thE Laguna Lacuna

The song begun by the flute rose overhead, became part of the air, and then part of someone else's breath.
The mountains never looked so warm, resting in the sun all stretched and eloquent. A slight breeze riffled the leaves of the pines and oak, creating harmonies high and low. Shadows and light played across the meadow, dipping into the small lakes, and soon everything was beholden to one or the other. Three hawks circled on thermals, two of them a mated pair and resenting the third until it sailed away. The day seemed to linger, a longing glance at summer, and the late-season flowers fairly danced beneath butterflies. A woodpecker hammered intermittently, a lone loud sound bookshelved by silence.

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In the thick of it …

Some like to teach so that someone will be taught.

Some like to teach so that someone will know who the teacher is.

Some like to teach so no one knows they are learning.



Some like to dance as if everyone was watching.

Some like to dance as if no one is watching.

Some like to dance and let no one watch.



Some like to sing for everyone to hear.

Some like to sing to let everyone join in.

Some like to sing when no one is listening.



Some like to create mysteries to confound those who don't like them.

Some like to create mysteries to intrigue those who like to solve them.

Some like to create mysteries so mysterious no one knows they're there.

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iN my working life...

What is the poet to do when he sees every day the ones who come back from war, missing parts of themselves, seen and unseen. What is the poet to do when every day he sees what is called a "burden" by those who do not carry, a "duty" by those who only command... Who sends another to fight in a situation that only angers another?

Who knows how to replace illusions with dreams in the young?

At the Navy/Marine hospital, some days can seem pretty rough …

At a speech given at the University of Concepción in southern Chile in 1968, poet Pablo Neruda said:

“Perhaps the duties of the poet have been the same throughout history. Poetry was honored to go out into the streets, to take part in combat after combat. When they called him 'rebel', the poet was not daunted. Poetry is rebellion. The poet is not offended if he is called subversive. Life is more important than societal structures, and there are new regulations for the soul. Seeds spring up everywhere. All ideals are exotic. Every day we await momentous changes — we are experiencing the excitement of a mutation in the human order: spring incites rebellion.
"We poets hate hatred and make war on war.

"Only a few weeks ago, in the heart of New York, I began my reading with some verses of Walt Whitman. Only that morning, I had bought still another copy of his Leaves of Grass. When I opened it in my hotel room on Fifth Avenue the first thing I read were these lines, which I had never particularly noticed before:

Away with themes of war! away with war itself!
Hence from my shuddering sight to never more return that show of blacken’d, mutilated
corpses!
That hell unpent and raid of blood, fit for wild tigers or for lop-tongued wolves, not
reasoning men.

"(When I read those lines that night) These lines brought an instantaneous response. The public that overflowed the auditorium stood and applauded wildly. Unknowingly, through the words of the bard Walt Whitman, I had touched the anguished heart of the North American people. The destruction of defenseless hamlets, napalm burning entire villages of Vietnamese — all this, through the words of a poet who lived a hundred years ago, condemning injustice with his poetry — was palpable and visible to those who were listening.
"Would that my poems were so lasting — the poetry already written, and the poetry still to come.”

[translated by Margaret Sayers Peden]

fOrtune's fall

This time of year
I like to read
people's fortunes
from the leaves
in their front yards.

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"I have the world's largest collection of seashells. I keep it on all the beaches of he world. Perhaps you've seen it." — Steven Wright

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Spite the Mote

I believe all WMDs — especially TVs — should be destroyed.


****

(apologies to Pablo N)

Total woman, sexual apple, hot moon,
thick aroma of seaweed, crushed mud and light,
what dark clarity do I see opening between your columns?

What old night thoughts a man touches with his senses.

Ay, to love is a voyage with water and stars,
submerged air, and abrupt sandstorms —
to love is a lightning combat:
two bodies by a single sweet honey defeated.

Kiss to kiss, I cross your small infinities
to your visible self, yes, your rivers,
your tiny towns and deltas,
and the genital fire transformed into delight
runs by the thin ways of the blood,
until hurrying like a nocturnal flower,
until being and not ever to be,
a sunray in the shade.

Terms of Endurance

In the news, have heard recently & quite frequently the use of the German word "Schadenfreude" (perverse pleasure taken in another's plight or misfortune). It has gained an ironic (yes, that's our culture for you, ever since Seinfeld & audience infamously mistook cynicism for a fashionable form of "irony") prevalence, what with tsunamis, hurricanes, and earthquake news coverage.

