Text: Algebra
26. nov 2009 09:08, Ceciliein girum imus nocte et consumimur igni
("We enter the circle at night and are consumed by fire")
Some years ago I decided to learn English. My mother tongue is Arabic, and for the first several months, I often experienced a brief panicky feeling of loss, when old habit made me read the words from right to left, and they suddenly all became new and incomprehensible. I later moved to England and almost completely stopped reading Arabic, and then a letter from home could have the same effect. I have the feeling of having spoken my own language for as long as I've existed, maybe longer - and that's probably why it made such a great impression on me when it disappeared in a flash. Sometimes I wonder if all languages in the world arose through such a mistake, when human beings learned to write. Maybe for each language, there is a kind of original language, one that is resurrected if you read in the wrong direction, a language I've never learned to understand. That's why I'm so fond of words like 'mum' and 'dad'.
And what terrifies me most in life is the thought that ethics might be such a mirror language. The idea that I, after having stayed within the narrow path of virtue all my life, will suddenly realize that I've been reading the Qur'an upside down. I would never get used to that. I can deal with being a plus or a zero. But not a minus.
22. dec 2009 16:10
Har du skrevet det? Det er meget originalt.
24. dec 2009 00:05
@Eini
Ja, jeg har skrevet alt her på bloggen. :)
Jeg kan huske at da jeg hørte den her fortælling af Laurie Anderson (som jeg ikke kan finde som lydfil lige nu), følte jeg at så kunne jeg lige så godt skrotte min tekst, fordi ideen allerede var taget - men nu jeg ser den igen, kan jeg godt se at jeg måske overdrev en lille smule. :) Hun er hos en håndlæser der arbejder hjemmefra:
"The odd thing about the reading was that everything she told me was totally wrong. She took my hand and said, 'I see here by these lines that you are an only child...' (I have seven brothers and sisters) '...I read here that you love to fly...' (I'm totally terrified of planes) and so on. But she seemed so sure of this information that eventually I began to feel like I'd been walking around for years with these false documents permanently tattooed to my hands. It was very noisy in the house, family members kept walking in and out speaking a high clicking kind of language that sounded like Arabic. Books and magazines in Arabic were strewn all over the carpet. Suddenly I realized that maybe it was a translation problem - maybe she had been reading from right to left instead of left to right - and thinking of mirrors, I gave her my other hand. She didn't take it, but instead, held out her own hand. We sat there for a minute or two in what I assumed was some sort of strange participatory, invocatory ritual. Finally I realized that her hand was out because she was waiting... waiting for money."