Over the past couple of nights I have read through this collection. The atmosphere starts off fine enough in the stories, but there is a particular point in each one where it swerves off the rails and I become concerned, aware of my discomfort. The writing is so calm, yet describes such isolation from other people.
'The Storm' was my favourite story, for the long night with the wind howling round:
'It no longer came in gusts. Now the wind pressed in on the city from the sea in a continuous roar, a rising and implacable sound.'
The strangeness didn't help my mind, as I was not sleeping, constantly waiting for a problem from one of my sons and in myself...being a mother isn't easy...I thought of those with more than 2 children and with younger ones. Better than the alternatives though.
Tuesday, 31 March 2015
Being a vector
Prime vectors of disease: the father who goes out to work while the rest of the family is prone, and the mother who goes to the supermarket to stock up on crisps and washing up liquid as soon as she feels well enough and both the children are well enough to leave behind for 40 minutes.
Sunday, 29 March 2015
The Road from Damascus - Robin Yassin-Kassab
I am on my second read through. It's one of those books where I don't want to move on from the current page I am on. I am so grateful to be able to read what I want for as long as I want.
The writer's blog.
The writer's blog.
Saturday, 28 March 2015
Desert Island Discs
The Hall Forum has asked for us to do our list of 8, plus a book and luxury.
1. Falile se castilanke - Living with my family and grandparents, in Ovington Square, 1969-1971
2. Glenn Campbell - By the time I get to Phoenix - Living with my family in Tachbrook Street, 1970's
3. The Corries - O Flower of Scotland - Driving North to Scotland for summer holidays with my family, 1970's
4. Durufle's Requiem - Pie Jesu - Living in Durham, 1983
5. Britten and Pears - O Rose, thou art sick - Living in Edinburgh, 1987
7. Klangkarussell - Sonnentanz - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
8. Eric Satie - Gnossiennes - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
9. Cairokee - Ya Al Midan - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
10. The Shipping Forecast - hugely emotional music from my teens onwards, particularly since it is played last thing at night on Radio 4, it reminds me of the home ed years of upside down days and nights, also of people at sea, I so feel for their suffering. It comes on before the actual forecast so you can go down below and get ready to write down all the details. My father is a skipper and navigator. I used to watch him practice at home, he'd explain exactly what it all meant, a born teacher.
Book - A copy of my blog so I could look at the photos of my family and read about the situations we got into. A never ending series of little Arabic readers created by friends with photos and sentences I can understand. It would be a one way communication from the other world, so I keep on learning. My favourite book of black and white photos of artists in their studios because I love people's faces and the personal chaos of a work space.
Luxury - A dark red or deep dark blue velvet ball dress. The Rothko room. Grounded helicopter to use as an armchair with a view out to sea, I could press the buttons and switches for fun.
Looking at this list: where are the many psalms, responses and anthems I used to sing in my church choir days? Or music from the wedding?
Even more to the point, what about a book of poetry? I am reading new poetry and stories, so don't want to go backwards. That's it.
1. Falile se castilanke - Living with my family and grandparents, in Ovington Square, 1969-1971
2. Glenn Campbell - By the time I get to Phoenix - Living with my family in Tachbrook Street, 1970's
3. The Corries - O Flower of Scotland - Driving North to Scotland for summer holidays with my family, 1970's
4. Durufle's Requiem - Pie Jesu - Living in Durham, 1983
5. Britten and Pears - O Rose, thou art sick - Living in Edinburgh, 1987
7. Klangkarussell - Sonnentanz - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
8. Eric Satie - Gnossiennes - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
9. Cairokee - Ya Al Midan - Living in Oxfordshire, 2014
10. The Shipping Forecast - hugely emotional music from my teens onwards, particularly since it is played last thing at night on Radio 4, it reminds me of the home ed years of upside down days and nights, also of people at sea, I so feel for their suffering. It comes on before the actual forecast so you can go down below and get ready to write down all the details. My father is a skipper and navigator. I used to watch him practice at home, he'd explain exactly what it all meant, a born teacher.
