Asakiyume mita

I don't read half as much as I'd like to, but now and then things spur me to read something and then wow! Amazed and delighted.

The first is a novelette in the December 2024 issue of Clarkesworld: "Lucie Loves Neutrons and the Good Samarium," by Thoraiya Dyer. It's an intimate story about a lesbian couple, Lucie and Izzy, both scientists (respectively from Tahiti and Australia, but living in France), and Miron Król, the Polish astronaut who fathers their baby. A nuclear war is going on in Europe, and where they live is dangerous because of its proximity to a research reactor (a research reactor that Izzy uses, in fact), and Izzy is nearly breaking from the mental strain:

In that moment, alerts [of possible nuclear strike] go off on their phones, and Izzy is overwhelmed. A new life has come into the world, Izzy and Lucie have just met their beautiful baby, and there is a fucking amber alert yet again, threatening to take everything away.

Izzy throws her phone at the wall.

“I can’t take this,” she screams. “Why can’t anybody make it stop?” She knows she shouldn’t be the one losing control. Lucie has just given birth ...

“Izzy,” Lucie says softly. “Izzy, I’ll make it stop. For you, and for Luc, I’ll make it stop. I promise. Now, forget about that. Come here, and kiss your child. It’s his birthday.”

And then Lucie does.

She does it. I don't think that's a spoiler because the drama of the novelette is not the in if, it's in the how, the many small moments, some funny, some painful, some joyous, as the characters live life, do their various researches ... and Lucie comes closer and closer to being able to keep her promise. Now there's a case of writing the change you want to see in the world! From Thoraiya Dyer's imagination to reality, please!

The second is probably also a novelette--it's "The Speech That God Understands," by Jonathan Edelstein, from the April 4, 2024, issue of Beneath Ceaseless Skies. This one takes place in 1194, in an alternative Tuluz, where Muslims, Christians, and Jews live and work together, where magic and science exist side by side, and Avram the Blind, a Kabbalistic magician, and Maryam of Wadan, a Berber scientist and a nonbeliever in any religion, join forces to deal with spreading incidences of people having their ability to speak scholarly languages essentially knocked out of them--they lose their Arabic, their Latin, their Hebrew and are left with their vernacular tongues only. But it's not just a physical brain injury, there's magic involved.

There's *so* much richness in this--Avram's summoning of various sefirot, the depiction of the hurly-burly of the city, and the discussion of language, translation, and reading--just great. I can share these beautiful lines from the end without spoiling anything:

From the silence, [Avram] conjured a vision of what Maryam might see if she found her reading-stone, a mental image of the night sky of Yetzirah. Who was it who’d said there were many more stars in heaven than human eyes could see? One of the Persian philosophers, or one of their poets? Did it even make a difference?

Those stars, as much as the sefirot, were outpourings of the divine, and messages were surely written in them. Isaac wondered what language those scriptures would follow. Or maybe they would be like the speech of the crickets, written in no language at all.

It didn’t matter, he decided. God would know them even so.

many Tims
The other day I saw the two neighbor girls onto the bus as both parents had to leave the house very early. I went over at 7:15, and they were still in their bedroom playing an imaginary game together. They are nine and eleven years old (or maybe eight and eleven; not sure), and it was the most charming thing to hear them talking and dramatizing together so happily.

"There's many Tims; what do you expect?!" --that was the one line I wrote down from their game.

And they were so good about getting themselves organized and out the door on time. Their parents should be proud.

favorite word
The ninja girl tells me that one thing her students in Japan like to ask her is what her favorite Japanese word is. By this they don't actually mean just any old random-ass word; they're really meaning more like favorite concept, but they ask in terms of favorite word. She said she usually turns the question back to them and asks them what their favorites are, and it's interesting to hear what they say: they are concepts that are very approved of, admired, promoted, etc., like 一所懸命 (isshokenmei: all one's might/effort) or 思いやり (omoiyari: considerateness, attentiveness, thoughtfulness). You couldn't ask the question "what's your favorite word?" in English to get answers like this; you'd have to make it "What's your favorite virtue?" or something.

