#the limits of language

[saintmaudes]

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a chest, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered?

— Amitav Ghosh, The Hungry Tide

[hamliet]

whats the difference between sympathy and empathy?

Generally it is said that sympathy is feeling sorry for someone, whereas empathy is bone-deep understanding of what and how they feel the way they do, or an acknowledgement of your limits in understanding that feeling and the postponement of judgement as a result. Basically sympathy looks from afar and perhaps looks down, while empathy stands next to you.

That makes sympathy sound insufficient though, and sometimes it is but sometimes it is also a good thing. Also, language is inexact (especially in English) and, while it’s the best form of communication we have, not perfect. Hence, sometimes colloquial use of empathy especially (since it’s the new buzzword) doesn’t really mean empathy, but something more along the lines of sympathy (or frankly not even that some of the time).

[heavenlyyshecomes]

The Rejection of Closure, Lyn Hejinian

Interview with Ocean Vuong

The Adolescent, Fyodor Dostoevsky

[sunriseseance]

I don't have the language to explain the beauty of Caleb and Nott's whatever they have. They're best friends. They're close on a level I envy. They're working towards something that could be goodbye. I don't have the words in me to process that. Let alone to process the fact that they do it with excitement and love. We would all be lucky to know a connection like theirs.

[genteelblackhole42]

Listening to the new Field Music album, Limits of Language. I’m a sucker for a one-note riff, and the title track has a mighty fine one!

[blegblogs]

Mātes valoda Jerofejeva poēmā 'Maskava – Gailīši' Lamu vārdu funkcionalitāte latviešu un krievu valodās Stilistiski pazeminātā leksika internetā Mat (Russian profanity) Krievijā pirmajā lasījumā pieņemts likums par lamuvārdu aizliegumu literatūrā, kino, TV Bļeģ vai bļaģ – tāds ir jautājums Dinamiskā ekvivalence lamu tulkošanā: praktiķa piezīmes Par vārda 'fuck' tulkošanas iespējām Domāšana – līdz 18 gadu vecumam neiesakām

[literarycatchall]

That a potholed street in the middling borough of Collingswood, New Jersey bears the name Atlantic, after an all-consuming body of water. That all-consuming is Atlas’ curse to bear the heavens on his shoulders. That after the fall of the gods, half of the heavens is darkness. That inside the car speeding down the street, I believe I am safe from being halved. That “I” am not a white box, but a body of water. That white is a pattern of boys who expect to live long enough to become men. That some of these boys are whistling by on their bikes, and behind them, clear as a dream, welcome candles in the windows framed by blooms of vervain. That “welcome” means I thought I was not afraid of the dark. Since the jade scrubs of the cancer ward. Since the florescent grid of the factory and the vista of small bones in my father’s collar while I was interpreting for the twenty-something-year-old white citizen,                                 “Tell your dad he can quit or I can fire him.” Grief had already burst its cocoon; it ate him like an army of moths from the inside. That brown men and women kept stitching jackets under the heavens of the machines. Welcome. That a moth is trapped in the car with me – it will die, but I do not want to practice florescence alone. Like a first language bleeding hearts call, speaking truth to power. I don’t know how they don’t know that power doesn’t care. That watching fires go out will become a pattern. That fire is everywhere, and therefore, cheap. That the hole in my foundation is all-consuming and at its bottom a frangipani tree opens its yellow hands. That POLICE ICE is printed in yellow or white on the jacket of the night. That the night walks freely among the ranks of the sun. That a body of water parted once like a red skirt then sealed over the armored horses of Egypt. That Whitney Houston is a bone blasting out the car windows. That tonight, the night after, the night after that, for as long as the distance between god and a pothole, a moth’s flight will spell,                                 “They are coming for you.”

“Redacted from a Know-Your-Rights Training Agenda—,” Cynthia Dewi Oka (2018)