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Oh how much I take for granted, that fucking human condition where you view wonders with a dull mind and get shaken only when they don't appear anymore.
Theodor Kallifatides is a very good writer of Greek origin, living for more than 30 years in Sweden. Writing in Swedish. Writing in very very good Swedish.
A Writer. Novels, many good ones. Great Poetry.
I happen to remember a phrase, a fragment from a poem of his about language, or the phenomena of losing one's language and having to reclaim some kind of substitute for it over time.
All my words have become grey leaves
(and then he writes some further shit about the hardship and awkwardness of lacking means of expression and communication)
ending the poem with something like: There really are no such things as grey leaves...
The more I live here in the States, the more I talk and think in English the further I feel that I get from gaining a whole writing language.
In Swedish I think I'm considered witty, at least knowledgeable in the uses of language...and now it feels like I'm re-saddling a very very hard ridden horse.
You see, I don't want to be decent, I want to be great, and I'm a far road from great.
Joseph Conrad...Slavenka Drakulic..all the names of those writers who started to write in a new language as adults comes to mind, they didn't have as many advantages as I have had, starting to learn English as a ten year old.
In small conversation over here, it is rare that people notice that I'm foreign...but I press myself further into really really deep waters sometimes, trying to use the same academic phrases that work in Sweden, jumping up and down in a slightly idiotic way of pissing and marking my territory around the words.
And believe you me, my dick is not that big.
In writing I'm terrified and provoked.
On those to whom poetry and witty prose comes easily I look with the same hunger as a rabid dog with an ulcer.
My inner thoughts are babbling in three languages and sometimes I think my brain has just a limited amount of territory. If English conquers the territory of common talk, the continent of journal writing and the kingdom of poetry...no poetry will be left for Swedish and no common talk for Polish.
Now..I know that the brain has immense power and capacity beyond our understanding..and that it doesn't work that way...you know, one piece of knowledge pushing away another to get room.
I just think that my brain works that way. Very good on short distances and in small rooms. Yeah, I'm a scientific exception, gotta be special in something.
Overall it's an exciting period I guess, the climbing of the Tower of Babel. I suppose I must first produce a lot of shit and eat my proud words with some cheap ketchup before I can create something of value.
I don't recommend it to anyone with a broom stuck up their ass.
Ah, and have you ever experienced the phenomena of knowing what's good or bad but not being able to express it? Such a delicious feeling of academic ennui.
The landscape of Colorado is a comfort in this.
I don't need words to view the thunder clouds roll over the mountain tops, to hear the humming birds, to swim in rain or mock the sassy squirrels.
When you walk into the clouds and breathe that particular misty air, seeing the trees and slopes enveiled around you, feeling the veins in your neck stretching because of the high altitude, you don't need words.
It would just be nice to have them.
Theodor Kallifatides is a very good writer of Greek origin, living for more than 30 years in Sweden. Writing in Swedish. Writing in very very good Swedish.
A Writer. Novels, many good ones. Great Poetry.
I happen to remember a phrase, a fragment from a poem of his about language, or the phenomena of losing one's language and having to reclaim some kind of substitute for it over time.
All my words have become grey leaves
(and then he writes some further shit about the hardship and awkwardness of lacking means of expression and communication)
ending the poem with something like: There really are no such things as grey leaves...
The more I live here in the States, the more I talk and think in English the further I feel that I get from gaining a whole writing language.
In Swedish I think I'm considered witty, at least knowledgeable in the uses of language...and now it feels like I'm re-saddling a very very hard ridden horse.
You see, I don't want to be decent, I want to be great, and I'm a far road from great.
Joseph Conrad...Slavenka Drakulic..all the names of those writers who started to write in a new language as adults comes to mind, they didn't have as many advantages as I have had, starting to learn English as a ten year old.
In small conversation over here, it is rare that people notice that I'm foreign...but I press myself further into really really deep waters sometimes, trying to use the same academic phrases that work in Sweden, jumping up and down in a slightly idiotic way of pissing and marking my territory around the words.
And believe you me, my dick is not that big.
In writing I'm terrified and provoked.
On those to whom poetry and witty prose comes easily I look with the same hunger as a rabid dog with an ulcer.
My inner thoughts are babbling in three languages and sometimes I think my brain has just a limited amount of territory. If English conquers the territory of common talk, the continent of journal writing and the kingdom of poetry...no poetry will be left for Swedish and no common talk for Polish.
Now..I know that the brain has immense power and capacity beyond our understanding..and that it doesn't work that way...you know, one piece of knowledge pushing away another to get room.
I just think that my brain works that way. Very good on short distances and in small rooms. Yeah, I'm a scientific exception, gotta be special in something.
Overall it's an exciting period I guess, the climbing of the Tower of Babel. I suppose I must first produce a lot of shit and eat my proud words with some cheap ketchup before I can create something of value.
I don't recommend it to anyone with a broom stuck up their ass.
Ah, and have you ever experienced the phenomena of knowing what's good or bad but not being able to express it? Such a delicious feeling of academic ennui.
The landscape of Colorado is a comfort in this.
I don't need words to view the thunder clouds roll over the mountain tops, to hear the humming birds, to swim in rain or mock the sassy squirrels.
When you walk into the clouds and breathe that particular misty air, seeing the trees and slopes enveiled around you, feeling the veins in your neck stretching because of the high altitude, you don't need words.
It would just be nice to have them.
