~ the evolution of dreams ~
December 10, 2006,6:25 p.m.
quote
October 13, 2006,3:20 p.m.
tongue twisters
*see note at bottomperhaps it’s inherent in the nature of language. in the construction of the word. but something about language drags chaos and conflict in its wake.
i love words. so many people do. we use them, to speak, express our emotions, to connect with other humans, because we need to – we need to be heard, we need to be touched.
i am so angry that in 2006, NOW, TODAY, THIS MINUTE, people still try to stop other people from speaking. from writing. from being heard.
no one should dare to impede another’s right to freely utilize words, especially when they are using those words for the expression of ideas. for the expression of intelligence. for the expression of genius. for the betterment of the human race.
we can – when faced with words aimed to hurt, aimed with malicious intent – deal with these words as best we can, with other words. i feel so stupid writing this, writing this when it is one of the lessons your parents teach you when you are five, or six: “don’t hit, use your words.” use your words. i wish with all my heart we could let people use their words without fear.
no one possesses the right to make people afraid to speak out. no government, no parent, no one. we shouldn’t be afraid.
use your words.
i love words. so many people do. we use them, to speak, express our emotions, to connect with other humans, because we need to – we need to be heard, we need to be touched.
i am so angry that in 2006, NOW, TODAY, THIS MINUTE, people still try to stop other people from speaking. from writing. from being heard.
no one should dare to impede another’s right to freely utilize words, especially when they are using those words for the expression of ideas. for the expression of intelligence. for the expression of genius. for the betterment of the human race.
we can – when faced with words aimed to hurt, aimed with malicious intent – deal with these words as best we can, with other words. i feel so stupid writing this, writing this when it is one of the lessons your parents teach you when you are five, or six: “don’t hit, use your words.” use your words. i wish with all my heart we could let people use their words without fear.
no one possesses the right to make people afraid to speak out. no government, no parent, no one. we shouldn’t be afraid.
use your words.
*Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children would be in this pile but i lent it.
Labels: language
October 3, 2005,4:35 p.m.
history, and love
it's a grey fug out. there have been sirens blasting all day today, what with the apartment building testing the system and fire-trucks zipping back and forth down bay street. i am home recovering from a nasty cold that succeeded in knocking me out for the whole weekend. it's the first time i've actually felt like i'm taking a break - hooray!! i have finally been given my one day of nothing. (which isn't actually true, since i've been working on the dance coalition budget etc. even though i really tried not to. the feeling of anxiety that encompassed me because i wasn't getting the ball rolling finally proved too difficult to ignore.) and actually, i do feel worse since i've been sitting up typing and formatting the budget in excel - my silly body seems to have an ingrained distaste for work. haha. so much for you, body, cuz the BRAIN is what rules on this planet. insofar as human bodies are concerned, anyway.
i have just finished diana gabaldon's breath of snow and ashes this weekend. i feel very odd, and sorrowful, after finishing it. usually i feel this way after finishing a book, - an odd sense of loss, and displacement. i think this is compounded by the fact that i really was quite ill and was more vulnerable (and more imaginative) than i would have been if i'd been feeling fine. in any case, i have an odd ache for the people i've lost recently in my family, and a kind of longing for the ties to still be there. which they aren't, i know, and never will be, but i'm being irrational, and wanting them anyway.
the funny thing that is beginning to emerge out of all this is a more determined and focused knowledge that i must, somehow, go to scotland and live there. it's my home. i need the history, and the land, and the familiar ties of my grandmother, and i have this odd notion that that is where i will find them. perhaps this is just a result of missing her so much. but tony and i have been planning this for a while, when grandma was still alive, and she knew about it and was happy about it. so perhaps that is part of it too - with a bit of my heart, when i told her and saw the gleam of delight in her eyes, i made a promise to her that i would go.
so i will.
i have just finished diana gabaldon's breath of snow and ashes this weekend. i feel very odd, and sorrowful, after finishing it. usually i feel this way after finishing a book, - an odd sense of loss, and displacement. i think this is compounded by the fact that i really was quite ill and was more vulnerable (and more imaginative) than i would have been if i'd been feeling fine. in any case, i have an odd ache for the people i've lost recently in my family, and a kind of longing for the ties to still be there. which they aren't, i know, and never will be, but i'm being irrational, and wanting them anyway.
the funny thing that is beginning to emerge out of all this is a more determined and focused knowledge that i must, somehow, go to scotland and live there. it's my home. i need the history, and the land, and the familiar ties of my grandmother, and i have this odd notion that that is where i will find them. perhaps this is just a result of missing her so much. but tony and i have been planning this for a while, when grandma was still alive, and she knew about it and was happy about it. so perhaps that is part of it too - with a bit of my heart, when i told her and saw the gleam of delight in her eyes, i made a promise to her that i would go.
so i will.
