A Very Slow Crisis of Faith
A raindrop or two, unheralded and smacking wet tiny starbursts on skin, or on paper - teardrop pops - can be the small precursors of a flood, surging white and breaking. Sometimes. And what about when those overloaded drops begin to land thput! on the heavy ground, drip off of leaves and cedar fans to spatter on the soggy and tangled earth and stay there, not vanishing into the soil, not running off, only soaking more and more.
Will you realize the surface you stand on is only the top of a saturated aquifer, sopping earthy sponge, or not? What about each tree, barken column of water, each solemn blade of grass, rare clover, these tiny succulent leaves, olive-skinned on red stems, a reservoir so deep around you once you begin sounding it. Are you - is one - awash then, suddenly flooded, only by the acknowledgement of what one knows, the reality of a raindrop? Or a tear?
It started raining outside while I wrote this. In the ultramarine light of afterwards, calmly, the rock wall and concrete steps, edged with light, and the flake of sky I could see, looked very different.
March 31, 2005
March 25, 2005
Spelling
"Saying "color" in Canada is essentially a spelling mistake whether it's accepted in America or not, and I expect profs to know better."
It's most definitely NOT a spelling mistake. There is in fact no accepted standard Canadian spelling. The Canadian Press (CP) style that is fairly prevalent in technical writing (and under which, it's interesting to note, "geese" is not a word; rather, that crowd of brown-drabbled birds is a flock of Canada goose) contains an unpredictable mixture of American and British spellings, like:
British: -our words (honour, colour, endeavour), -re (centre, theatre) and cheque, grey, jewellery, pyjamas, storey and sulphur. And American: aluminum, artifact, jail, curb, program, specialty, tire, and carburetor. A Canadian would watch a television program, as in the United States, but would read the programme at a concert or theatrical performance. These conventions are generally theorized (without much surety) to have evolved by historical coincidence and circumstance, on a case-by-case basis without any overarching logic.
I'd say Canadian spelling is basically a very subtle creole and that's great. Honestly, that's how languages develop. If this kind of thing bugs you that much, then if you consider that 2/3 of the world's current English speakers are non-native, and that all sorts of English dialects are popping up and bending the language in various directions, this fact would probably, as we say down South, really stick in your craw. Another related point is that much of the supremacy of English among world languages is due to its wilingness to adapt and incorporate, as opposed to, say, French. English has about 500,000 words. The next-largest vocabulary is, I think, about 50,000. We can use any word we want. I don't know about Life Science kids, but we English students pretty much all think this is great.
And please, it's not like 'American,' 'British' and 'Canadian' English are different languages! Spellings should be standardized in journals and newspapers for ease of editing and copying, but these are the only benefits such rigid treatment accords. Some profs, including the teacher of my primatology class, require that their students use the American spellings (and here I might note that these differ depending on what dictionary one consults, much like the Canadian ones but to lesser extent. I mostly use Merriam-Webster because they kick a high quotient of ass), because the main journals of their fields are printed using these spellings. The world is very interconnected linguistically, and failing to recognize (in any sense of the word) the major spellings of a word outside of one's own geographic region is kind of silly.
I don't know why people can get so territorial about spellings specifically, but try googling it, and read some of the polemics people have posted, and then ask yourself - whether you be American, Canadian, or otherwise - why you can readily accept such a word as "google" as a verb but put up an honest-to-god fight against an arrangement of letters, slightly different from your own particular spelling, that has been used by millions of people for a very long time, nearby.
I don't really care what spelling someone uses, and in that I'm with most Canadian academic institutions and hosts of international conferences. I just wouldn't like it if someone started to get rhetorical with me about the spellings I use, (which are mostly American: that is how I learned to write), because writing is pretty much what I do and I don't want anyone else to be pushy about how I "should" do it, regardless of where I am, unless there is a valid reason concerning the specific task at hand, such as that I am writing for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Which I did. And it was kinda cool, despite the fact that the research I had to do for it was so very boring. When the 1931-1940 phase of the project is published, you can read my entry on James Henry Fleming (born 1872, d. 1940, and by all accounts a rather bland chap of some ornithological significance), and reap the benefits of my academic endeavor.
Fin.
"Saying "color" in Canada is essentially a spelling mistake whether it's accepted in America or not, and I expect profs to know better."
It's most definitely NOT a spelling mistake. There is in fact no accepted standard Canadian spelling. The Canadian Press (CP) style that is fairly prevalent in technical writing (and under which, it's interesting to note, "geese" is not a word; rather, that crowd of brown-drabbled birds is a flock of Canada goose) contains an unpredictable mixture of American and British spellings, like:
British: -our words (honour, colour, endeavour), -re (centre, theatre) and cheque, grey, jewellery, pyjamas, storey and sulphur. And American: aluminum, artifact, jail, curb, program, specialty, tire, and carburetor. A Canadian would watch a television program, as in the United States, but would read the programme at a concert or theatrical performance. These conventions are generally theorized (without much surety) to have evolved by historical coincidence and circumstance, on a case-by-case basis without any overarching logic.
