language.
A language determines whether or not you pay attention to an experience or object; if you have a term or syntactical construction that denotes a relationship or an experience, then you look out for it and are able to see it or hear it. My old friend, the artist Aaron Yava who left us some years ago, made a wonderful line drawing of an old man who walked in a distinctive manner, in which the muscles of his back seemed to work themselves independently as he walked along. Aaron wrote this was âchickish muggeeââsomeone who exercises his back as he walks along. I never forgot that term, and years later I did see a man walking like that, âchickish muggee,â his back was moving this way and that way as he went along.
In a lecture I gave in 2008 at West Virginia University I happened to mention that five hundred years from now, throughout the Americas, Nahuatl and related Uto-Aztecan languages will be spoken, not Spanish or English or even Chinese. Later, CC at West Virginia U sent me an e-mail with this newspaper article: âThe mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, wants all city employees to learn to speak the Aztec language, Nahuatl. A possible presidential candidate in 2012, Ebrard presented his governmentâs development plan this week translated for the first time into Nahuatl. He calls it a first step toward establishing the use of Nahuatl in the government. Translators who speak Nahuatl already work in hospitals and courtrooms, but now desk workers will learn the basics of Nahuatl from classroom sessions and online courses.â
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I realize now that from the time I was very small, I focused my attention more on non-verbal communication between people, between animals and between other beings. I used to trail along behind my great grandmother without a word, absorbing from her all the waves of experience and being in shared proximity. I helped her pick âgraahdunt,â cilantro, from her garden; I helped her carry the coal bucket and I pulled the hose along while she watered the cosmos and hollyhocks. She and the others of her generation happily existed without concern for clocks, were never in a hurry, never impatient with anyone. There was always time for everything as long as the sun was up.
I learned the world of the clock and calendar when I started school, but Iâve never lost my sense of being alive without reference to clocks or calendars. My great grandmother didnât know exactly when she was born; none of her generation did. Calendar age wasnât important. Time was very much present time; even the way the old folks talked about the ancestors and their time was located in the present. Those who passed on to join our beloved ancestors at Cliff House remained close by; Cliff House wasnât far away.
I learned adults would tolerate my presence if I kept quiet and didnât touch things. I used to go looking for adults at work in their yards, chopping wood or hanging wet laundry on the clothesline. I watched Aunt Alice rake up trash and weeds down at the dump (so they didnât blow into her yard, she said). She had a mania for order and for saving things. Her yard was spotless, swept clean every day with a broom. Her house was in complete order, so she cleaned the dump.
Aunt Alice saved every penny, so she wasnât poor. She had a pension from years as a Government nurse. My mother was the postmaster at Laguna when the U.S. Treasury Department sent a postal inspector to find out what happened to all the checks theyâd sent Alice Marmon Little; none of her pension checks had been cashed. The postal inspector discovered Aunt Alice had a big stack of turquoise blue U.S. Treasury checks she was saving. The inspector explained she should cash the checks and then save the money.
Aunt Alice searched the dump for things that still had some good or some use left in them. Right away I sensed the excitement of a sort of treasure hunt. I remember her
A language determines whether or not you pay attention to an experience or object; if you have a term or syntactical construction that denotes a relationship or an experience, then you look out for it and are able to see it or hear it. My old friend, the artist Aaron Yava who left us some years ago, made a wonderful line drawing of an old man who walked in a distinctive manner, in which the muscles of his back seemed to work themselves independently as he walked along. Aaron wrote this was âchickish muggeeââsomeone who exercises his back as he walks along. I never forgot that term, and years later I did see a man walking like that, âchickish muggee,â his back was moving this way and that way as he went along.
In a lecture I gave in 2008 at West Virginia University I happened to mention that five hundred years from now, throughout the Americas, Nahuatl and related Uto-Aztecan languages will be spoken, not Spanish or English or even Chinese. Later, CC at West Virginia U sent me an e-mail with this newspaper article: âThe mayor of Mexico City, Marcelo Ebrard, wants all city employees to learn to speak the Aztec language, Nahuatl. A possible presidential candidate in 2012, Ebrard presented his governmentâs development plan this week translated for the first time into Nahuatl. He calls it a first step toward establishing the use of Nahuatl in the government. Translators who speak Nahuatl already work in hospitals and courtrooms, but now desk workers will learn the basics of Nahuatl from classroom sessions and online courses.â
Â
I realize now that from the time I was very small, I focused my attention more on non-verbal communication between people, between animals and between other beings. I used to trail along behind my great grandmother without a word, absorbing from her all the waves of experience and being in shared proximity. I helped her pick âgraahdunt,â cilantro, from her garden; I helped her carry the coal bucket and I pulled the hose along while she watered the cosmos and hollyhocks. She and the others of her generation happily existed without concern for clocks, were never in a hurry, never impatient with anyone. There was always time for everything as long as the sun was up.
I learned the world of the clock and calendar when I started school, but Iâve never lost my sense of being alive without reference to clocks or calendars. My great grandmother didnât know exactly when she was born; none of her generation did. Calendar age wasnât important. Time was very much present time; even the way the old folks talked about the ancestors and their time was located in the present. Those who passed on to join our beloved ancestors at Cliff House remained close by; Cliff House wasnât far away.
I learned adults would tolerate my presence if I kept quiet and didnât touch things. I used to go looking for adults at work in their yards, chopping wood or hanging wet laundry on the clothesline. I watched Aunt Alice rake up trash and weeds down at the dump (so they didnât blow into her yard, she said). She had a mania for order and for saving things. Her yard was spotless, swept clean every day with a broom. Her house was in complete order, so she cleaned the dump.
Aunt Alice saved every penny, so she wasnât poor. She had a pension from years as a Government nurse. My mother was the postmaster at Laguna when the U.S. Treasury Department sent a postal inspector to find out what happened to all the checks theyâd sent Alice Marmon Little; none of her pension checks had been cashed. The postal inspector discovered Aunt Alice had a big stack of turquoise blue U.S. Treasury checks she was saving. The inspector explained she should cash the checks and then save the money.
Aunt Alice searched the dump for things that still had some good or some use left in them. Right away I sensed the excitement of a sort of treasure hunt. I remember her
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