September 7, 2005,6:44 p.m.
voice
it's been a long time since i've had enough peace and quiet around me and inside me (relatively speaking) that i've been able to hear my own voice in my head. it feels like years since this has happened, although my guess is that is not true, and it's really only been months. perhaps this happens because of all the change that has occurred in such a tumultuous fashion since may. leaving school, getting a job without blinking (so it felt - i was lucky); getting into this program that requires me to take courses and work at the same time - at least the coursework and "real" work is integrated. that makes life easier.
i feel like i lost my bearings somewhere along the way to the place i currently hold in life here. the person who is sitting at this table, in this apartment, with this job, in this city, is hardly recognizable. the demands on this person are not recognizable. everything i do i have done before, but i am not happy doing everything i am doing every day. i realized today that this is not where i want to be. this is a stage in my life where i am learning concepts that are good for me, like medicine - these things will serve their purpose at some later point in my life, and this is another process i have to survive in order to grow and learn and develop inside. but it's not a place i want to stay. it's a place of transition. as always with these things, i wish it was over and i was on the other side of it. but as always with those things, once you are on the other side of it you are in another tangle. but i guess one can hope that tangle is related to something that connects with you deep inside, that allows your creativity and passion to burst through. or not. i don't know.
i really feel like i'm in a mudslide. that i can't see where i am or my circumstances objectively. usually i am pretty stable doing that, but i feel too tired to be honest to even begin surmising a perspective that places who i am becoming into what i have done before and where i might be going. it's very strange.
i read about typhoon nabi this morning on google news. i am so worried about the team from tjsff. i hope they, and their families and friends, are safe and well. i hope, and hope. and am so deeply sad, for those who have suffered such loss.
i feel like i lost my bearings somewhere along the way to the place i currently hold in life here. the person who is sitting at this table, in this apartment, with this job, in this city, is hardly recognizable. the demands on this person are not recognizable. everything i do i have done before, but i am not happy doing everything i am doing every day. i realized today that this is not where i want to be. this is a stage in my life where i am learning concepts that are good for me, like medicine - these things will serve their purpose at some later point in my life, and this is another process i have to survive in order to grow and learn and develop inside. but it's not a place i want to stay. it's a place of transition. as always with these things, i wish it was over and i was on the other side of it. but as always with those things, once you are on the other side of it you are in another tangle. but i guess one can hope that tangle is related to something that connects with you deep inside, that allows your creativity and passion to burst through. or not. i don't know.
i really feel like i'm in a mudslide. that i can't see where i am or my circumstances objectively. usually i am pretty stable doing that, but i feel too tired to be honest to even begin surmising a perspective that places who i am becoming into what i have done before and where i might be going. it's very strange.
i read about typhoon nabi this morning on google news. i am so worried about the team from tjsff. i hope they, and their families and friends, are safe and well. i hope, and hope. and am so deeply sad, for those who have suffered such loss.
Labels: language
July 16, 2005,1:22 p.m.
"quotes"
"Canadians are too nice. They are too nice because they are scared."
"Some people wear beer goggles. I wear LOVE goggles!"
"Some people wear beer goggles. I wear LOVE goggles!"
Labels: language
May 19, 2005,11:07 p.m.
coinage. aka new words.
writing the "title" for this blog suddenly reminded me that i have an american dime for my brother who collects coins. not just american ones. i got him italian ones when i went to italy too, and he has some stuff from my germany trip as well. i think. plus francs. french and swiss ones.
anyhow what this blog is really about is the dedication of my brain power to creative but ridiculous things. i mean, i'm working a 9 to 5 job, no longer in school, not reading AT ALL because when i come home from work my body says to me EAT then SLEEP not READ. which is a pity. my brain will be dead long before i am.
in any case this entry is short because i have not yet packed to travel to london and i must do that. or else i shall never SLEEP.
the new word is my creation for what is generally known as "fart". this is dooce-worthy. wait for it.
