january in my apartment

You know what's nice? Clomping home up a snowy hill to a strong glass of karkaday that's been steeping all day long, and a box of tasty dates. Such a nicely Middle Eastern way to live in Southern Maine. Now I just need a cat.

His deep soft voice still echoes.

I listen to him, not every day, but when I do, it's for hours. I met him summers ago, working to catch his voice, to letter his words...not knowing that to transcribe, you have to know the words already.

I remember the day we found his own writing, his own English version of the story, written out on a rough scrap, in the shaky letters of men who don't work on paper.

I couldn't understand much of it.

So I listen. I listen and I listen, straining to hear his words, straining to hear a faint syllable, trying to grab back every scrap of sound, everything that was lost.

He sounds nervous, uncertain at times, but then there's the bear story: almost four hundred pounds it weighed, he says!

Or how they beat the Mohawks who came to fight. Or how the flaming vampire skeleton ate that man's friend up. Or...well, these are all just the stories I find in his sounds: are they even really there?

After all, now, with the man gone, and no translation with him, no translation by him, what do I make of it? What do I make of him?

I pick away, I note a schwa, wonder if that's a t or a devoiced n, wonder if there's a short demonstrative pronoun there, or if it's just a tweak of his lips closing. I have no one to answer my questions.

I met his son, already an elder, grandparently. He only remembers one word from his father, and asked me what it meant. I told him it means 'maybe'.

hmph

Another one of those days where I hit the wall of my own distractability.

'cause we all shine on...

Off on another Saturday morning Wikipedia jag, I have stumbled across the joys of Chinese constellations. They are beyond fun. Many have lovely evocative names---sometimes, as is often the case, seemingly more evocative in translation than in the original. Lest I keep you from discovering them for yourself, here I give only a small sample of the rich and wacky tanglings they offer the crosslinguistic wanderer.

To start off on the technical side, 卷舌 Rolled Tongue, in its common translation as 'retroflex', brings gladdening warmth and validation to the hearts off all phoneticians. And the swirl-vs.-lisp of it should be familiar to any student learning standard Beijing-style Mandarin who then goes and talks to non-northerners, i.e. the huge swath of everybody else in the world who speaks Mandarin.

Beyond this, is it not great to have in your mental sky now asterisms like 酒旗 Banner of a Wine Shop (they have ads up there!), 敗瓜 Rotten Gourd, and 狗國 Dog Territory? And, eminently practical and hospitable, the ancients kindly saw fit to install a 廁 Toilet.

I'm particularly fond of 土公 Official for Earthworks and Buildings, as it might translate more directly as Public Guy In Charge Of Dirt.

But nothing really beats 虛 Emptiness for best constellation of all. I have a hard time locating it, though.

so here it begins

Finally, a blog by which to blather. Ironically enough, not feeling particularly talksome today, but I can pretty much guarantee that that won't last. So tune in next time for, well, whatever pops into my head and then slips out through the keyboard.