I am now enclosed inside a time warp with my grandparents in Scotland. They’re talking in the living room while I’m in the kitchen here, dwelling. I can hear my grandfather commenting negatively here and there, hollering about this and that. When he came in to grab something he asked me if I had a hair dryer and informed me I would get head rheumatics with wet hair. At the moment I can hear him going on about when people used to have their fires inside the houses and that they were often not very careful. This is a common theme for him, as most people never seem to have their heads on straight. I certainly don’t, for I left my camera on the living room coffee table the other night and someone could’ve broken in to get.
My Gran has a lovely way of telling a story, capped with a little giggle at the end. At the moment she’s recollecting how birds would build nests in the chimney causing the smoke to come inside. Granda compliments the story by talking about the unbelievable amount of tree parts and papers that the birds would manage to find and create their homes with, followed by Gran being reminiscent of how cozy the fire was. She has been making our stomachs feel quite cozy, inundating us with her apple tart, ice cream, meat, mashed potatoes, overcooked vegetables and toast loaded with butter and homemade marmalade. It’s a wonder how her blood pressure can be so healthy, I wonder if her veins are actually strengthened by all the strengthening fat that they receive.
In the way of food, Granda is now asking about the meal that we went out for last night. Apparently, they’ve been forever advertising about eating places in Glasgow. However, trying to explain Persian food is like trying to tell a fish about trees. My mom pursues it, trying to explain Naan, rice and the “creamy sauces” that they use.
“Get away!” says my Granda as my Grandma’s giggle pops the ceiling, “Did you like it?” he asks. His curiosity reminds me of all the things of the outside world that we should try to describe for them. The world has changed so much since they’ve walked around in it.
“Persian….” he says under his breath, allowing the words to slowing melt into his mind.
This is only a brief window of contemplation before the conversation meanders back to other depressing current events, including how people on the internet misuse information and you should certainly never give your personal information over the phone, as they’ve been told.
“The things they’re up to is terrible.” Gran almost gasps.
“Aye, and we don’t know the half of it Sarah… we don’t know the half of it…” Granda solemnly notes.
My grandparents really look stunning for their age, in their thick knitted sweaters always dressed properly for the day. My Gran still wears nylons under her woolen navy pants, though she has to cut them at the knee because half her leg is wrapped in gauze due to a cellulitis infection. She also makes sure to wear her little nylon socks over her wrapped feet. My Grandfather sits regally in his red Celtic suspenders with golden clasps, complementing the striped purple and navy polo t-shirt underneath and thick navy sweater overtop. He wears thick brown slippers, put up on a small soft green footstool as he does his crosswords and reads his books. Both have just the right amount of frailty and health that somehow bring a wise and happy presence. Though their bodies fail them a bit at times, their minds couldn’t be better, hanging on to the stubborn independent thinking that has carried them on for so many years. As a perfect example of this, I can hear my mother yell in the kitchen:
“WE’RE NOT TALKING LOW. YOU’RE GOING DEAF.”
We all can endure their independence with a little humor, satisfied that they are the same as they always have been though accumulated years that are more than twice my lifetime. They continue to exercise their minds with much reading and when we are stumped about some piece of history we can certainly ask my grandfather, who will give us a wonderful explanation of the particulars of the situation.
Now I see that the snowflakes have arrived after much speculation. Here they come, softly drifting down from the cloudy sky. Although we may feel a bit enclosed at times, there is a magical quality that exists between the constant commentary and storytelling that I like very much.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Saturday, November 13, 2010
Castles and Pockets
Harvard Square magically lights up at night like my old Polly Pocket kingdom.
Inside the heart-shaped plastic case I would find a tiny little castle, lit up streetlights and a princess. Tiny Polly stood in her plastic spot on the “ground”, next to her horse and carriage with the prince positioned into the yonder grass colored plastic.
What a creator I was, moving her around that little kingdom, not to mention her other “pockets”, including a kitchen scene, the beach, and a couple other house-like or neighborhood settings. If you google her name, you’ll see what I mean.
