I tried to find this journal I wrote when
I was India, this time of year, in 1989-'90. I couldn't find it, but
there are a couple of more places left to search. I've moved I don't
know how many times since then. Ten? 15? Surely not 15. Ten is possible.
'Til then, I don't know what to write about. Blogging - what a
narcissistic exercise this is. You know you hear about people who talk
because they just like to hear themselves talk. Well I'm guilty of a
similar sin, I write just to read what I've written. But it goes beyond
that - I want people to read it, and to respond to it, especially if
they like, less so if they don't. I need to thicken up. If I'm going to
go on wearing my heart on my sleeve, I also need to be aware that I'm
sort of sticking out some vulnerable bits for folks to hack off from
time to time. I'll live.
So I never know who reads these words; sometimes I wonder if anyone
does. Occasionally I send a message out that screams, Pay attention
to what I've written!, and wonder if anyone reads it. Narcissism and
self-doubt, all rolled into one nice little 37-year old Irishman.
I've always liked to write. I remember as a kid I read in the
Guinness Book of World Records that the youngest published author
was...I don't remember now...11? A girl in England I think. I was 10 at
the time, and thought I could get the world record. My enthusiasm for a
record was greater than any skill or talent I had though. I remember
sitting at a typewriter and just getting a few lines down before
stalling permanently.
Somewhere along the way though I became fascinated with words and
their meanings and the way they communicate concepts and ideas that
really don't have the boundaries that words do. Foreign languages in
addition to English became fascinating. I love that you can pronounce a
word in a foreign tongue, and this will spark an idea in a native
speaker's head which connotes the same or different idea than I
might have in my head when making the utterance. And therein lies
some of the trouble inherent in foreign relations, huh?
Here's a
small, funny story. I was trying to show off speaking some of the fewer
than a hundred words of Bemba that I know. (Bemba is my wife's tribal
language.) So I'm on the phone, and I said, Chawama ukulala na imwe,
but I should have said Chawama ukulanda na imwe.
Instead of telling Maggie's sister-in-law that it was nice speaking with
her, I told her it was nice to sleep with her. Maggie couldn't stop
laughing for half an hour, fortunately. Hubris before the fall.
Language provides the hooks on which we hang our learning. With a new
idea or a new concept, a new word gives us a placemarker and a tool with
which we can communicate with others about this concept. That has
certainly become clearer and clearer to me as we go through medical
school. There are so many new concepts - types of descriptions of cells
for one thing, like spindle-shaped, for example - that provide one with
a means of describing a phenomenon that characterizes this or that...
I've always had trouble with conclusions in whatever I write. Here is an
example.
The End.