"ghost poop".
anyhow what this blog is really about is the dedication of my brain power to creative but ridiculous things. i mean, i'm working a 9 to 5 job, no longer in school, not reading AT ALL because when i come home from work my body says to me EAT then SLEEP not READ. which is a pity. my brain will be dead long before i am.
in any case this entry is short because i have not yet packed to travel to london and i must do that. or else i shall never SLEEP.
the new word is my creation for what is generally known as "fart". this is dooce-worthy. wait for it.
"ghost poop".
Labels: language
January 31, 2005,5:34 p.m.
language is alive
i am working on my annotated bibliography for australian and new zealand cinemas and i suddenly realized (anew, it seems, but with more significance) that language is ALIVE. i mean, alive and KICKING. it's active. i am specifically thinking about this on three different levels:
1) language is alive and active and kicking in the sense of our use of words. take, for example, these two expressions: "in contrast", and "in comparison". as soon as you say, in a text, "in contrast to", you are summoning the sharpness of light against dark (think film noir), you are summoning light and darkness to refract against each other within the ideas you are discussing. when you say "in comparison" in a text, you are mixing two or more ideas together, thoroughly, and allowing the differences and similarities within those ideas rise to the surface. in this sense language seems to me incredibly active.
2) language is alive and kicking in the way it actively connects us. it formulates our identities, our cultures, our specificities, our ability to relate to each other, because we share common languages, common meanings, common lexicons. language swirls around us, existing in its own power because WE exist to give it life, and yet, in a peculiar symbiotic-dependent relationship, language constructs us in its very being.
3) in this sense i am thinking about languages as texts. "language" in a bigger sense of the word, i.e. the language of novels, or short stories, or musical scores, or films. in this sense language is alive in that it allows us to construct memories, complex memories, of who we are and what we do and what our particular culture and heritage is about. with languages as texts, we are able to remember the past, live in the present, and project ourselves into the future.
this is so cool. i hope it develops well into my essay. sigh. why didn't i pursue structural linguistics? (post-structural linguistics? why don't i spend quality time with de saussure, kristeva, and all those other language theorists???? i LOVE thinking about language this way. it seems so directly CONNECTED to the outside world, and it makes sense to me to think about the world in those terms.)
i hope you enjoy the Mishka Narrative i posted below earlier today ;) she really is one priceless sophisticat (grin)
1) language is alive and active and kicking in the sense of our use of words. take, for example, these two expressions: "in contrast", and "in comparison". as soon as you say, in a text, "in contrast to", you are summoning the sharpness of light against dark (think film noir), you are summoning light and darkness to refract against each other within the ideas you are discussing. when you say "in comparison" in a text, you are mixing two or more ideas together, thoroughly, and allowing the differences and similarities within those ideas rise to the surface. in this sense language seems to me incredibly active.
2) language is alive and kicking in the way it actively connects us. it formulates our identities, our cultures, our specificities, our ability to relate to each other, because we share common languages, common meanings, common lexicons. language swirls around us, existing in its own power because WE exist to give it life, and yet, in a peculiar symbiotic-dependent relationship, language constructs us in its very being.
3) in this sense i am thinking about languages as texts. "language" in a bigger sense of the word, i.e. the language of novels, or short stories, or musical scores, or films. in this sense language is alive in that it allows us to construct memories, complex memories, of who we are and what we do and what our particular culture and heritage is about. with languages as texts, we are able to remember the past, live in the present, and project ourselves into the future.
this is so cool. i hope it develops well into my essay. sigh. why didn't i pursue structural linguistics? (post-structural linguistics? why don't i spend quality time with de saussure, kristeva, and all those other language theorists???? i LOVE thinking about language this way. it seems so directly CONNECTED to the outside world, and it makes sense to me to think about the world in those terms.)
i hope you enjoy the Mishka Narrative i posted below earlier today ;) she really is one priceless sophisticat (grin)
Labels: language