Book - A copy of my blog so I could look at the photos of my family and read about the situations we got into. A never ending series of little Arabic readers created by friends with photos and sentences I can understand. It would be a one way communication from the other world, so I keep on learning. My favourite book of black and white photos of artists in their studios because I love people's faces and the personal chaos of a work space.
Luxury - A dark red or deep dark blue velvet ball dress. The Rothko room. Grounded helicopter to use as an armchair with a view out to sea, I could press the buttons and switches for fun.
Looking at this list: where are the many psalms, responses and anthems I used to sing in my church choir days? Or music from the wedding?
Even more to the point, what about a book of poetry? I am reading new poetry and stories, so don't want to go backwards. That's it.
Wednesday, 25 March 2015
Idea
I would like to arrange 4 series of guest posts from poets, each series based on one topic:
1. Form
2. How they react to reading poems they can't get hold of, are lost with, just don't understand
3. Tell me about the different groups or individuals they find nourishing and inspiring right now
4. Tell me about the experiments they do with poetry, things which don't get submitted or workshopped
1. Form
2. How they react to reading poems they can't get hold of, are lost with, just don't understand
3. Tell me about the different groups or individuals they find nourishing and inspiring right now
4. Tell me about the experiments they do with poetry, things which don't get submitted or workshopped
Endless questions 8. - 11.
8. How am I supposed to create elegant sinuous sentences?
By using linking words like thumma, baada dhalik, walakin etc. Lots of wa's too. There is more to it than that, there always is. I will have to copy out examples of gently repeating and mildly varying sentences. Those seem to be the key qualities. Here I use short, to the point sentences. A totally different approach.
9. Why is the letter at the end of موسيقى, musiqa, sometimes pronounced 'a' and sometimes 'i'? Now I can't remember a single example to add, but there are some. Aha, تفضلى is tafadali, which has 'i' at the end.
10. What is that letter 'ى' called anyway? It is not in the dictionary as one of the sections?
11. Why is 'a' at the end of words spelt in different ways: طفلة ,كتب ,موسيقى? The 'a' at the end of kataba is invisible, but it's there all the same.
By using linking words like thumma, baada dhalik, walakin etc. Lots of wa's too. There is more to it than that, there always is. I will have to copy out examples of gently repeating and mildly varying sentences. Those seem to be the key qualities. Here I use short, to the point sentences. A totally different approach.
9. Why is the letter at the end of موسيقى, musiqa, sometimes pronounced 'a' and sometimes 'i'? Now I can't remember a single example to add, but there are some. Aha, تفضلى is tafadali, which has 'i' at the end.
10. What is that letter 'ى' called anyway? It is not in the dictionary as one of the sections?
11. Why is 'a' at the end of words spelt in different ways: طفلة ,كتب ,موسيقى? The 'a' at the end of kataba is invisible, but it's there all the same.
Tuesday, 24 March 2015
An attempt at a 3rd person bio, not used!
smp lives near Didcot in Ofordshire. She has been accepted for publication by Obsessed With Pipework and has been published by iamnotasilentpoet. She has read at the Wantage and the Woodstock Poetry Festivals, plus theAlbion Beatnik in Oxford. She adores the buzz of online porytu courses and facebook groups. She recommends getting onto the next ModPo class on coursera and also starting your own poetry group. Just take a timer and a few copies of a poem, go round with 2 or 3 minutes each, sharing any and all reactopns to the oems. You will find things out about eachother and the poems you could not have predicted. she loves live in poetry festivals, eg swindon, based at lower shaw gfarm. the best. breakfast lunch tea and supper with poets..best holiday i can think of.
I love the rubbish spelling and mistakes :) Is there a name for the love of unedited text?
I love the rubbish spelling and mistakes :) Is there a name for the love of unedited text?