Intimate and intricate, these little settings grew an imagination in me. I could control Polly’s movements and create a storyline for her and her friends. One minute they would be in the kitchen, proceed to the living room, suddenly it’s bedtime, or perhaps a boy would knock on the door unexpectedly catching all the day’s plans off guard. Two friends might even get into a disagreement over who gets to ride the horse (whose stable happens to reside in the house as well).
But I no longer create a world for this plastic princess.
In my current world, I hit Harvard station at 8:21 and step on an escalator for 53 seconds, remaining to the right so the esca-walkers can pass me. At the top, a man with a weathered face offers me a Metro “newspaper” which advertises tragedy and gossip everyday. The two seconds it takes to reach out and grab it is too much. A second escalator lifts me out of the underground, focusing Harvard Square for me. Is it raining up there?
Raindrops sometimes sleep on the skylights above, snoozing off rising into the sky again. Sometimes the flaky snow is flirting with the wind, forcing me to bundle my jacket more tightly and ignore their careless dancing, though the romance makes me feel warmer inside. Other times, the morning light gently pulls up the corners of my mouth. Brick escorts my feet, while also holding up a homeless man and his dog, college students and magazine vendors. In the winter, Peacoated and North Faced people walk by me, while side bags and backpacks are hugging the backs and shoulders in the same way that children cling to their parents or ride their father’s shoulders.
Harvard University lights up like a scholastic castle once the sun has set again.
It’s one world that I see and at the end of the day I return home to another one. I tromp through the grass in the square in front of the Post Office. Far away from the scholastic castle I find rest in this place I’ve learned to call home. But for how much longer will that still be true. Both will be dropped soon, left behind as soon as I step on that plane.
The lid will be pulled down on both, with a strong clicking sound.
Inside the heart-shaped plastic case I would find a tiny little castle, lit up streetlights and a princess. Tiny Polly stood in her plastic spot on the “ground”, next to her horse and carriage with the prince positioned into the yonder grass colored plastic.
What a creator I was, moving her around that little kingdom, not to mention her other “pockets”, including a kitchen scene, the beach, and a couple other house-like or neighborhood settings. If you google her name, you’ll see what I mean.
Intimate and intricate, these little settings grew an imagination in me. I could control Polly’s movements and create a storyline for her and her friends. One minute they would be in the kitchen, proceed to the living room, suddenly it’s bedtime, or perhaps a boy would knock on the door unexpectedly catching all the day’s plans off guard. Two friends might even get into a disagreement over who gets to ride the horse (whose stable happens to reside in the house as well).
But I no longer create a world for this plastic princess.
In my current world, I hit Harvard station at 8:21 and step on an escalator for 53 seconds, remaining to the right so the esca-walkers can pass me. At the top, a man with a weathered face offers me a Metro “newspaper” which advertises tragedy and gossip everyday. The two seconds it takes to reach out and grab it is too much. A second escalator lifts me out of the underground, focusing Harvard Square for me. Is it raining up there?
Raindrops sometimes sleep on the skylights above, snoozing off rising into the sky again. Sometimes the flaky snow is flirting with the wind, forcing me to bundle my jacket more tightly and ignore their careless dancing, though the romance makes me feel warmer inside. Other times, the morning light gently pulls up the corners of my mouth. Brick escorts my feet, while also holding up a homeless man and his dog, college students and magazine vendors. In the winter, Peacoated and North Faced people walk by me, while side bags and backpacks are hugging the backs and shoulders in the same way that children cling to their parents or ride their father’s shoulders.
Harvard University lights up like a scholastic castle once the sun has set again.
It’s one world that I see and at the end of the day I return home to another one. I tromp through the grass in the square in front of the Post Office. Far away from the scholastic castle I find rest in this place I’ve learned to call home. But for how much longer will that still be true. Both will be dropped soon, left behind as soon as I step on that plane.
The lid will be pulled down on both, with a strong clicking sound.
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Language Logic
I know a man who has one friend.
