Summary

Chapter 5

Pages 126 through 130 -- This chapter describes the period of Mala's life where she enters into a phase of not using language or words, entering instead into a new communion with her natural environment, freed from nomenclature. The first part of the chapter describes the way this new communication alters her thinking patterns, with sentences evolving into image-based ideas that initially adhere to familiar syntax, but which eventually break down the very concepts of lexical conventions like sentences and words as "unnecessary translation[s] of the delight she experience[s]" moving through the world and observing the birds and plants and insects around her (126). Eventually, Mala hums in harmony with the sounds of insects and bird calls around her, listening carefully to and "gossip[ing]" with the creatures and foliage of her garden (127).

Mala actively leaves nature to its devices, choosing not...