Saturday, 21 March 2015
right now
loud music in the drawing room, mixed up head after a poetry reading, want to introduce someone to someone else on facebook, my knee hurts, so much to do and read, need to message someone to ask about an Arabic verb, I think I read the word for king in 2 places, in Hebrew...., in an exhibition yesterday and on a wall today, when I was trying to do something else entirely, the letters looked a bit different, but from the context they could have both been for moloch, very golden and lovely, what's all this about? I have enough on my plate, met a wonderful home educator, got a voluntary job yesterday in one place after being given the brush off by somewhere else, cleaned the crap off my car, literally! got to go into the cave now, an experiment we are doing online, will it work or die a death?
The lesson is: paragraphs and proper punctuation make writing easy.
The lesson is: paragraphs and proper punctuation make writing easy.
Wednesday, 18 March 2015
Endless questions 3. - 7.
3. The 'an' at the end of words like 'for example' or 'in the morning'.
Why is the 'an' sound written with two tiny lines up in the air above the alif? It could just be written with a 'nun' and a 'fatha'. But it isn't.
So in the distant past, did people decide to deliberately use that way of writing the sound to mark out its grammatical function? Did Arabic get its written rules from people who were into grammar in a big way and laid them down because they could and because they bamboozled everyone else with less interest in grammar, and had worse spelling and handwriting anyhow. People with social lives and families :)
4. No italics, what is that all about?
Arabic has a dark side with unreasonable quirks. It receives all these foreign names and doesn't even use italics to mark out their presence. Try searching for the root letters of 'Elizabeth' in a dictionary, or a nice short word like 'Hans', 3 letters, so obviously a verb like 'hanasa'... That kept me busy for ages. I was so cross when I realised what was going on. Try 'Wall Street'!!
Now I am feeling less repentant about English and our wonky ways with language. It functions as a silent weapon, as all languages do.
I like the way that Arabic is getting less and less phonetic the further I go. I have examples, but not to hand.
Why is the 'an' sound written with two tiny lines up in the air above the alif? It could just be written with a 'nun' and a 'fatha'. But it isn't.
So in the distant past, did people decide to deliberately use that way of writing the sound to mark out its grammatical function? Did Arabic get its written rules from people who were into grammar in a big way and laid them down because they could and because they bamboozled everyone else with less interest in grammar, and had worse spelling and handwriting anyhow. People with social lives and families :)
4. No italics, what is that all about?
Arabic has a dark side with unreasonable quirks. It receives all these foreign names and doesn't even use italics to mark out their presence. Try searching for the root letters of 'Elizabeth' in a dictionary, or a nice short word like 'Hans', 3 letters, so obviously a verb like 'hanasa'... That kept me busy for ages. I was so cross when I realised what was going on. Try 'Wall Street'!!
Now I am feeling less repentant about English and our wonky ways with language. It functions as a silent weapon, as all languages do.
I like the way that Arabic is getting less and less phonetic the further I go. I have examples, but not to hand.
5. Why are there 3 'a' sounds? As in 'bat', 'bar' and 'bare'. Yes, I know there is no answer to this, but I am still asking.
6. Why does the letter 'Q' suddenly become sayable with no warning and without me having made the slightest effort? It has a wierd pre-sound, a throaty thing as well, as if I am going underground somewhere first. You will know what I mean if you have recently learnt that one.
7. Oh yes, why was learning the names for the accents so impossible? Then one day it was fine. The teacher would merrily mention this or that accent in passing and I'd think and get nowhere, hiding my 100% confusion. And then missing the next 30 seconds of intelligent whatever it was. Nightmare. Sitting there in the land of 'Shit, what the hell was that, and now what is going on? Arrgghh, I need tea.'
Tuesday, 17 March 2015
Election Fever - Daily Diary - No Traces
Elections
I didn't ever expect to be paying attention to the Israeli elections. I am not going as far as with the US ones, no getting up at 5am to see what happened. Or staying up nearly as all night with our elections. I love it when I am able to do that. Twitter is my best source of info.
