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Transcription: [00:25:54]
You and I can we see eye to eye or must your eye and eye lock horns and struggle 'til we die.
[00:26:04]
Your mind not mine and I experience not, can never learn. Reverse the same my life transfers a blank. We say communicate, smile, touch, and kiss.
[00:26:20]
And I say, "This is what I mean!" You nod at me excitedly and say that's what we mean. And that dismay, tight throat, I look and look and see that on one hand that on the other hand the same?
[00:26:40]
No, not for me must we forever eye to eye the path that we want to see or can our mind send messages and your mind's eye meet my mind's eye?
[[applause]]
[00:27:04]
Obviously, that poem discusses problems of communication between two people. Even though they have the same language they still have problems communicating.
[00:27:18]
Now here in this situation some hearing people don't know sign language here and many here know sign language any way. But for those who don't we have a worse situation because I am using sign language and you are speaking English. We are lucky that we have an interpreter to help us understand and try to communicate.
[00:27:37]
But even though we have an interpreter and we have two different languages all of us must work harder to try to communicate and understand each other, our different cultures, and our different languages.
[00:27:52]
It's interesting that Dot Miles chose the title "Total Communication" for her poem. Obviously it fits the poem but that phrase appears often in the field of deafness. Total communication
[00:28:09]