What was that they said I should do? “Put up”,”Put down” or “Put on” the pig?
Only one of them will help me pass the veterinary exam I’ve studied so hard for.
That the impact of misunderstanding things in broad terms can be so disastrous, and not just for pigs, it is amazing just how well people can get on through life, by only understanding in broad terms.
I’m one of them and I can tell you it’s not unlike a dedication to a drug habit, or committing yourself to a debilitating, long term mental illness because you suddenly find yourself in situations ad places without any true understanding how you got there. You’ve no excuse though as you agreed to it in a fit of mistranslation or wallowing in that point of tiredness when the game of 'words of another language Tetris' is lost.
In a waking moment of lucidity I found myself at a celebration of ‘the erotic’. I was listening to Spanish poetry and monologues, all chosen with this theme in mind. I had plenty of time to think at this exhibition whenever the poetry became to difficult or bad to understand. Some readers were reading their own poetry like it was a infirm relative, pushing a pillow down, stifling the passionate expressions until they lay silent and lifeless. Not for the first time in my life I felt like an eunuch at an orgy as the words of lust and love, thrust and stroke passed through me like uncooked chicken, I got thinking hard about the emotional impact of words and how that is something you loose when borrowing the clothes of another language.
Words are like a campfire beneath cast iron pan, of the body, heating the consciousness until it boils; spilling out waves of love or hate or lust.
Words can can forge a single piece from many or drive a wedge until a whole is split, shattered and irreconcilable.
They can pierce the breast like a lance, either tearing out the heart or merely casting a glancing blow and wounding it. A wound that can fester and blacken and poison.
They can open legs, or slam doors shut, lubricate and soothe or leave creaking, dry and raw.
They can burn bridges or quench burning thirsts
Technorati Tags:
ElGuiri, English, Spanish, language
Posts
3 comments:
this is absolutely beautiful Neil. I'm so glad you are still here.
I have the same difficulties in the Spanish language and I don't think it will ever be the same as the experience one can have with words in one's native tongue.
Thank you. That's the sadness of our Education systems, just so mono-lingual in the U.S. and most of the UK
Hey Tobey, followed the breadcrumbs then? :)
But can words that you learnt ten years ago really be as potent as those you learnt 20 years ago, or in your first years for example?
These words, taboo words, go deep into your subconscious, can they really be just as potent as the equivalents in a learnt language?
Not even American pronunciations of taboo words have the same potency to British pronunciations for me.
"Follar" could never perk my ears quicker than its english equivalent"fuck".
Post a Comment