German daily diary
I have written one for H, to show him how I do this for my Arabic. I explained how just using German means he can read it back and practise the words he knows that way.
Then I explained how he can have a small dictionary of just the words like heute and ich bin which he might want to use each time he writes about his day.
My 3 years of effort are being condensed into 5 mins of tips for him. Mothering in a nutshell...
No Traces
Since H has started at LVS I have stopped making home ed notes. There is no record of the sort I used to create. It is a loss to have no perspective on what has happened since Sept 2014. I am disconnected from a process which I used to be part of and carefully observant of. How easily I drift away from a previous way of living. I wonder how other home ed families experience the moving on phase?
I didn't ever expect to be paying attention to the Israeli elections. I am not going as far as with the US ones, no getting up at 5am to see what happened. Or staying up nearly as all night with our elections. I love it when I am able to do that. Twitter is my best source of info.
German daily diary
I have written one for H, to show him how I do this for my Arabic. I explained how just using German means he can read it back and practise the words he knows that way.
Then I explained how he can have a small dictionary of just the words like heute and ich bin which he might want to use each time he writes about his day.
My 3 years of effort are being condensed into 5 mins of tips for him. Mothering in a nutshell...
No Traces
Since H has started at LVS I have stopped making home ed notes. There is no record of the sort I used to create. It is a loss to have no perspective on what has happened since Sept 2014. I am disconnected from a process which I used to be part of and carefully observant of. How easily I drift away from a previous way of living. I wonder how other home ed families experience the moving on phase?
Monday, 16 March 2015
Poety types speaking directly to me and you
Newest blogs on my sidebar: Shezea Quaishi and Roy Marshall
Both added because they speak directly to the reader and to themselves. I like that a lot.
Both added because they speak directly to the reader and to themselves. I like that a lot.
Friday, 13 March 2015
I have trapped myself
I have started to write lines in Arabic, but I have stopped bothering to write out the English translation. I don't know why that is.
Anyhow, the happy result is that if I want to know what I wrote a few days ago....I have to read the stuff, word by handwritten word...... Got to laugh at my own solution to my problem.
I'm also writing my own dictionary, so when I need a word I can look it up in my own pocket version. It only contains the words I can't be bothered to get out of bed for and then cross the room for to get a big dictionary for. Laziness has its own rewards! Soon I won't need the English in it, just the Arabic.
Eventually my mind will be just good enough to know a word instead of needing to bother to reach out and flick through my own dictionary. So each solution is purely temporary and is sufficiently inexact that it provokes a new stage of learning.
I wrote la aarif al faal, not in Roman letters, obviously. I meant 'I don't know what to do' which summed up exactly what I wanted to say. That was a good moment. One day I will see the errors in it, but that's ok too.
Anyhow, the happy result is that if I want to know what I wrote a few days ago....I have to read the stuff, word by handwritten word...... Got to laugh at my own solution to my problem.
I'm also writing my own dictionary, so when I need a word I can look it up in my own pocket version. It only contains the words I can't be bothered to get out of bed for and then cross the room for to get a big dictionary for. Laziness has its own rewards! Soon I won't need the English in it, just the Arabic.
Eventually my mind will be just good enough to know a word instead of needing to bother to reach out and flick through my own dictionary. So each solution is purely temporary and is sufficiently inexact that it provokes a new stage of learning.
I wrote la aarif al faal, not in Roman letters, obviously. I meant 'I don't know what to do' which summed up exactly what I wanted to say. That was a good moment. One day I will see the errors in it, but that's ok too.
This is what I had been wanting - A Bird is Not a Stone
Back in August I listened out for the Scottish voices I had lived with while I was there for a couple of years, working after graduating. They did not come at the reading in Oxford.
I hadn't realised how much I had wanted to hear for real those accents I know and could hear in my head.
