Language

"We come into consciousness speaking a language already permeated with many voices—a social, not a private language. From the beginning, we are 'polyglot.' Already in process of mastering a variety of social dialects derived from parents, clan, class, religion, country. We grow in consciousness by taking in more voices as 'authoritatively persuasive' and then by learning which to accept as 'internally persuasive.'"

E. B. White claims that to develop style we must accept the whole body of language, not hack it to bits. We must cherish language's form, the classic as well as the modern. We must accept language's variety, its richness. I like White. I often turn to his Elements of Style, especially as I navigate the field of American English and grammar with a style of my own, careful not to hack myself to bits in the process.

"Finally we achieve, if we are lucky, a kind of individuality."

This is the project. Reading over my work, the best writing achieves a kind of individuality. This has been my goal and my great difficulty. Not in achieving that voice, but in accepting and expressing it. I read outside my area. I live outside my area. I speak outside my area. Migration shapes the whole of my vision and my word choice. Emergence from lower worlds, along trade routes and looking for labor, I am aware of the need to hold simultaneous realities in focus while retaining some impression of my own, something to carry with me from here to there.

"But it is never a private or autonomous individuality in the western sense; except when we maim ourselves arbitrarily to monologue, we always speak a chorus of languages."

I went to Presentation High School for girls in San Francisco to show the world we weren't heathens. I wanted to go Lowell. My first year at Pres. is best described by three (four) words: Old English 800 (tall). My second by one: Smirnoff. These were the years I started dreaming of Jesus.

I stand in a field of blinding light. I hear a moan. Slowly, bit by bit, I can see the field is flesh, the flesh is seared. The vision at a distance, comes nearer. Who is doing this? Where am I? I can see the searing. I keep looking. The moaning grows louder and more frequent. I breathe fast. I am warmed by fear. I am burning myself. I am afraid of dying by fire. The field of white is flesh. I understand, at this moment, flesh marked by burning circles of blood. There are so many they look like freckles, the white turns red beneath them. My eyes, I can see out from them. I see a man. He turns. I see his face. It is Jesus. I ask him who is doing this? Why don't they stop? He can not answer me. He can only moan. He looks down. I follow his eyes. The field of white is his back. I keep looking. It is me. I stand on top. If I could only stand still, but I keep moving. I cannot stop. I keep moving. I wake tied in sheets. My skin a fever.

This was a dream. I told myself, stepping into it, waking out of if. This was a dream. Half of my family took the waters (though more are being born again, a plague of frogs among us). Death through resurrection. Colonization through baptism. Papal Bulls and high school diplomas. I am dreaming. I am found. In a field of words I find myself.

"Anyone who has not been maimed by some imposed 'ideology in the narrow sense,' anyone who is not an 'ideologue,' respects the fact that each of us is a 'we,' not an 'I.' Polyphony, the miracle of our 'dialogical' lives together, is thus both a fact of life and in its higher reaches, a value to be pursued endlessly."

A river of words, a river of names, we wade in deep and sometimes we drown. One I thinking it exists alone, able to offer definitive proof of a status higher than heathen.


all quotes are from Wayne C. Booth's introduction to Mikhail Bakhtin's Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics