not my language
in tagalog there are no tenses, passive/active voices, or stable subjects. instead there are aspects, actors, beneficiaries, social-reciprocals. this language gets more foreign to me as i learn it.
somewhere during the process of plotting thoughts to words, you need to decide the part of the sentence on which your verb should focus, and attach the appropriate prefix and/or suffix. the actor? the object? the location? the beneficiary, instrument used, or the doer who is forced to do something? the person doing the forcing? victims of calamity, the experiencer of an emotion? that is, tagalog verbs are trained on directionality. where is this act coming from, why, and who is being affected? just a few letters before and after can mean the difference between cooking and being cooked.
the effect is that for a brief moment, or for me a few pained seconds, you consider the relation of actors to objects to place. there’s an affix, magpa-, to express an act being done for someone by someone else; makipag- indicates that you’re joining an ongoing activity with a specific set of actors; ma- signals the experience of a calamity or emotion; maki- denotes the sharing of resources; paki- a sign of respect.
i’d like to think this means a heightened awareness of power relations and social dynamics, embedded at the level of language and in dynamic relation to one’s experience of and in society. and even more, i’d like to think that tagalog forces the speaker to think about what makes it possible to be served, or what actions must always be done together, reciprocally.
been here before
during the trip here, to madison, there was a recall of events: this evening two years ago i convened, all together for the first time, with the friends who are now my rocks; there’s the isthmus from the air again; here are the burly corn-fed folks i’m to rub shoulders with; there’s that lake that will stink with/from heat in a few weeks; etc.
a resolution: this summer will not be that summer. instead — a work regimen, temperance, an eye toward phd exams, moderate attachments. (to make it worth what i had to miss to be here; to make up for delinquency.)
electric air
a magic formula of sorts for, or symptoms of an impending storm, lightning and all: a few hours before the downpour, the air so humid that moisture gathers on your skin even while you stand still, your lungs work extra hard to separate the moisture from usable oxygen; an overcast sky, which could also forewarn of a tornado; heat that can render indoor air-conditioned air sickness-inducing; a stickyness enough to make you say ‘fuck it’ and take a long walk through the wetness that hangs everywhere, no matter what kind of odd sweat marks imprint themselves on your clothing.
it’s necessary payment, though, for the result a few hours later: heavy, heated, microwaved rain and a lightning show to accompany it. the sky lights up so often that you stop bothering to look up because you’ll never get any work done with such constant movement of your head away from the screen and towards the electric air.
i’ve been missing me some classic midwestern and mid-atlantic summer weather. it’s best experienced on a covered but not enclosed porch, with quiet friends and possibly a smoke, definitely a beer.
spoon and lohan together at last
oddness last night at the annex for the smoosh and aqueduct show. smoosh, tween-aged rockers that they are, playing more interesting music than headliner aqueduct. really! the drummer’s pretty darn good. said A, “it’s like spoon meets lindsay lohan.” me: “woah. that just does not compute.” during aqueduct’s set, the ladies of smoosh ran around the annex as if playing a game of tag, which after awhile did seem like more fun than sitting through aqueduct. i can’t find sample lyrics to post, but trust me when i say that they are gems of horror.
just weird. seattle, what music are you releasing into the world?
my mind is elsewhere
madison does indeed deserve its own post, several in fact. my mind, though, is wandering to other cities and regions that i’m looking forward to returning to and exploring once august 13 rolls around: seattle, san francisco and oakland, los angeles, portland, and back to seattle. the engine behind all this wandering is of course this music i’ve been listening to — the shins bring me to oakland, the dears to the 110 in LA, elliott smith to portland, andrew bird to seattle (oddly).
but madison. i have a little over a week to document this town, or at least what i’ve gotten to know of it in the past month and a half.
a preview: on my bike rides i’ve found the perfect homes — covered porches, older but not crumbling, overlooking the lake, shaded by trees.