Ouch my French

I have had a look at the text I sent my mother yesterday. It has two major grammatical/spelling errors. Bless her, my mother didn't text a word about them. She texted back using perfect endings and the feminine where it should be. Ouch and blush. I need to dig out my French dictionary. Texting from a station while waiting needs all the information to be in my head.

A couple of weeks ago I forgot how to spell soleil. It only came back to me when I saw a lorry or some advertisement with it written clearly and boldly. That is my sort of language learning/relearning. Accidental and effective.

Maybe embarrassment is the strongest push to learn things, the emotion shoves the information right into the brain without any effort.

I used to try to chat to my Grandmother in French, but it never seemed right. She was an Anglophile anyway, her heart was here and she was more at home in English.

Where am I? End May 2014 - 4 new blogs added

http://nacimpakshiraz.wordpress.com/blog/ Lecturer on Iranian films at Edinburgh University. Useful because I am in a little Middle Eastern Film club of 3. We post dvds to each other and watch them in turn.

http://backroompoets.blogspot.co.uk/ Because I have been along to one meeting so far. It is remarkable to be with a dozen people all reading out their own work, then analysing and making suggestions for improvements while the writer sits in a receptive silence. Will I dare to take anything more personal next time? Will there be a next time?

http://pro-lernen.ch/blog/ German language autonomous home education blog. Home ed is legal in Switzerland, but illegal in Germany, remember that.

http://murielecamac.blogspot.co.uk/ French language poetry blog. I want to restart reading French since it is available to me, even if it seems utterly unfamiliar somehow, like something I used to do many years ago.

Swindon Literary Festival - Martin Figura and Blue Gate Poets

Going to this poetry reading was like going to a new Quaker Meeting. Different, but totally familiar.

A very good friend of mine was there to read her work, so that was the real reason for driving an hour down the motorway and getting back near midnight.

I met someone whose blog I follow, found a fellow member of the closed poetry group I belong to on Facebook, saw 2 familiar faces from the Lower Shaw Farm where I spent a weekend gardening and talking, met a home educator and said the words "I don't know you" to a complete stranger as my introduction.

Martin Figura
Helen Ivory

Encouragement for those who home educate

Yvonne Frost - puts in words things I don't put into words, but recognise immediately.

We Go With Him - general attitude of love and support.

Ask which personal bond you are committed to: the person telling you what to do and sharing their deepest fears at the same time, or the person who you are defending and protecting until it all becomes clear, which will take a while.

If you like, dive into your own interests to provide a world to balance the one of home education. That's what I have done and it is a great antidote to the overwhelming responsibilities.

Texts and phone messages

What do I do with my messages from my mother? Do I photocopy my mobile with the little screen showing her texts, one by one, section by section? I could just type them out in the same format and print them off as tiny prose poems from her to me.

The phone messages are much harder. They will expire after 20 days and are pure sound. What do I do? What can I do apart from listen to each one until it disappears? Type them out too?

Amjad Nasser - Imagined Sons - Prof Asher Susser

This is a bit of a sandwich:

Here's another book for my wish list. It is half way between prose and poetry. It looks like covering both the writer's and the translator's life. I really like autobiographies. The more personal the better, but then I can put a book down whenever I choose. Land of No Rain by Amjad Nasser and translated by Jonathan Wright, who translated Hassan Blasim.

Without planning it, I have read another complete collection of poetry on a Tuesday. It was so fast, I started to read it, then found I was nearly at the end. It stirred me up, so I wrote some incoherent rambling with an awful pen with loose ink which goes all over the place. This is preparation for a workshop I am going to, given by Carrie Etter. I see a life-time of poems about her lovely son. As she lives on, hopefully he will live on too, living their parallel lives until perhaps they meet.

Listening to my current online Professor is taking up a lot of time. The lectures will disappear in a couple of weeks, maybe sooner. I have 16 to get through by then. The topics have come up to my own life time. I hadn't expected to feel in some way responsible and far more unsettled in a way I hadn't for the pre-1964 sections of history. As an adult I do now have powers to support or not support what others do.

I nearly spoilt my ballot paper - So I am protesting here instead

I couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the words on the ballot paper. It was a mile long and had names of parties plus the logos. The bit which got me was that it was clearly legal to put phrases like 'zero-immigration' and 'no immigration' onto a public document like that which is for everyone to consider while they go through the important process of voting.

If I had protested on the ballot it would have been disallowed, so I had to just put my X in the box, then put my vast folded thing of paper into the actual box of votes.

It was my older son's first time voting so we went in together and talked about it all afterwards, without revealing who we had voted for.

Later my younger son took the opportunity to be annoying and tell me how wonderful UKIP were late at night. It was part of an important conversation though, so a bit of stirring was ok.

Human Rights Film Festival in New York

human-rights-watch-festival

There is a list of the films, divided into categories. It is a good way of knowing what to look out for.

I go onto Amazon and add to my wish list. Then I always have good options to choose from in my late night weak moments.

If I have to buy something for T or H, that is when I add a couple of good things for myself too. Or rather 'for the household' for general learning purposes.

"eau" - Muriele Camac

http://murielecamac.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/mes-poemes-eau.html

I have taken a step into French, it is my family language after all. I did a google search for 'poesie 21 siecle' and pretty soon came across this poem. I feel very pleased with myself that I can just read it so very easily. The meaning for 'averse' came to me after a bit. A good surprise that vocab is not permanently dormant.

'trombe' is familiar but I don't actually know what it means. Google says 'downpour', so that's a good play on words: 'tombe en trombes'.

I had forgotten about artists like Nicholas de Stael too, so the pictures on the blog are an additional gift.