I had thought it was all about the complicated Arabic I couldn't understand as it went past me and which I tried to read at the same time.
Now I have found a link to 2 short videos with the Scottish voices alongside the Arabic ones. Enjoy 'The wee girrl', what an iirrr!
I hadn't realised how much I had wanted to hear for real those accents I know and could hear in my head.
I had thought it was all about the complicated Arabic I couldn't understand as it went past me and which I tried to read at the same time.
Now I have found a link to 2 short videos with the Scottish voices alongside the Arabic ones. Enjoy 'The wee girrl', what an iirrr!
Thursday, 12 March 2015
Short films from Modern Art Oxford - Resonance fm
I am always happy to watch short interviews because there is something so immediate about them. No acting as such, just unplanned chat.
Link to MAO's latest batch of films
Resonance fm
Next Saturday there will be a radio show by Jude Montague interviewing Jenny Lewis. Will there be singing? I don't know.
Link to the show:
Link to MAO's latest batch of films
Resonance fm
Next Saturday there will be a radio show by Jude Montague interviewing Jenny Lewis. Will there be singing? I don't know.
Link to the show:
Wednesday, 11 March 2015
Now our teacher has started to just speak Arabic with us - Preparing for a reading
...so our class is more like listening to the radio news, bits here and there, rushing past. As I came in a more fluent person was chatting so that was how it went on.
We are to write a dialogue for next week, which is exactly what someone wonderful on ModPo told me to do. Well, she said 'Write a play', which is the same thing.
Preparing
Roy Marshall knows what he's writing about. This all makes a lot of sense. The most important one is do readings often, which is my current problem to solve.
I am starting to walk around the garden wondering what to put in my set. Also getting those flashes of adrenaline, though I know I love reading, so it's familiar territory. But what to choose?
We are to write a dialogue for next week, which is exactly what someone wonderful on ModPo told me to do. Well, she said 'Write a play', which is the same thing.
Preparing
Roy Marshall knows what he's writing about. This all makes a lot of sense. The most important one is do readings often, which is my current problem to solve.
I am starting to walk around the garden wondering what to put in my set. Also getting those flashes of adrenaline, though I know I love reading, so it's familiar territory. But what to choose?
Tuesday, 10 March 2015
Empty Roads - The Road from Damascus - Crickets - Giggling
Empty Road - The A34 is strangely empty this week. I think working people without children who are tied to school terms have gone abroad en masse.
The Road from Damascus - Very readable. One paragraph describes my home life to the letter. I didn't know my life was so much a classic case of whatever-it-is. The cause was different in the book, but the result is identical.
I think I need to start again from the beginning, to read about the father/mother/son/daughter relationships a second time. I skipped some sections, but that's ok.
This is getting to be a theme, I have just had a look at another book I want to write some notes on, and I realise I want to start again with that one too. One step forward and several steps sideways!
Crickets - Our latest film was The Lemon Tree. Out of nowhere came the crickets making their endless noises at night, just like they did in the South of France in the summers when I was little. I love it when something arrives from nowhere, a complete surprise, a reminder of something I'd forgotten I loved.
Giggling - Another film I went to recently surprised me even more with the giggling of the men in one section. I recognised their giggles... How can that happen? I don't know them, they are actors, from elsewhere. The film was very serious etc etc, but I came away with that instead.
The Road from Damascus - Very readable. One paragraph describes my home life to the letter. I didn't know my life was so much a classic case of whatever-it-is. The cause was different in the book, but the result is identical.
I think I need to start again from the beginning, to read about the father/mother/son/daughter relationships a second time. I skipped some sections, but that's ok.
This is getting to be a theme, I have just had a look at another book I want to write some notes on, and I realise I want to start again with that one too. One step forward and several steps sideways!
Crickets - Our latest film was The Lemon Tree. Out of nowhere came the crickets making their endless noises at night, just like they did in the South of France in the summers when I was little. I love it when something arrives from nowhere, a complete surprise, a reminder of something I'd forgotten I loved.
