Living Liturgy: Part II

You may have already read how I started Part I of this two-part series called, "Living Liturgy":

This week, some of my favorite bloggers [and I now] are using the word, liturgy, as they get on with their lives.  [I'm getting on now with living too.]  In Part II of this short series, I'll link to them.

Without further ado:


I do not usually admit this right off the bat – it is definitely a conversation stopper – but here it is: I am a liturgist. “Liturgy” is a common enough word among Christians, but it does not flow trippingly off Jewish tongues, and I am not only Jewish but a rabbi to boot. The word comes from the Greek, leitourgia, “public service,” which is how Greek civilization thought of service to the gods. The Jewish equivalent is the Temple cult of antiquity – in Hebrew, avodah, which meant the same thing, the work of serving God. That eventually morphed into what people do in church and synagogue. Christians call it liturgy; Jews call it “services.”

--Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.,

"What’s this blog all about anyway?"

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, Ph.D.:
Life and a Little Liturgy

Will you grow up in love with liturgy, as I did? I have no idea. You will become whoever you become. I do hope that you will come to cherish this holiday, this season when we retell the story of how our people came to be a people, how we were lifted out of slavery and constriction by God's mighty hand and outstretched arm. How it is possible that even though this is a once-upon-a-time story, it happened to each of us -- it happens to each of us even now. I hope you'll thrill to the songs and the flavors as each year's new spring unfolds. I hope you'll ponder the question of what it means to be free. 

--Rachel Barenblat,

"A Passover letter to my son"

Velveteen Rabbi: 

Now running and playing with the real rabbis!

The author of three dozen books, Rabbi Hoffman — “Dad,” to me — is a preeminent Jewish liturgist (it’s a niche market, I know, but he’s got it cornered) and leading modern Jewish philosopher.

--Joel M. Hoffman, Ph.D.,

"Life and a Little Liturgy:

Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, PhD, 

has a blog!"

God Didn’t Say That:
Bible Translation and Mistranslations

I’ve listened politely to preachers who decry the “humanist position” and heard historians complaining about the effects of the Enlightenment. But, I have to admit I’ve secretly taken these comments with a grain of salt as, I am, after all, human and think there must be various advantages to taking this key fact into account. I’m also a Christian (just stating that upfront before I continue), and I believe humans have common needs – I’m happy to call these “rights”. I even believe that human behaviour should be governed by conventions lest another Holocaust is to occur.  Interestingly, the most negative reactions from other Christians against humanism (that I’ve seen) have been in response in response to psychology....  [T]he discipline well entrenched now, my mother is a well qualified one, so there’s little use protesting!!!  I figured I should learn some more…. Humanism seems as I thought, very pro-human, but also seems to be the cool cousins of Atheism… (http://www.iheu.org/about). Some comments I thought I could resoundingly yell “Amen!” after;

Our vision is … a world in which human rights are respected and everyone is able to live a life of dignity....

God wasn’t here auto-writing through people, but something far beyond the scope of understanding of the authors took place at the time – Paul has an incredibly high view of Scripture both old and new, e.g. Romans 15:4 “For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope“. I believe that unique, divine inspiration is contained in these books and I esteem them as texts around which the Church has gathered in liturgy, in practical application, and in seeking the meaning of human life.

--Tonya Riches,

"'The Mission of God' 

– and humanism…"  

tanyariches:

musings, teaching and music

Charlie Peer sums up with accompanying critique (rather kindly really) a great many people’s view of the prayer released by “the Church of England” for the royal wedding. (Then again, this is probably in part the result of a new part-time appointment of someone also relatively new to the Church of England to replace a full-time experienced Church of England priest to resource liturgy and worship.)

--Clayboy

(Clayboy is really called Doug Chaplin.)

"Sunday best:
from trans clergy
to that royal wedding prayer"

clayboy:

an everyday tale of starburst, spit and spirit

Meanwhile we had some surprise visitors on Saturday afternoon who brought us flowers from the mountain top. It was an act of spontaneous pleasure and joy at having found such a perfect meadow on their part and we were the first people they knew on their way home. It was a lovely moment to see them standing there at the door, holding out the pretty posy pictured here, and to know with a smile on my face and a slightly sinking heart, that I had 10 minutes earlier decided to put off tidying the house for a little while longer ... aie! However, many who have experienced the untidy houses I have lived in may think that my levels of embarassment have perhaps not quite reached the required level for ensuring a tidy place!