I'd say Canadian spelling is basically a very subtle creole and that's great. Honestly, that's how languages develop. If this kind of thing bugs you that much, then if you consider that 2/3 of the world's current English speakers are non-native, and that all sorts of English dialects are popping up and bending the language in various directions, this fact would probably, as we say down South, really stick in your craw. Another related point is that much of the supremacy of English among world languages is due to its wilingness to adapt and incorporate, as opposed to, say, French. English has about 500,000 words. The next-largest vocabulary is, I think, about 50,000. We can use any word we want. I don't know about Life Science kids, but we English students pretty much all think this is great.
And please, it's not like 'American,' 'British' and 'Canadian' English are different languages! Spellings should be standardized in journals and newspapers for ease of editing and copying, but these are the only benefits such rigid treatment accords. Some profs, including the teacher of my primatology class, require that their students use the American spellings (and here I might note that these differ depending on what dictionary one consults, much like the Canadian ones but to lesser extent. I mostly use Merriam-Webster because they kick a high quotient of ass), because the main journals of their fields are printed using these spellings. The world is very interconnected linguistically, and failing to recognize (in any sense of the word) the major spellings of a word outside of one's own geographic region is kind of silly.
I don't know why people can get so territorial about spellings specifically, but try googling it, and read some of the polemics people have posted, and then ask yourself - whether you be American, Canadian, or otherwise - why you can readily accept such a word as "google" as a verb but put up an honest-to-god fight against an arrangement of letters, slightly different from your own particular spelling, that has been used by millions of people for a very long time, nearby.
I don't really care what spelling someone uses, and in that I'm with most Canadian academic institutions and hosts of international conferences. I just wouldn't like it if someone started to get rhetorical with me about the spellings I use, (which are mostly American: that is how I learned to write), because writing is pretty much what I do and I don't want anyone else to be pushy about how I "should" do it, regardless of where I am, unless there is a valid reason concerning the specific task at hand, such as that I am writing for the Dictionary of Canadian Biography. Which I did. And it was kinda cool, despite the fact that the research I had to do for it was so very boring. When the 1931-1940 phase of the project is published, you can read my entry on James Henry Fleming (born 1872, d. 1940, and by all accounts a rather bland chap of some ornithological significance), and reap the benefits of my academic endeavor.
Fin.
March 18, 2005
Try to Believe
On second thought, I've decided not to take as a tangible metaphor the refusal of a revolving-booth turnstile to allow me to pass, but its permission in, seconds after I left to walk to the other side of the station, of a friend.
What does the turnstile open into? The Heaven bus? What number is that? I tend to go around on foot alot anyway, I know the city from pointless wanderings down pointless streets.
But I've decided, on second thought, not to take it that way.
I'm walking amongst small frustrations of all the things I've failed as yet to become. Little pieces, margins, and the untended peripheries of my life, wanting a center that has shifted beyond their access. But there's something more in the picture and it's good.
A moment of that confused and cloudy knowing that can almost always only be clarified in writing passed over me, and I composed a poem. We will see.
Try sometime to go find the song "Try to Believe" by Danny Elfman. It's not the Danny Elfman you know. It's still raucous and to some extent unpurposed mayhem, but also some very different things. Now I'm the sort of person who doesn't trust any happy thing wrought by an individual over the age of three unless it also has somewhere in it a sadness mixed in - and I'm not cynical in that way. The opposite also holds very much true: things never are even close to being all bad. Well anyway, that's pretty much what I like about the song. It could have been another dismal ballad, but instead it acts differently and is this big, loud, dancing song. What I like about it is this person who feels so immensely unworthy, shrugs, and says, well, I don't care, I am going to try for grace. More or less plainly just like that. It's inevitably a little cheesy, of course, but a hell of a lot better than the trucksfull of "serious" songs that capture so much attention.
Anyway, this is really just a thought. The sound card on my computer is dead.
On second thought, I've decided not to take as a tangible metaphor the refusal of a revolving-booth turnstile to allow me to pass, but its permission in, seconds after I left to walk to the other side of the station, of a friend.
What does the turnstile open into? The Heaven bus? What number is that? I tend to go around on foot alot anyway, I know the city from pointless wanderings down pointless streets.
But I've decided, on second thought, not to take it that way.
I'm walking amongst small frustrations of all the things I've failed as yet to become. Little pieces, margins, and the untended peripheries of my life, wanting a center that has shifted beyond their access. But there's something more in the picture and it's good.
A moment of that confused and cloudy knowing that can almost always only be clarified in writing passed over me, and I composed a poem. We will see.
Try sometime to go find the song "Try to Believe" by Danny Elfman. It's not the Danny Elfman you know. It's still raucous and to some extent unpurposed mayhem, but also some very different things. Now I'm the sort of person who doesn't trust any happy thing wrought by an individual over the age of three unless it also has somewhere in it a sadness mixed in - and I'm not cynical in that way. The opposite also holds very much true: things never are even close to being all bad. Well anyway, that's pretty much what I like about the song. It could have been another dismal ballad, but instead it acts differently and is this big, loud, dancing song. What I like about it is this person who feels so immensely unworthy, shrugs, and says, well, I don't care, I am going to try for grace. More or less plainly just like that. It's inevitably a little cheesy, of course, but a hell of a lot better than the trucksfull of "serious" songs that capture so much attention.
Anyway, this is really just a thought. The sound card on my computer is dead.
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