Please support Home Education in Northern Ireland

There are proposals to change the law surrounding home education in Northern Ireland.

There is a consultation. I don't know whether people living outside Northern Ireland can submit responses to it.

There is a petition. I have signed it and shared it on Facebook.

Please consider writing to the Prime Minister of Northern Ireland.

Make a link to HedNI, a national home education organisation, which aims to keep readers up to date with developments.

All the details are here:

http://sometimesitspeaceful.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/news-from-northern-ireland.html

Kevin Young - Book of Hours

On Monday I decided I would give myself a complete day off from Arabic on Tuesday. My plan was to read a collection of poetry from my shelf.

Amazingly, I did it! As I read I spotted the sudden revelations of snippets about Kevin Young's father and about the process of  becoming a father himself. I got used to the extent to which I was in tune with his style of writing. I let the bits I found less understandable wash over me, no dwelling and worrying about words or lines.

::

I chase the quiet
round the house.

'It's death there' p180

::

Here I was writing a poem
Called Heaven

actually about the earth.

Pilgrimage p147

::

You are not still,
nor born,
now never

will be.

Stillborn p135

::

Where's the soul?
Hidden.

Where?
Everywhere.

And the breath?
Only wind.

Truce p122

3000 words - Kickstarter project

That is my challenge. I stacked up my vocab cards and I guess I am 1/10th of the way there. Then I made a pencil mark on the door frame for 300 cards. I used my tape measure to see where 3000 cards might stack up to. Now I have a little pencil line to aim for.

I'm finding words everywhere. My favourites are ones like tahrir because I know it anyway from the political changes on tv and on Twitter. Names of newspapers and writers are great too, I make a card for each if those and chuck them on my pile to check the exact spelling on Wikipedia or on Google Translate. The food ones are a mystery, so I have the instruction "look on Google images" on the back of those cards.

All texts I read in English have a few anglicised Arabic words so I take those. By their nature they are important enough to be used in a Preface or essay.

---

The Kickstarter project I signed up for has been fully funded.

A Bird is not a Stone

It looks as if there will be an event linked to this in Oxford, so I look forward to that. I will encourage my previous class mates to come along with me to that.

A B C of My Mother

I have started to write this. One paragraph with a story about my mother for each letter of the alphabet. The fiirst is called Apple and the second Beach.

Would anyone else like to experiment with this structure?

New blogs to try out

http://elisabethjaquette.wordpress.com/ She did a review of Banipal 49, which needs more coverage.

http://kelloggoxford.wordpress.com/ I went to a seminar there, met a friend on the way in, hugged her, then told her I had 'seminar quakes' and she, most flatteringly, asked if I were giving it!! Well, no! The person who was giving it was Jenny Lewis.

http://www.pierrejoris.com/blog/ Well, well, he is interested in many of the things I am interested in, and follows some of the same blogs. I heard him speak about Paul Celan on a Kelly Writers House video.

MOMA Oxford - Charlie Cunningham - Biodanza - أم كلثوم - بعيد عنك

I have a friend who is happy to go to an opening of an exhibition one night and a dance afternoon the next day. How lucky am I?

There was a beautiful singer with his guitar down in the basement, if only someone had drawn a chalk circle for dancers we could have been part of that. Why does everyone stand still?? What a great venue for dancing that would make.

Charlie Cunningham: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4SKYrslreBY

Dancing is on my mind...how lovely it is to dance with older people, they are so into it, so relaxed and joyful, so appreciative and knowledgeable.

U2 - Magnificent

أم كلثوم - بعيد عنك - Umm Kulthum - Far from you - The words...

London - People - Places - Decision

So much:

Friday: Tate Britain, including the Blake room, hundreds of Turners, cardboard and wood in the massive halls, other great things I just love walking around. The Letitia Dean film made at Kodak, just my thing.

My cousins in North London, expecting a first baby and loving their garden.

Saturday: The British Museum, plus many streets I walked along, convinced I knew where it was, I didn't! Mesopotamia, Ancient Arabia, Islamic section, why is it in the basement?? Met a fellow student of Arabic, she is exactly at the same stage as me, but without a class or teacher to continue with. We had a guided tour together. I decided to buy the Arabic guide to the museum, it is surprisingly suited to my level of reading. No translations, just pictures.

My cousins in West London, the flat is full of pictures and feels like being at home. At one point my cousin was on skype with a relative I like in Belgrade. I shall have to learn how to skype before T goes to university.

Sunday: Tate Modern, lots of short films, I leaned against a wall and it fell open, it was a very tall internal door. Space, vast unmitigated space.

Easter Lunch with my brother plus friends of my parents. We even had a chocolate course, my parents like their food, but this is off the scale! It wasn't meant that way, but there were so many tidbits to go with coffee that it deserves a name. My brother had made some chocolate with ginger in it. That went fast.

Before lunch I tried the closest church to us, St Saviour's St George's Square. Their bells used to keep me and my friends company as we talked into the night on my parents' roof garden way back in time. It was so friendly, I had arrived in the middle of the sermon, that I rushed back home to encourage my mother to give it a go. She was game and we made it for the second half. It's a good alternative if going to their favourite isn't possible, St Mary's Bourne Street.

Monday: The Photographers' Gallery, an old haunt from my late teens, only it has moved to another building. This was my first visit there. Many different styles of work, revealing the concerns of the photographers. Syria was represented, huge square photos of squares where executions used to take place at dawn.

My cousin who was the body double for Sophia Loren in a film made in Spain. We talked family stuff for ages and have finally met properly after all these years of being in the same family. It is good to be able to tell her how things really are. We really enjoyed the restaurant her son had recommended.

Decision

Next time I shall just go to new places, but will continue to see family as much as possible.