The flowers from the mountain top will have faded and wilted by the end of the week but their meaning for me, the memory of their fragility and the smiles with which they were offered will remain. "Say it with flowers" the adverts used to say ... yet there was much that was unspoken in this small bunch of colour we received and which I placed in our favourite jug. So the yellow daffodils and the purple vetch speak for all that cannot be, for those things which cannot be said, for the deisre for joy even when this seems far off, for the promise that fear will truly be overcome.
For such small fragile yet powerful signs I give profound thanks.

--Jane Stranz,

"Of tears, laughter and flowers ..."  

Of life, laughter and liturgy . . .

In reading the the Gospel of John, I find that several interactions between Christ and the other people in the story can easily be seen as liturgical – a sort of call and response.... [F]or now, consider this example:....

--Joel Watts,

"Liturgy in John's Gospel"

Unsettled Christianity

Dan took one look at the wilting potted palm I brought home from BiLo and said, “I think they needed to be at least 21 inches long.”....

I guess in the back of my mind I’d hoped that all the liturgy and symbolism and tradition would magically restore my hope in Christianity and miraculously cure me of my doubts about God.  Isn’t that why young evangelicals have rushed out and purchased The Book of Common Prayer? Isn’t that why troubled, poetic folks like Anne Lamott and Sara Miles are Anglican? 

--Rachel Held Evans,

"Embracing The Not-So-Holy Holy Week"

Rachel Held Evans - Blog

For example, if I say I don’t take Genesis 1 literally, just what do I mean? For me, Genesis is not narrative history. Having said that, there are many things it could be, and it happens that I take Genesis 1:1-2:4a to be liturgy. There are figurative elements in liturgy, but it is a more specific label....  [I]n the Orthodox Study Bible [is a note] regarding the Greek word leitourgia ... : “Service is literally ‘liturgy.’ …” ....  But “service” is not literally “liturgy” nor is leitougia literally “liturgy.”

--Henry Neufeld,

"A Misuse of the Word LITERAL" 

Participatory Bible Study Blog

Everything hangs on that even though. I have to find a way to feel grateful for the innumerable blessings in my life even though other things are tough. I have to find a way to understand (again) that I'm always already liberated, that the freedom we celebrate at Pesach is always real. That's what redemption means. We speak in our liturgy about God Who redeems us from slavery -- that's always ongoing.

--Rachel Barenblat,

"Worth Revisiting Before Pesach" 

Velveteen Rabbi: 

Now running and playing with the real rabbis!

In the six quotations below, can you [and I] see how the word [liturgy] has had origins that are fairly restrictive? 

--J. K. Gayle,

"Living Liturgy: Part I"

Aristotle's Feminist Subject

Living Liturgy: Part I

This week, some of my favorite bloggers are using the word, liturgy, as they get on with their lives.   In Part II of this short series, I'll link to them.

In Part I, below, I'm just quoting some of the first uses of an old related word.   One new blogger has today called this word, "the Greek [word], leitourgia, 'public service,' which is how Greek civilization thought of service to the gods."

In the six quotations below, can you see how the word has had origins that are fairly restrictive?

At first, the word is purely Greek for Greek men alone.  Aristotle is writing his Politics to show who the exemplary Greek men are (in geographic locations such as Crete); it's his effort to form a pan-Hellenic empire.  Secondly, then, and considerably later, Aristotle's Greek word becomes Jewish (or also Hebrew Hellene).  The Greek word becomes Jewish in appropriated translation.  It's a word that Jewish translators in Alexandria, Egypt, use.  (Alexandria is the namesake city of Alexander the Great.  Alexander the Great is Aristotle's disciple.  Egypt was also the pre-Alexandrian empire, where a tribe of Jews became the 12 tribes and eventually became the imperial slaves of the Egyptian Pharaohs and even slaves of the general Egyptian population).  So, back in Egypt, now under the Greek empire of Alexander, the Jews translating their holy history will and do appropriate the Greek word.  Finally, we fast-forward to the days of the Roman empire and see the Greek word expanding in meanings from its earliest uses.  We see this now in the Jewish new writings of the first century, but - in the first century here - only in the writings of Luke the writer of the gospel and of the Book of Acts and only in the Book of Hebrews (written anonymously) and only in the writings of Paul.  Below are some writings of Paul, to "Jews" and to "Greeks" [but not to "Romans"], in Rome.  Paul writes in Greek [not in the imperial language Latin].  Paul is a Jew [but he's also a Roman citizen] and also a proponent of Jesus-as-Messiah to the Jew first and then to the Greek, to the nations that eat unkosher foods and offerings made to idols and gods and goddesses.  He opens up the uses of the Greek word explicitly to "the nations," also known as "gentiles" or "the goyim."