Does he honestly just have one friend, or does he have a friend? Maybe he really does have one friend (which would make him one/a lonely man). The misuse of a, an, the or one are pandemic among students, resulting in unfortunate shifts in meaning. Even more, if we want to talk about the man (that we just mentioned) a second time, we must specify by using the to point him out.
Prepositions are also complicated, as well as using count and noncount nouns. For example:
I brush my hair, not my hairs. I always enjoy milk in my coffee, not a milk, along with some sugar, not many sugars. My house has a couch, not just couch, and even more, that man up there - he doesn’t have friend, he has a friend (and maybe just one friend).
I hadn’t known those terms before I began teaching. Little do you know, but I just used the past perfect tense (had + past participle) which consistently blows students’ minds. I had eaten breakfast this morning and then I had gone to the train. Now, in that sentence the tense is misused, for we can only use it before another action that happened in the past. It’s more complicated than you had thought (right?). Perhaps it was more complicated than you had thought before you realized it was complicated. But more likely you just hadn’t thought it was as complicated as it is.
Often I find mistakes such as:
She have a sex mouth.
I am boring in class.
You went to the movies, weren’t you?
After Boston I come back to my country.
I am living in the Boston.
Have you ever thought about how “everyone” is considered singular? Or, why can we say “I go home” but can’t say “I go school”? How do we automatically know the difference between “it could be”, “it might be”, “it should be” and “it has to be”? How do we immediately know that “I considered to go” is wrong and that “I considered going” correct?
We also know that “read” in the past is pronounced like the color, yet “read” in the present is pronounced like the plant. We know that we ARE 26 years old, we don’t HAVE 26 years old. And even more astonishing, we can state perfectly that we are interested in, excited for, and are thinking about. We can recollect that we went to bed at 11, we didn’t necessarily sleep at 11. Moreover, we know that we can break up with a boyfriend, break out in a rash, break in new shoes, and even take a break when we’re tired. We also know that we’re tired, not tiring.
Modals, gerunds, infinitives, and the future perfect were all terms that I had no knowledge of before teaching grammar. But now I can confidently spew out all sorts of grammatical terms that would make any English speaker zone out. It’s like learning the inner workings of the human body, a car, or even mother nature.
But the major problem is that language is only mostly consistent. Students desperately desire to label grammar rules with “always” or “never”, but there are always exceptions and always things that they will never be able to express from their own language.
“We just don’t say it that way in English.”
That is all I can offer them, for any language must be learned purely as is. Constant translation only leads to frustration, as one tries with all their might to punch that language into the way they are most comfortable thinking. This is why children are the language prodigies. Their minds are so eager to absorb everything around them, the wires in their brains still malleable.
Each language is so closely tied to its culture and the unique way that each society thinks about things. English pops with so many different kinds of words that capture the tiniest contours and shifts in meaning. I could say that I am happy, or I could say that I am elated, excited, content, well-pleased, joyful, merry, cheerful or satisfied. Each would connote a different meaning and require an appropriate tone or context. Why do we have so many slightly different words for things? And as people have often noted, why only one word for love?
But even more than this, some things, in some ways, can often be more appreciated when taken as is. Rather than try to translate people or events into our own language of how we view life, and what they ought to mean, it is more meaningful to open the mind to possibility. Not flippantly, but in a way that helps release a creeping anxiety about the direction of our lives and the illusion of control. Sometimes life works differently than our limited understanding of it.
Yet, it’s difficult to be open when you believe that if you could figure out the rules, then things would click. In some ways, the rationalizing just needs to be turned down a bit.
An end. One end.
The end.
Does he honestly just have one friend, or does he have a friend? Maybe he really does have one friend (which would make him one/a lonely man). The misuse of a, an, the or one are pandemic among students, resulting in unfortunate shifts in meaning. Even more, if we want to talk about the man (that we just mentioned) a second time, we must specify by using the to point him out.
Prepositions are also complicated, as well as using count and noncount nouns. For example:
I brush my hair, not my hairs. I always enjoy milk in my coffee, not a milk, along with some sugar, not many sugars. My house has a couch, not just couch, and even more, that man up there - he doesn’t have friend, he has a friend (and maybe just one friend).