Tower of Babel
And that got me thinking how we can understand the story of the tower of Babel as a blessing that God gave people rather than a punishment. When everyone was working together on the tower of Babel--and incidentally, all speaking the same language--they were single minded. One language, one idea. But when the tower was broken and they all found themselves speaking different languages, suddenly they were multi-minded. Many languages, many ideas. Many ways of expressing how it is to be human. And, when we learn each other's languages in a world of many languages, we're expending effort to understand each other--not just "see through another's eyes" but "borrow another's tongue." If we all spoke the same language, we'd lack that diversity and that opportunity to make an effort to understand one another.

The teacher I used to work with in Holyoke asked me back to give a talk on writing to her high school-aged students, who are working on personal narratives. These are all kids for whom regular high school hasn't worked out, but they are still fighting for an education and a future, and the teachers at this program are 100 percent dedicated to helping them with that.

This happened in front of the building housing the program. This is these kids' daily life.

We talked about what makes writing hard, and how you have to strive to write in a way that your readers will understand and feel what you're sharing--even if your reader is only your future self. It's too easy to be cryptic or use a sort of shorthand that speaks to you in the moment but not later. And of course if your audience is going to include people other than yourself, you have to work even harder. Learning what you need to improve is good--but we also need reassurance and praise for what we're doing.

( the writing exercise I did with them )

Afterward, I answered questions and the talk drifted to (among other things) languages. I think I maybe went overboard talking about how learning languages made me positively high, but it led to a touching conversation on my way out with a student who confided that he'd started teaching himself Hebrew.

"Oh wow, Hebrew!" I said. "How did you choose that? Is it part of your heritage?"

"No. It's because of ... You know. The news. I thought of doing Arabic, too, but the letters seemed too hard."

I felt so much love for that kid in that moment. What a profound response to what's going on. What an instinct for healing.

So take heart, everyone. You can be a kid growing up in a neighborhood where stray bullets kill babies, and yet you're teaching yourself language to Tikkun Olam the hell out of our broken world.

I got five questions from osprey_archer!

1. What's a skill that you're proud of having?

... I'm realizing that it's hard to write an answer to this because as soon as I start composing in a direction, I think, Now you really sound like an insufferable asshole.

Am I perhaps proud of the skill of being able to guess when I'm about to sound like an insufferable asshole? ... Mmmm, I am not particularly proud of that. And I'm not even sure if my assessment is correct, so.

So ... skill implies something that you've worked on and honed--so not, say, a one-off accomplishment, and not something that's just part of your personality without your particularly exerting yourself.

Okay, how's this: I don't know if I'm proud, exactly, but it gives me great joy and exuberance to have discovered, in my fifties, that it's possible to learn multiple languages more or less simultaneously well enough to read them and attempt rudimentary communication in them. It literally feels like having developed a new sense, like my brain has changed its shape. ... Other people knew this delight from a young age, but not me. And there's something about coming to it later in life--you can be very consciously grateful, appreciative.

2. What's a treasured memory?

Sleeping together as a family on summer nights in Japan--the tactile-ness. The in-out of our breathing, together; our hearts are beating, together. Our foreheads are touching, or someone has an arm flung this way, or someone's toes are touching someone else's calves. Outside, insects are singing.

3. Do you have any unusual yearly traditions?

Not really; I have a hard time repeating things cyclically. For a while our family did Boston's Walk for Hunger yearly, but that's not a very unusual thing, and anyway, we since stopped. There are certain things I like to forage when the time is right (cattail pollen in June, chestnuts and hickory nuts in September and October), but I'm not consistent.

4. If you could have a telepathic companion animal, what kind of animal would you want?
I waver between something small enough to sit on my shoulder and something large enough that I could drape my arm over its shoulders. Much as it would be fun to have a telepathic connection with a dolphin (hello Ring of Endless Light) and fascinating to have one with a celphalopod, I think I'd prefer to have a connection with a terrestrial animal because delightful as water is, I can't breathe in it or even keep air in my lungs for as long as dolphins and other water-living mammals can. OTOH, if there are some telepathic marine creatures out there who are hankering for a connection, I withdraw that caveat! Come to me, friends!

