Looking out of one of my living room windows, I see at a street sign I've viewed many times, both from the front and the back. The sign reads, "Arguello", with white letters on a green background with white trim along the edges. This is the name of the street where I live. The sign is probably meant to inform people driving or walking east on Cornwall Street that they have just arrived on Arguello Boulevard, but looking at it from the back, as I currently am, it seems that this sign is intentionally keeping things out of view from the people and cars approaching. Visually, it doesn't allow them to see the construction of the sign as I can, or how it is affixed to the light pole that displays it. Beyond the visual, it strikes me as only showing one side of itself, the informational side. Because I live in an apartment behind the writing, I see the sign in a different way, precisely because the word is not visible to me. I see the construction as purely informational, because the word printed on it does not make me forget that I am looking at a sign.
Thinking about the sign in this way leads me to think about how language functions as I seek to think about and describe myself to myself, and how it leads me to believe that it has no function other than to make my thoughts and feelings concrete. In reality, it seems to me that the words in my brain are not unlike the one printed on this sign. They provide a sense of reality to me about my existence, but they are more tangible than the feelings I am trying to understand. In back of them is a construction invisible even to me, who is supposed to reside there.
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