Giggling - Another film I went to recently surprised me even more with the giggling of the men in one section. I recognised their giggles... How can that happen? I don't know them, they are actors, from elsewhere. The film was very serious etc etc, but I came away with that instead.
Monday, 2 March 2015
Contemporary Iraqi Fiction - Shakir Mustafa - Musing on learning French and Arabic (long)
Contemporary Iraqi Fiction - translated and edited by Shakir Mustafa
I had my eye on this for ages. Every time I put it in my Amazon basket the price would rise after a few hours, so I'd put it back again. Eventually I realised I'd have to buy it immediately at the lower price.
It came from the public library in Blue Ridge Boulevard in Kansas City. Now it is in Oxfordshire in my private library. One day I will be lending it out to the Didcot circle of Arabic in Translation readers. I live in hope.
The editor and translator is Shakir Mustafa. How keen, to translate and put it all together? Syracuse University Press published it. Their book list.
I have picked out some stories, but really they need the other stories around them, so I can't single any out. It isn't fair. I could list their names and authors, and just give hints.
Mahmoud Saeed - 'A Figure in Repose' - knock at the door in the night
Salima Salih - 'Those Boys' - growing up in Germany
Mayselun Hadi - 'Her Realm of the Real' - a love story
Muhammad Khodayyir - 'The House of Names' - a birth story
Samira Al-Mana - 'That Thing We Call Age' - observing intimacy
Short stories are far more visual than poems or blogs, my usual reading. Each one could be turned into a screen play, such as the clear one I read recently on the Hall Writers' Forum. Then turned into films. A huge series of experimental mini-films.
They are strangely uniform and universal, no details, just the essentials, the father, the mother, the door, the soldier. Rather like the parables. Timeless. Demonstrating a circularity, opposite to our conviction that progress and change occurs and is unstoppable.
When does our writing become timeless? When it deals with birth, death? Mainly it is set in a time with a political flavour and particular transient ethos and set of explorations of thought. Yes, so different. The whole point is to include elements of Thatcher's Britain and the Poll Tax Riots or London in 2003. Beckett steps outside time though. Now I have lost myself!
Musing
I like the biographical page for each author. It gives a counterbalance to the stories. Since they are all alive, I think, and so am I, there is an interesting potential for seeing them in London or Oxford at some reading in the future.
The bios pretty much all include the move away from Iraq, I'd wait for the phrase 'left Iraq' in each one, or a smoother version of the same fact, 'went to xyz to study'.
They remind me of the calls I received at Standard Life. Always a problem, always interestingly different from the one before, always composed of the same sequence of errors and growing irritation. I'd say soothingly "Hmm, that shouldn't have happened."
Mainly people would calm down and I'd sort the problems out. Apart from one person I hung up on. I shouldn't even have answered the call, it was well after 5pm, but I decided to be generous. The man bawled and shouted, to my shock, so that went very badly!
There it is: stories lead to other stories and life trundles on. I think I could read Middle Eastern stories until I am 80 and find myself treading the same ground, just with ever increasing perceptions of the tiny variations being presented to me.
At some level the evened-out English might be the problem. Once I get to a certain point I will have to shift into Arabic entirely and leave the translators' life work behind.
Unfair on the translators, but it's like leaving a teacher behind, it has to be done. They can be a friend, but no longer the person you show your ignorance to every week. That's rubbish, I'd love to keep all my teachers, but on a 50/50 basis, I teach you x and you teach me y.
When did I ever read French in translation? Extremely rarely, only when I couldn't buy the 2nd hand original. For O level I didn't read texts, but then for A level that is all we did, so I just read and read and read. Easier ones at first, no Montaigne essays or Villon!
I just can't remember being unable to read French text in the way I am with Arabic now. What we did then was perfectly paced, while I haven't had any Arabic literature teaching yet and am muddling along by myself. No wonder it's all a bit home educational.
