Language | Language
Apr.06.2013
So I'm like, sitting in this little lunch place in this upper middle class setting, and drinking coffee and there are these, like, three young women talking nearby. Between the music and the distance I can only make out part of what they're saying. But I'm trying really hard not to mind my own...
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Jan.28.2013
“After leaving your show, I noticed only beauty.”
--comment in the guest book for “Layers of Being” (Estratos del Ser)
One of the highest purposes of art-making – perhaps its most essential – is to inspire viewers to...
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Jan.26.2013
I've heard people use the word "hodgepodge" to describe the crazy blend of Hindi and English heard on the streets of New Delhi and Bombay, in Bollywood movies, and around Indian dinner tables. It's been called a jumble, a mess, a corruption of English or Hindi or both. Linguists have a technical...
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Jan.16.2013
We spent five days in Delhi, then jostled our way to Agra, home of the Taj Mahal and the astounding Agra Fort, where Shah Jahan--the emperor who had the Taj built--was imprisoned by his own son. My students stared and were stared at, took in the stunning beauty of the sights, and took photo after...
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Jan.08.2013
I was one of those girls who got grammar. I racked up A’s in English because the rules made sense to me. Diagramming sentences was my favorite part of school. I loved discovering how the different parts of a sentence fit together in an elegant, efficient arrangement. I completely bought the notion...
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Jan.05.2013
The Mind’s Eye – writings on Photography and Photographers, by Henri Cartier-Bresson, is a lovely book I received for Christmas from a dear friend. I was reminded how H C B inspired my photographic work with its poetry and Golden Mean, and still inspires other creative areas,...
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Dec.04.2012
How English is English? Will we ever know why an editor deleted words of foreign origin from the Oxford English Dictionary? Was he a racist? Or a purist? In the socio-historical context, both these words have been used interchangeably a few times. Nazism and apartheid do believe they...
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Nov.14.2012
How can a writer retire? Is there an age limit, an “until such time” proviso in an unwritten contract? Will there be a toast to the end of the day, a little gift for “services rendered”, and then post-retirement blues?
When Philip Roth’s plans to stop writing came to public notice a few days...
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Nov.05.2012
Differance
For a student of modern literary theory, Jacques Derrida’s essay “differance”, given as an address before the “Societe francaise de Philosophie”, poses an immense challenge. Not only does Derrida not deal with a literary text, he does not even examine a critical essay of...
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Oct.12.2012
A memory rises from my grandmother’s kitchen. I saw a little bird outside, through the sliding glass door. I pointed and said, “mira, un pájaro.” My grandmother scolded me in the nicest way and even made me laugh. “No! No es pah-ha-doh. Se dice pájaro” (“No! It’s not pah-ha-doh. You say pájaro”),...
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