Oh my good gravy, am I tired of typing. Katrina J. B. Lao, I hope you appreciate this! I made a blog for my poetry. It's very long and dull... but it's there if you want to read it.

Happy World Day for Water!

Today is the World Day for Water. It kind of makes me thirsty just to think about it... I got a kit once from my cousin that contained everything you would need to put on a miniature play, including two scripts. One was silly, I don't remember it very well, something about all the different fairy tales getting mixed up in each others' stories, but the second one was about the future. A little boy's grandmother takes him back in time (to our time) to show him how it used to be, when clean water was so abundant that people could actually drink it out of the tap, and wash in it whenever they felt like it! It made me think long and hard about the way things might be one day. I "received a very deep impression," as they say in Chinese. Plus it was ironic, because at the time I really couldn't drink water out of the tap.

We actually had a whole system for drinking water - filled the kettle from the faucet, heated it until it had boiled for ten or fifteen minutes, then poured the water into the first hot water thermos. The cap to yesterday's hot water thermos was loosened so that the water would be cool by the next day, and a third thermos held (finally) cold, drinkable water. Cold boiled water has a particular taste, probably from a combination of the metallic precipitate at the bottom of the tea kettles and from sitting still for so long. Whenever we were back in the States, it felt so fresh and daring to drink from the tap. Or a water fountain! Wow. You Americans really do live the life... At the time, though, boiling water wasn't really something I thought about, any more than I thought about having to soak fresh vegetables in iodine or always peeling apples. It was the same, I guess, as filling the dishwasher here, or mowing the lawn - something I have still never done. Or in other places, carrying water from the river and herding goats. You're used to the little ways you live your life, and you don't realize until you step outside of it just how strange they are.

Post Script: UNEP photo contest: http://www.unep.org/photocomp2005/
They had some of these posted on the msn website, but you really should look at all 25. Disappointed that they wouldn't let me download any of them - I literally stopped breathing when I saw number 6...

Professor M and The Hair

Before we begin this story, let me introduce the principle characters. I, of course, am Narrator. Otherwise, it's really a Dialogue between Professor M [opinionated, fascinating middle-aged Bostonian linguist] and The Hair [student].

Various students in the class have caught my attention, for positive, negative or benign reasons. For instance, there are the language informants - Jamaica 1 and 2, Spain... I am the proud holder of the Mandarin Chinese seat (although Professor M didn't believe me at first, and made me prove it in front of the whole class one day). There is also Slightly Stupid Verbal Girl, who makes out-of-context comments to which the professor is unsure how to respond. Finally, there is our Hebrew informant, The Hair. He has beautiful, long, curly hair. Thus, he is The Hair.

Now to the exposition. On Good Friday (and Passover), our professor decided to discuss a holiday-appropriate topic - the language of religion. I think the main gist of his lecture was that language is a powerful tool with which we can create beings which may or may not exist. (I am unsure, because the lecture was peppered - and then there was the huge sneeze that constitutes this story - with interruptions from philosophical students). There are all kinds of theories about the spirit world, he said, and not all of them can be true, therefore some of them must simply be created by the human brain and by language. Our post-modernist students, however, could not accept such a statement.

"How do you define reality?"
"How do you know they (the inhabitants of the invisible world) don't all exist? If it's real to me, then it's as real as it needs to be."
"But," Professor M responds, "Surely you don't believe that there is such a thing as, say, flying invisible elephants... I hope we can all agree on the point that flying invisible elephants are beings that I have, just now, simply created by language."

Apparently we could not.

I must interrupt for a moment to explain a rule that Professor M has wisely instated in the class. It is a class of 150 students, so to avoid a single student's manipulating the conversation, and to make sure that many people get the chance to voice an opinion, he limits every student to two comments per lecture. The Hair had some vehement opinions to express about reality and the fact that shared experience is what creates reality, not empiricism, yada yada. He used up his comments.

The Drama begins. The Hair drew several curious eyes by once again raising his hand. We all knew he'd used up his comments. He knew it. However, it seemed to have become a matter of principle. Professor M, peeved, called him on this.

"You have used up your comments, I really don't-" M began.
"But how can you decide what is-"
"Please, you're disrupting the class, you've used up-"
"I didn't use them up, you kept interrupting me!"
"Stop. Okay? Be quiet."

But having begun, The Hair could not stop and kept talking over the professor. That was the last lexicon, as far as Professor M was concerned. Quite suddenly, he lost it. Eyes blazing, hand pointing imperiously, the learned professor began shouting at The Hair - in Hebrew! The class as a body was taken aback. Our eyes darted around the room, looking to each other to confirm what we'd heard. "Was that...? Did he really...?" Yes, it was, he did. Our eyes swivelled back to The Hair.

"Wow," he said. To this day I have no idea what Professor M said. All I caught was the word "shechem." It was enough to shut The Hair up, though. He began to pack his bag. The class sat in awkward silence, and the professor tried to find the thread of the lecture he had so unceremoniously dropped.

"Ahem... Ahem... so the invisible world.." Professor M began. Yet The Hair was not finished. The tension crackled. With drama, with flair even, he slung his bag over his back and threw a parting shot.

"Professor or not," he cried passionately, "You have no right to belittle these students!" And even as he opened his mouth, Professor M was letting loose another stream of scathing Hebrew. The Hair fled out the door, spilling books and papers from his half-closed book bag. No one dared move to pick them up. Silent, frozen, horrified, we held our collective breath as interminable seconds passed.

"Well," Professor M remarked, as composed as if he had not just been bawling out a student in a foreign language, "You mention religion in a classroom and you never know what issues are going to be raised..." He shook his head affectionately. "Now, the invisible world-" And he finished the rest of his hour-long lecture.