... I guess not someone really small, like a tardigrade. I want to be able to see my companion. Probably someone adapted to the type of climate I live in--hello coyotes, bobcats, foxes, bear, deer, squirrels, chipmunks, mice. And I don't want to exclude birds, though I think I would want a very friendly type of bird for an animal companion--someone like a catbird or chickadee, or like the starling that drank the last of my sister's wine the other day.


5. Favorite museum?

Without a doubt, the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.

Anyone else like some questions?

In order to be a volunteer tutor for refugees and immigrants learning English, I had to do some minimal training (I'm not teaching; I'm only supplemental help), and part of that involved watching some videos on language acquisition. The video below on world languages was something extra you could watch. I knew most of the stuff in it already, but I liked the presentation, the varying examples used, and the inclusion of information about signing languages. Take a look if you feel like it--it's 11 minutes.

Watch on YouTube

My tutee is from El Salvador, is trans, and a real delight. We bonded instantly over both learning Portuguese--she sent me a link to a free online site for learning it, and I laughed, because the site is--of course!--for Spanish speakers learning Portuguese. Well so that will be a fun challenge, if I do it. I told her about seeing a bald eagle the other day and asked if El Salvador had a national bird, and she told me yes, the torogoz, and WOW. That is one beautiful bird. In looking around for more information, I stumbled upon this wonderful site called "Your Story Our Story," which describes itself as "a national project [that] explores American immigration and migration through crowd-sourced stories of everyday objects." It invites you to add your own. I came across it because a high school student in Annapolis had written about el torogoz:

El torogoz is a small bird that has many colors, blue, green, red and black and is from El Salvador. The torogoz is the national bird of El Salvador. All Salvadorian people know the bird and we have respect for the torogoz. Also we feel proud of our bird. The object is important for our people because we identify with the torogoz. That way we feel part of Salvadorian culture ... This represents me because I feel "guanaco** de corazon." It means I am Salvadorian deep in my heart.

Photo of a torogoz by Flickr user Erik Rivas--click through to get to his page


**A guanaco is an animal like a llama, and/but Salvadoreans refer to themselves as guanacos. I went on a google search to find out why/how/when, and it seems like it was originally a derisive thing, and not limited to Salvadoreans at all, but gradually became something they adopted with pride. (A los salvadoreños nos dicen guanacos ... ¿por qué?) It made me think of The Emperor's New Groove

If the three stories I've read so far are any indication, this issue of Clarkesworld is crackerjack, but the story that's really blown me away is "Embracing the Movement," by Cristina Jurado, translated by Sue Burke (who writes a little about her process here).

It's the story of a powerful, intelligent collective alien species trying, with increasing frustration, to communicate with a lone explorer who, as described and seen by the aliens, reads very human. The communication issues and disjunction between the lone "sister sojourner" and the alien collective reminds me of China Miéville's Embassytown.

Most beings who detect our presence shy away, fearing the reach of our offensive capacity: the destructive power of our attack system is legendary throughout the galaxy. And yet you drew near in your mediocre artifact and initiated an amazing dance.

The aliens invite (detain?) our lone sister sojourner for a visit and attempt to show her their grandeur:

Few have visited our refuge: consider yourself regaled.

We find out plenty about the aliens as they do their regaling. For example. . .

Despite our reputation, I assure you we are sensitive. How else could we have prospered if not by caring for each of our sisters? The union of our swarm is only possible through the concern and attention with which we treat every one of our members

But then too...

We are the sentries of our hives, porters of justice, and exterminators of hideous, pillaging, corrupt, squandering vermin.

Our morality is impeccable, although that may be hard to see except from our viewpoint.

The aliens describe their communication method--patterns and formations:

If anger inundates us, we compose an undulating surface, a flowing liquid force that manifests itself as breaking waves and even as tides. At times sadness possesses us, and our organisms pulsate in a fractal of fluorescent scales.

If you would like to see how this first-contact ends, click on the link at the top of the entry, or, what the hell, here it is again.