So, that's Part I, below.  Hope we can read these passages with all the care and attention they've earned.  Note, for example, what Aristotle tells men about women about abortion and infanticide.  Note how the priest Aaron, and his son, must be exclusively family and exclusively male in the family.  Note how Paul assumes certain classes of race and ignores some still.  Here, hear:



but in Crete the system is more communal, for out of all the crops and cattle produced from the public lands, and the tributes paid by the serfs, one part is assigned for the worship of the gods and the maintenance of the public services [λειτουργίας leitourgías], and the other for the public mess-tables, so that all the citizens are maintained from the common funds, women and children as well as men; and the lawgiver has devised many wise measures to secure the benefit of moderation at table, and the segregation of the women in order that they may not bear many children, for which purpose he instituted association with the male sex, as to which there will be another occasion to consider whether it was a bad thing or a good one.

--Aristotle,

Book II (1272a line 20)

The Politics

translated by Harris Rackham

from Greek to English

And pregnant women also must take care of their bodies, not avoiding exercise nor adopting a low diet; this it is easy for the lawgiver to secure by ordering them to make a journey daily for the due worship of the deities whose office is the control of childbirth. As regards the mind, however, on the contrary it suits them to pass the time more indolently than as regards their bodies; for children before birth are evidently affected by the mother just as growing plants are by the earth.  As to exposing or rearing the children born, let there be a law that no deformed child shall be reared; but on the ground of number of children, if the regular customs hinder any of those born being exposed, there must be a limit fixed to the procreation of offspring, and if any people have a child as a result of intercourse in contravention of these regulations, abortion must be practised on it before it has developed sensation and life; for the line between lawful and unlawful abortion will be marked by the fact of having sensation and being alive. And since the beginning of the fit age for a man and for a woman, at which they are to begin their union, has been defined, let it also be decided for how long a time it is suitable for them to serve [λειτουργεῖν leitourgeīn] the state in the matter of producing children. For the offspring of too elderly parents, as those of too young ones, are born imperfect both in body and mind, and the children of those that have arrived at old age are weaklings.

--Aristotle,

Book VII (1335b line 28)

The Politics

translated by Harris Rackham

from Greek to English

And its sound shall be heard for Aaron in his ministering [λειτουργεῖν leitourgeīn], as he enters into the holy place before the Lord and comes out, lest he die.

--

The Exodus

Chapter 28 (verse 35)

the very 1st use of the Greek word for the Hebrew Bible

translated into Greek by an unnamed translator

translated into English by Larry J. Perkins

And Aaron and his sons shall wear them, whenever they enter the tent of witness or whenever they come near to the altar of the holy place to minister [λειτουργεῖν leitourgeīn], and they shall not bring onto themselves sin, lest they die: a perpetual precept for him and his seed after him.

--

The Exodus

Chapter 28 (verse 43)

the 2nd of perhaps 160 uses of the Greek word for the Hebrew Bible

translated into Greek by an unnamed translator

translated into English by Larry J. Perkins

... I write boldly to remind you,
Because of grace that God has given me
To be a servant [λειτουργὸν leitourgon] of Mashiah Yeshua
To gentiles in the holy governance
Of all good news of God so that this offering
To gentiles be acceptable to him
And sanctified by the holy spirit.

--Shaul/Saul/Paul,

Romans

Chapter 15 (verses 15 and 16)

1 of around 15 uses of the Greek word for the New Testament

translated into English by Willis Barnstone 

Now I am going to Yerushalayim
And labor in the service of the saints.
Makedonia and Ahaia with kindness
Have offered their funds to help the poor saints
In Yerushalayim.  They agreed to do this,
And feel themselves indebted to these saints,
For since the gentiles share in spiritual matters,
They also are obliged to share [λειτουργῆσαι leitourgēsai] with them
Materially.  When I have done all this
And sent them the fruit of my work, I'll go
For Spain, stopping on route to visit you.
I know that when I come to be with you,
I'll come with the Mashiah's full blessing.

--Shaul/Saul/Paul,

Romans

Chapter 15 (verses 25 - 29)

1 of around 15 uses of the Greek word for the New Testament

translated into English by Willis Barnstone 

That Issue, of Representation

Just a couple of quotations or so.  First, although we in the west tend to speak in terms of categories, that are binary, as if they are natural, our practices are ancient, going back to the man Aristotle, who profoundly believed that females naturally were inferior to males.  Second, from Aristotle to a bit more recently Ferdinand de Saussure to Jacques Lacan to Sigmund Freud and even to Jacques Derrida, there has been this presumption of representation by language, as if language itself is naturally so binary, so that there's the signified and the signfier, or, in more personal terms, as if more objective terms, the observer and his subject observed by him.  But fortunately, we all know there's more than just these two, than just the "either/ or" possibility in language.  So third, there are linguists and literary theorists such as Hélène Cixous, who get us beyond the (male-ish, constructed-as-if-"natural") binary.