I hadn’t known those terms before I began teaching. Little do you know, but I just used the past perfect tense (had + past participle) which consistently blows students’ minds. I had eaten breakfast this morning and then I had gone to the train. Now, in that sentence the tense is misused, for we can only use it before another action that happened in the past. It’s more complicated than you had thought (right?). Perhaps it was more complicated than you had thought before you realized it was complicated. But more likely you just hadn’t thought it was as complicated as it is.
Often I find mistakes such as:
She have a sex mouth.
I am boring in class.
You went to the movies, weren’t you?
After Boston I come back to my country.
I am living in the Boston.
Have you ever thought about how “everyone” is considered singular? Or, why can we say “I go home” but can’t say “I go school”? How do we automatically know the difference between “it could be”, “it might be”, “it should be” and “it has to be”? How do we immediately know that “I considered to go” is wrong and that “I considered going” correct?
We also know that “read” in the past is pronounced like the color, yet “read” in the present is pronounced like the plant. We know that we ARE 26 years old, we don’t HAVE 26 years old. And even more astonishing, we can state perfectly that we are interested in, excited for, and are thinking about. We can recollect that we went to bed at 11, we didn’t necessarily sleep at 11. Moreover, we know that we can break up with a boyfriend, break out in a rash, break in new shoes, and even take a break when we’re tired. We also know that we’re tired, not tiring.
Modals, gerunds, infinitives, and the future perfect were all terms that I had no knowledge of before teaching grammar. But now I can confidently spew out all sorts of grammatical terms that would make any English speaker zone out. It’s like learning the inner workings of the human body, a car, or even mother nature.
But the major problem is that language is only mostly consistent. Students desperately desire to label grammar rules with “always” or “never”, but there are always exceptions and always things that they will never be able to express from their own language.
“We just don’t say it that way in English.”
That is all I can offer them, for any language must be learned purely as is. Constant translation only leads to frustration, as one tries with all their might to punch that language into the way they are most comfortable thinking. This is why children are the language prodigies. Their minds are so eager to absorb everything around them, the wires in their brains still malleable.
Each language is so closely tied to its culture and the unique way that each society thinks about things. English pops with so many different kinds of words that capture the tiniest contours and shifts in meaning. I could say that I am happy, or I could say that I am elated, excited, content, well-pleased, joyful, merry, cheerful or satisfied. Each would connote a different meaning and require an appropriate tone or context. Why do we have so many slightly different words for things? And as people have often noted, why only one word for love?
But even more than this, some things, in some ways, can often be more appreciated when taken as is. Rather than try to translate people or events into our own language of how we view life, and what they ought to mean, it is more meaningful to open the mind to possibility. Not flippantly, but in a way that helps release a creeping anxiety about the direction of our lives and the illusion of control. Sometimes life works differently than our limited understanding of it.
Yet, it’s difficult to be open when you believe that if you could figure out the rules, then things would click. In some ways, the rationalizing just needs to be turned down a bit.
An end. One end.
The end.
Saturday, November 6, 2010
The Entrance
The train ride lasts for 40 minutes, clicking and gliding northward along the coastline, between marshland and smoky cities, chugging itself through towns speckled with painted wooden houses, windows televising contented families with decorated living rooms; tailored window treatments, hemmed at the bottom, hanging peacefully next to a bright bay window dissected into four or eight sections. Retired chimneys are bricked upside the house or through the center, patched up and no longer smoking. On the front, sides, and back, porches have been stitched on, waiting for company. Yet winter quiets the streets, sweeping conversation inside around kitchen tables and putting people away into their living rooms, finding them curled up in blankets and next to their heaters. Meanwhile, the characters of nature take their place for the new season, directed to their appropriate corners and dots on the floor of the earth, some suspended in the air. Autumn drops her leaves until Spring can hang them back on the branches. Winter wanders in, staring at Summer falling asleep in the right corner. All things on the stage freeze as Winter takes a breath to speak.
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