So far I've also read two other stories, also worthy of your time:

Yukimi Ogawa, "The Shroud for the Mourners."
In a society stratified by body patterns and colors, as well as andoid/non-android status, a mysterious medical condition has arisen. The solution to this mystery involves honoring personhood and the dead, and finding ways to make society a little more humane.

Jiang Bo (trans. Andy Dudak), "Face Changing," a cat-and-mouse story in which financial police officer Xu Haifeng is always one step behind cybercriminal Huang Huali. You may, like me, be a little exasperated by Xu's unjustified self-confidence and dubious decisions, but the financial cybercrime aspect and the dystopic all-present state was very interesting to me (LOL), and I found the end very satisfying.

Saw a thing on FB and decided not to engage because it wasn't from anyone I knew and no one was begging for my input. Instead I'll inflict the information on my readers here--who also didn't ask for it, heh.

The FB post was about a news story yesterday that "Merriam-Webster has declared 'irregardless' a word!!" The news story was full of pearl-clutching and oaths sworn to continue to teach children not to use that word, no matter what MW says, and the commenters on the FB post were shaking their heads over standards, etc. etc.

Once upon a time I worked at Merriam-Webster, so I know a thing or two about it. What its dictionaries aim to do is **record the language as it exists in print**. MW dictionaries--and all modern dictionaries I know of --are descriptive, not prescriptive. In other words, they're not trying to act as style manuals. (There is no shortage of style and grammar manuals, if what you want are rules on how to speak or write the language.)

At Merriam-Webster, lexicographers note how words are used in print--they literally spend time doing a thing called "reading and marking," where they read through magazines, books, and newspapers (or they did, back when I worked there)--and if a word reaches a threshold presence, it goes in the dictionary. "Irregardless" has been in Merriam-Webster for at least 20 years, because it was there when I worked there.

MW does have ways of warning dictionary users about words, though. The first are labels like "archaic," "slang," or "offensive." There are also usage notes and usage paragraphs, which will warn you about words. In my 2003 physical copy of the MW Collegiate Dictionary, the note for "irregardless" says,

Irregardless originated in dialectal American speech in the early 20th century. Its fairly widespread use in speech called it to the attention of usage commentators as early as 1927. The most frequently repeated remark about it is that "there is no such word." There is such a word, however. It is still used primarily in speech, although it can be found from time to time in edited prose. Its reputation has not risen over the years, and it is still a long way from general acceptance. Use regardless instead.

I don't think you can have any doubts about the word's standing if you read that. The dictionary up and tells you not to use it. The news story was obviously an attempt to provide a new, inconsequential thing to spend some outrage on, but honestly, there's nothing to see here, people. Move along.

This'll be the fourth year running that I post resolutions.

I didn't do a good job with last year's. I didn't find a way to incorporate conversational Spanish practice into my learning, and I didn't work on the novel twice a week. However, this year I have two possible leads for conversational practice, so even though I failed last year, I think I'll try again with that this year:

(1) Continue to practice Spanish every day, and find a way to work in conversational Spanish every week. Grace period of a month to get that up and running.

As for the novel, what I found helpful was what I did in November, slip-streaming along with the NaNo crew--namely, keeping a tally of words written each day. When I did that, I put much more effort into at least opening the document and turning attention to it. So this year the goal will be ...

(2) to open the document each day and to record words written. If I don't write anything, but I stare at it, musing at possibilities, that's still something (I'll record zero words but note that I opened the document). If I undo a bunch of words and tinker, that's still something too.

A third, less-important-to-me resolution is to continue with Duolingo Portuguese. Still, it's a resolution.

(3) Do Duolingo Portuguese each day

This doesn't qualify as a poem; it's just playing with sound.


誰のせい？ [dare no sei/ whose fault]?

no sé [I don't know]

say what?

no dice nada [says nothing]

dime [tell me]

だめ [dame/ no way]

Spanish Duolingo often has intriguing or provocative sentences for you to translate. This post's subject line was one I got last night:



(The girl plays with her shadow)

The child plays with her shadow
Jumping, jumping
To free her playmate
From the tether of her feet