Cette transformation du discours littéraire en discourse scientifique - qui sera (du moins, pour la tradition occidentale) à peu près definitivement formulé par Aristote - résulta d'un effort immense et vraiment langagier des Présocratiques, et cet effort devait être accompagné d'un effort linguistique, des élaborations théoriques des relations complexes entre l'univers, la pensée et le language, et entre la langue et son usage.

--Ferdinand de Saussure,

"Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure"

Revue Suisse de Linguistique Generale

et

Société genèvoise de linguistique

.....In his own investigation of "the life of signs in society," [Ferdinand] de Saussure, the founder of modern linguistics, saw language as a binary system consisting of an arbitrarily related signifier (the sound) and signified (the concept). Jacques Lacan developed this concept of the nature of the sign as both arbitrary and diacritical, a fundamental concept of sexuality in Freudian psychology, into a psychoanalytic theory that has had great impact on feminist theory. Jacques Derrida argued from the basis of this arbitrary and diacritical nature of the sign that language is essentially indeterminate--that there is no origin of meaning--and that there is no prelinguistic self. Because the issue of gender is fundamentally an issue of representation, for feminists the study of signs has become the study of gendered signs, and the arbitrary and diacritical nature of the sign is the site where semiotics and feminism intersect.
.....Arbitrariness means that the relation between the sign and its referent is neither a necessary nor natural one. From here, we could argue against claims of an essential nature of woman, because woman as a sign is a constructed category. A complication that arises from this constructedness is that, because the recognition of women as a distinct social group was a founding moment for feminism, the arbitrariness of the sign at first seems to threaten a fundamental aspect of feminism, that is, its claim that there is a category called woman. But by denaturalizing the category, the arbitrariness of the sign opens up for analysis the many ways in which woman is constructed as subject within an oppressive system.
.....In its diacritical nature, the sign takes on its meaning only out of its difference from other signs. This meaning-making through difference has led to the insight that the categories of man and woman stand in diacritical relation to one another and, moreover, that this binary opposition is at the heart of language. Hélène Cixous argued that Western philosophy and literary thought is a series of male/female oppositions which, no matter the terms, always translate in a patriarchal value system into positive/negative. To this binary system, Cixous opposes a multiple, heterogeneous difference as the feminine.

--Mary Anne Stewart Boelcskevy,

"Semiotics,"

Encyclopedia of Feminist Literary Theory

edited by Elizabeth Kowaleski-Wallace

You Are A Radical Relativist!

In this post, I'd like to expose you: You are a radical relativist! Before you deconstruct me, take a look at yourself. Listen to your own language. Okay, I'll help you out: listen to mine. These are "true" statements, of mine:

1. I am a linguist.
2. I am a native speaker of Vietnamese.
3. I am a native speaker of English.
4. My Vietnamese is Southern Vietnamese; my southern Vietnamese is Saigonese; my saigonese is 5-toned only.
5. My English is Southern American English; my southern american english is Texan probably only less drawled than my maternal grandfather's.
6. Blue is not green.
7. Xanh is the Vietnamese word for blue and for green.
8. Xanh is xanh; xanh is not not xanh.
9. I am a fan of Bob Dylan's "Tangled Up in Blue."
10. I am someone who almost entitled this post "Tangled Up in Green."
11. Noam Chomsky is more clever than he thinks he is by creating his novel utterance: "Colorless green ideas sleep furiously."
12. "Colorless green" is still a color.
13. "Colorless green" is an illustration of much much more than just abstract grammar categories or than unbounded nonsensicalness otherwise.
    
14. The river I step into is still the same river.
15. A pile of grain is a heap.
16. You and I are much much more forgiving and forgiven than we can even imagine.
    
17. Abortion is murder.
18. Abortion is a woman's legal choice in the United States of America.
19. I am a feminist.
20. You are a radical relativist!

With these 20 statements, I'm trying to show that we all (yes, you and I also) use language to chunk up our reality. I've been reading comments from some of you at this blog this past week. Posting on Anne Carson writing on adjectives was only the beginning of my response.

We construct and we deconstruct our realities by language. Benjamin Whorf began talking about that. