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The output of Glossolalia (speaking in tongues) depends on the content of the machine generating the glossolalia.

The content of the machine generating the glossolalia will depend on all the input ever experienced by the individual including inculcated material and internal predispositional guides and the psychological protocols one has developed within to accomplish a predisposed goal and remain capable of operating in the world one has created, the world as one perceives it, the world one projects to impress on those in their environment, and the real world.

One operates accordingly.

Some protocol generators of glossolalia have a great cover up to offer their adherents. The glossolalia needs no, indeed proscribes, known language. So, every babble is protected by a built in nondisclosure. Yes, you just have to feel it, which means moving it from the forum of thought, to the agora of feeling, and ascribing the marvelous source, not to the content mentioned above, but to the user’s “ability” to channel god as convincingly as their worshipful peers.

Succinctly, if Sarah Palin and I were speaking in tongues standing side by side, our utterance would be so different, in so, so, so many ways. She would be the one with the single minded ferocity of a white tornado.

The destruction of the tower of Babel was like fire: good and bad.

Step through that for now and listen to the bard saying in As You Like It “Sweet are the uses of adversity which like a toad, ugly and venomous, wears a precious jewel in its head.”

When I am walking on the mountain behind the house here, I write. That is, I talk and record into my Sansa Clip MP3 player. Sometimes an article, sometimes a story, sometimes I glossolaliate - in English or Spanish, sometime in Danish or an effort to recover it, sometimes in my own version of German, not high German, not low German, more like Bavarian under the influence. It might sound to you more like Yiddish with a strange inflection.

My previous mate, Judith, and I would sometimes talk, in a game — she in her Yiddish that was becoming less accessible to her through disuse and I in my German that was becoming less accessible to me through disuse. Amazingly, we understood one another pretty well. In fact better than we sometimes did in English. For obvious reasons if you stop to think about it.

The babble on the mountain has various uses and purposes. It is free association. And since it is free, I try to use it up. One, to just let the mouth, brain, and heart go free for a while. It does them good. Two, brainstorming. Every now and then, well frequently, stuff pops out I had no idea was in there. Three, my mountain walking partner, dot.dog, likes it. We share a distinct preference for the sound of Danish. Thus, I may eventually become fluent in Danish again.

Since the Sansa Clip is recording, I am always happy when I discover that I have said something that pleased me to have said. No, dot.dog is not always pleased simultaneously. But if he is sufficiently pleased enough to give me one of those pleasant extended grumbles as only he, I assume, can, I cannot but help to accept that as a favorable edit when I play the recording back later looking for the good stuff.

Feel free to try all this yourself. Let me know how it works for you. You can even take dot.dog along with you if you like. Hecky darn, you can even use my mountain if you want to. But just be aware that my neighbor, Do, and friends have put a Trol Toll bucket at the little bridge over the gully, and he would appreciate your dropping a couple coins in the bucket, or a good luck charm or something.

Now, next time I get on this track I am going to share with you the technique I use if I stay in my Il Grotto work station instead of trekking up the hill. It is called Mind Mapping. You can even get some open source software to use if you want to. I usually just use a tablet and then later capture the tablet on the webcam.

Back to the mountain mapping, hazards do exist.

No, we have not seen a mountain lion, not even a lynx around here in a couple years. But imagine you have been up the hill a bit. You sit down a while to rest. You have already babbled. So you get out your beloved Hohner XB-40 Extreme Bending Harmonica and play dot.dog a little meander as you study the stars and ruminate. By and by, you let the stars go their own way. You rise and start the trek home. Just you and the night and dot.dog, the portion of the latest chapter in the latest volume of your autobiography, and a new melody, maybe a new song. You are pleased.

You come down the trail and decide to descend from the trail down to your street through a huge vacant lot, hiking light probing the steep possibility of a stumble. Then, suddenly, from high above, from a window way up there, someone is bellowing that you had better quit authorizing your pup to poop out there and why don’t people clean up. And as you listen to the rant, you observe the furrowed brow of dot.dog as if he is saying, “now hold on, I pooped half hour ago and several hundred feet higher.”

You try to explain that to the ranter. He disappears. You ask, well don’t you want to hear my side. You guess not and having reached the street you turn toward home just as a white tornado comes whirling out the door of the house containing the aforementioned window. The tornado grabs you by the shirt, breaking the lanyard of the mp3 player and the mp3 player goes sailing across the asphalt as the white tornado beats you half to death. You are on your back. The tornado is astraddle you with the obvious intention of beating you the other half to death. Well, sufficiently that it crosses what is left of your mind that death may be very, very imminent.

So before you go off thinking about how you are going to get constructive, creative, all mapped out, remember this. It is a jungle out there, Jane. Think it over. You can always choose to forget the mountain and just go on down to your local Diassembly of God Church. Who knows, you and Sarah may glossolaliate together. You with your creative effort. Her with her white tornado.

jack luna MOTH