allowing us to look directly at the colorful lava lamp of transcendence. It gave me the shivers.

One of my favorite parts of a Cirque du Soleil performance is when the clowns walk among the audience members before the show starts, engaging themselves - and the crowd - in various acts of slapstick humor. My grandfather liked clowns, too. He collected them. And I think I know at least one of the reasons why: like my grandfather, clowns are people of few words. They're oddly fascinating, clowns. And part of the reason is that they don't speak. That is, they don't speak English. Or French. Or any discernible language, really. If they speak at all, they speak in a tongue called Gibberish, a dialect most people don't understand without the aid of expressive body movements, which clowns are great at. It's a subtle magic, what clowns do. And the spell is that when they speak Gibberish, you can understand it. You laugh. And that's all that matters.

I sometimes wish all communication were like this. Less what we say, and more how we say it. Get to the core, man.

There's a guy selling the Washington Post each morning at the corner of K and New York. He walks hunched over, and with a swaying limp, holding the papers in his left hand, one held up high over his head in his right, belting out two words: POOOOAH! . . . . AIYYYYY! Then a pause. Then again: POOOOAH! . . . . AIYYYYY! And repeat. Okay, they're not really words. More like sounds. And in any other circumstance, they might be taken for some kind of backwards hip-hop chant. (Which, if I'm honest, is actually how I like to think of them.) They echo through the morning air from a couple blocks away in either direction. Now, I know what he's saying. It's this: POOOOOst! todAYYYYY! But does it really matter? The main idea is he's holding a stack of papers and making a lot of noise. I get it: he's selling the Post. Effectively, I might add.

C and I sometimes stop using the English language with one another. We will utter strange, primal phrases like the kind you find frozen in ice in the highest regions of Mount Everest. Ancient syllables that, through the cupcake of time, find their way to our lips where they take form and quiver directly on our consciousness, tap-dancing lightly on our temporal lobe. I guess it's something married couples develop. The ability to create new languages. It's kind of like music.

Okay, I've jumped around a lot, I know. But here's the deal: Sometimes language is an obstacle. This weekend, try talking gibberish to some people. It's liberating. And you might just find people understand you. They may even understand you better.

That is all. Have a good weekend. And if you have a moment, take a look at some more San Francisco pics.

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