Linguistic Privilege

I spent all day yesterday composing my personal history statement for UC Berkeley & UC Santa Cruz (mostly for Berkeley since Santa Cruz did not provide any instructions whatsoever). In the process, I discovered some things about myself and my motivations in studying linguistics and wanting to document and preserve endangered languages. (I think I discovered things, at least, although a case could be made that I invented explanations rather than discovering them.) Here are some thoughts that didn't make it into my final draft, about linguistic privilege and the impact that living in Japan as a linguistic minority had on me:

In California, I would have been a member of a privileged class, comfortable without ever recognizing the advantages accorded to me. Growing up in California would have meant hearing my native language all around me; understanding the words used by teachers as well as my classmates did, if not better; exploring entire libraries of books meant for me, because they were in my language. These privileges belong to the linguistic insider, and because I did not experience in Japan, I recognized them when I gained them years later in California, and I recognized that my Spanish-speaking immigrant neighbors were deprived of these privileges.

I perused Ethnologue last night while working on my essay, and reacquainted myself with a statistic I'd like to share here:

6% of the world's languages are spoken by 94% of the world's population; the remaining 94% of languages are spoken by the other 6% of the world's people.

For so many of those four hundred twenty million people (7 billion people x 6%), there is nowhere they inhabit a position of linguistic privilege.

Presence [Pilgrim at Tinker Creek]

Another quote from Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

And what if those grasshoppers had been locusts descending, I thought, and what if I stood awake in a swarm? I cannot ask for more than to be so wholly acted upon, flown at, and lighted on in throngs, probed, knocked, even bitten. A little blood from the wrists and throat is the price I would willingly pay for that pressure of clacking weights on my shoulders, for the scent of deserts, groundfire in my ears--for being so in the clustering hick of things, rapt and enwrapped in the rising and falling real world.

In the copy I'm reading, my mother has marked exclamation points in the margin of this paragraph, as though the image is entirely alien, or the desire expressed is incomprehensible. But Dillard's words resonate in my ribcage. They curl around my wrists like bracelets: someone else has felt this way! I will gladly pay a penny of pain to participate in the world with my whole being--to know I belong on this planet--to step into the ceremony instead of watching from the pews, even if it means I must be the sacrifice on the altar.

And Dillard has a quote for that, too, at the end of the next chapter, after she has told us about the myriad parasites that are eating the world:

I am a sacrifice bound with cords to the horns of the world's rock altar, waiting for worms. I take a deep breath, I open my eyes. Looking, I see there are worms in the horns of the altar like live maggots in amber, there are shells of worms in the rock and moths flapping at my eyes. A wind from noplace rises. A sense of the real exults me; the cords loose; I walk on my way.

The wind is the body of mystery, and its breath is a benediction. I receive it with open hands and closed eyes, and like Dillard, the prophetess, I walk on my way.

[Quote of the Day:] Sparks of Souls

Fantastic quote courtesy from Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek:

For that forty minutes last night I was as purely sensitive and mute as a photographic plate; I received impressions, but I did not print out captions. My own self-awareness had disappeared [...] I have often noticed that even a few minutes of this self-forgetfulness is tremendously invigorating. I wonder if we do not waste most of our energy just by spending every waking minute saying hello to ourselves. Martin Buber quotes an old Hasid master who said, "When you walk across the fields with your mind pure and holy, then from all the stones, and all growing things, and all animals, the sparks of their soul come out and cling to you, and then they are purified and become a holy fire in you."

I love this image of sparks that fly off of souls and cling like static, like burrs on your clothing, like a child in your arms. And as for wasting my energy, and scattering my soul to shards, by saying hello to myself: Yes. I would like to stop. How, I don't know. But stop: stop. Stop chewing the inside of my lip, stop picking at my fingernails, stop holding my jaw tight. Stop running back and forth like a squirrel, and learn to stand in the wind like a pine tree. Then the sparks will land on me and set me aflame like the burning bush, and I won't have any sandals to take off on the holy ground, because each foot will be a buried root.

Split Pea Soup

I could start writing about cooking and never stop.

I watch (and enjoy) a calculus lecture, from two and a half years later and almost 200 miles away, but when the video screen goes black and youtube offers me related videos, I need to come back to my body. I need to be present.

Cooking: it is all about being there. Being here. Being now. Cooking is timing and attention and transformation. Heft the bag of split peas, feel them, through the plastic, shifting. The thousand split peas will pour out of this bag, cascade across the bottom of the bowl. If I poured them onto the floor, they would scatter and skitter into every corner. They are independent, they do not love each other. But for now, they are one shape, moving together, formed by my hands into this reassuring solid. When I set the bag on the counter vertically, it slouches, but does not sway.

And then the onions, like giant pearls. The onions wait patiently in the bottom drawer in the refrigerator, but when their time comes, they shine through the whole kitchen. When I pick up an onion to slip and rip away its brown jacket, it fills my palm. For an instant, this onion globe is the entire world. Under the crisp outer paper, the onion is silken smooth. Today I sliced one along its equator, revealing concentric circles. Pale and perfect inside, the two hemispheres glowed on the cutting board, as though I had split the planet apart and found it suffused with light.

Chopping the onions, the knife is very real in my hand: its weight, its solidity, the sliding of the blade through the onions. Like the peas, the onions will be sundered into a thousand independent pieces. With each severance, the onion cries out, and its scream hangs in the air as an acrid vapor. But to no avail. The knife mercilessly destroys the harmony of those opalescent globes. They are bound for a bowl and then a bowel.

When I slide the onions into the pot, I scrape the knife across the edge. The metal rings. The onions, below, crinkle and shiver in the hot oil.

Meanwhile, I pour the peas into a bowl, and fill it with water. My language lacks a word for the song of liquid pouring into legumes. . . It's a very transient fountain, but lovely nonetheless. I immerse myself in the cooking, bury my hands in the peas to clean them. I can smell the peas: a quiet smell, minerals, sunshine. My hands massage the peas. Clouds drift into the water. Rinse, repeat. The little golden peas cling to my hands but I wash them back into the crowd, and then they all go in with the onion in the pot.

Pour in five cups of water. Wash the dishes, listen for the water to boil. Listen for the plopping, popping sounds that say to stir the pot. Smell: the onions, the softening peas, the steam.

Later I squirt in the lemon juice the recipe calls for. But it's not enough. Instead, the kitchen tells me what the soup needs. I drizzle black molasses across the sandy-colored peas. The cider vinegar reeks, but I add a capful, and another. Stir and taste, add and stir again and simmer some more. . .

At the end of the hour, it's lunch, ladled into a bowl that I hold in my hands. In the bowl is soup, and in the soup is myself. I eat, and I thank God for creation, for these glorious vegetables, for these scents and sounds, and I rejoice in this kitchen, where I play creator.