Schadenfreude, a word which I think adequately reflects upon the traffic phenomenon of rubbernecking. Or for that matter, for what passes as "news," as covered by corporate media. A perfect word, we have to borrow it, co-opt its hapless sound into our own lapses. But so appropriate.

Are there other concepts which don't have a precise word in English?

English language has a powerful ability to absorb and utilize other cultures' words. A good or bad thing, depending on one's point of view. Just as our quite maleable culture absorbs, transmutes, and appropriates every other culture it comes into contact with. So we have a word for almost everything we value. Especially in science and technology, worldwide, English terms are predominant.

No wonder this language currently dominates the world. English-language schools know it's often a necessary tool for success. But I don't think it's just because of its alignment with economics or capitalism, or pop culture, let alone military might. Although it's being predicted that English may not be the lingua franca of the next 50 years, I still don't see the pretenders to the throne — Mandarin Chinese or Arabic — doing that; they've historically been too self-referential, insular of influence.

But about those words and our customs about words?

… You know the common but false story that there are vast numbers of Inuit words for snow? It has been reported recently that climate change in the Arctic means that snow and ice conditions are occurring for which the native population has no words, since they've never seen them before.

Evidently there are 27 Albanian words for "moustache" and another 27 for "eyebrows."

Some interesting words and meanings:

… Persian "nakhur," which means "a camel that won't give milk until her nostrils have been tickled."

… Indonesian didis — "to search and pick up lice from one's own hair, usually when in bed at night."

… Cook Islands Maori: papakata, meaning "to have one leg shorter than the other."

… Japanese: bakkushan, for "a girl who looks as though she might be pretty when seen from behind, but isn't from the front."

… Tingo, from the Pascuense language of Easter Island, meaning "to borrow objects from a friend's house, one by one, until there's nothing left."

… Hawaii: ho'oponopono — "solving a problem by talking it out"

… Japanese: kyoikumama — "a mother who pushes her children into academic achievement"

… Indonesia: kekaku — "to awaken from a nightmare"

… Mayan: Bol — "stupid in-laws"

… German: Torschlüsspanik — "the frantic anxiety experienced by unmarried women as they race against the 'biological clock'";

Treppenwitz — the "clever remark that comes to mind when it is too late to utter it" (similar, I think, in meaning to the French "Esprit de I'escalier" — a witty remark that occurs to you, literally, on the way down the stairs);

Schlimmbesserung — "a so-called improvement that makes things worse";

Drachenfutter — "a peace offering from guilty husbands for wives," or literally "dragon fodder" (perhaps not an image most wives would be happy to be associated with);

… Russian: Razbliuto — the feeling (not quite of love, but perhaps close) a person has for someone once loved but now longer the object of affection

… Attaccabottoni — someone who grabs the conversation and won't let you go

… Korinthenkacker (literally "raisin crapper") — someone who obsesses on insignificant details

Arabic: Taarradhin — Arabic has no word for "compromise" in the sense of reaching an arrangement via struggle and disagreement. However a much happier concept, taarradhin, exists in Arabic. It implies a happy solution for everyone, an "I win, you win." It's a way of resolving a problem without anyone losing face.

… New Guinea is actually home to a fifth of the world's languages. From the highlands: Buritilulo — "the practice of comparing yams to settle a dispute."

… From the Kilivila language, spoken on Kiriwina, the largest of the Trobriand Islands, part of Papua New Guinea: Mokita — "the truth everybody knows but nobody speaks" (such as, for instance, the idea that most Americans seem to be against immigration, or that IQ measures only academic performance: facts well known to the scientific community, but perhaps best not discussed in public).

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If you're interested in a great book about language and its effect on people, cultures and history, I highly recommend "Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World" by Nicholas Ostler. Fascinating, about which a starred, informative review in Booklist says:

"… readers learn how languages ancient and modern (Sumerian and Egyptian; Spanish and English) spread and how they dwindle. The raw force of armies counts, of course, in determining language fortunes but for far less than the historically naive might suppose: military might failed to translate into lasting linguistic conquest for the Mongols, Turks, or Russians. Surprisingly, trade likewise proves weak in spreading a language — as the Phoenician and Dutch experiences both show. In contrast, immigration and fertility powerfully affect the fate of languages, as illustrated by the parallel histories of Egyptian and Chinese. Ostler explores the ways modern technologies of travel and communication shape language fortunes, but he also highlights the power of ancient faiths — Christian and Moslem, Buddhist and Hindu — to anchor language traditions against rapid change. Of particular interest [to readers] will be Ostler's provocative conjectures about a future in which Mandarin or Arabic take the lead or in which English fractures into several tongues. Few books bring more intellectual excitement to the study of language."