I have a plan to make my own reader of parallel texts. The first paragraphs of several short stories in E and A. A selection of short poems in E and A. I have several of these to hand, including a book with many small pieces of prose poetry strewn about in the text. Things are looking up, yet again.
I had my eye on this for ages. Every time I put it in my Amazon basket the price would rise after a few hours, so I'd put it back again. Eventually I realised I'd have to buy it immediately at the lower price.
It came from the public library in Blue Ridge Boulevard in Kansas City. Now it is in Oxfordshire in my private library. One day I will be lending it out to the Didcot circle of Arabic in Translation readers. I live in hope.
The editor and translator is Shakir Mustafa. How keen, to translate and put it all together? Syracuse University Press published it. Their book list.
I have picked out some stories, but really they need the other stories around them, so I can't single any out. It isn't fair. I could list their names and authors, and just give hints.
Mahmoud Saeed - 'A Figure in Repose' - knock at the door in the night
Salima Salih - 'Those Boys' - growing up in Germany
Mayselun Hadi - 'Her Realm of the Real' - a love story
Muhammad Khodayyir - 'The House of Names' - a birth story
Samira Al-Mana - 'That Thing We Call Age' - observing intimacy
Short stories are far more visual than poems or blogs, my usual reading. Each one could be turned into a screen play, such as the clear one I read recently on the Hall Writers' Forum. Then turned into films. A huge series of experimental mini-films.
They are strangely uniform and universal, no details, just the essentials, the father, the mother, the door, the soldier. Rather like the parables. Timeless. Demonstrating a circularity, opposite to our conviction that progress and change occurs and is unstoppable.
When does our writing become timeless? When it deals with birth, death? Mainly it is set in a time with a political flavour and particular transient ethos and set of explorations of thought. Yes, so different. The whole point is to include elements of Thatcher's Britain and the Poll Tax Riots or London in 2003. Beckett steps outside time though. Now I have lost myself!
Musing
I like the biographical page for each author. It gives a counterbalance to the stories. Since they are all alive, I think, and so am I, there is an interesting potential for seeing them in London or Oxford at some reading in the future.
The bios pretty much all include the move away from Iraq, I'd wait for the phrase 'left Iraq' in each one, or a smoother version of the same fact, 'went to xyz to study'.
They remind me of the calls I received at Standard Life. Always a problem, always interestingly different from the one before, always composed of the same sequence of errors and growing irritation. I'd say soothingly "Hmm, that shouldn't have happened."
Mainly people would calm down and I'd sort the problems out. Apart from one person I hung up on. I shouldn't even have answered the call, it was well after 5pm, but I decided to be generous. The man bawled and shouted, to my shock, so that went very badly!
There it is: stories lead to other stories and life trundles on. I think I could read Middle Eastern stories until I am 80 and find myself treading the same ground, just with ever increasing perceptions of the tiny variations being presented to me.
At some level the evened-out English might be the problem. Once I get to a certain point I will have to shift into Arabic entirely and leave the translators' life work behind.
Unfair on the translators, but it's like leaving a teacher behind, it has to be done. They can be a friend, but no longer the person you show your ignorance to every week. That's rubbish, I'd love to keep all my teachers, but on a 50/50 basis, I teach you x and you teach me y.
When did I ever read French in translation? Extremely rarely, only when I couldn't buy the 2nd hand original. For O level I didn't read texts, but then for A level that is all we did, so I just read and read and read. Easier ones at first, no Montaigne essays or Villon!
I just can't remember being unable to read French text in the way I am with Arabic now. What we did then was perfectly paced, while I haven't had any Arabic literature teaching yet and am muddling along by myself. No wonder it's all a bit home educational.
I have a plan to make my own reader of parallel texts. The first paragraphs of several short stories in E and A. A selection of short poems in E and A. I have several of these to hand, including a book with many small pieces of prose poetry strewn about in the text. Things are looking up, yet again.
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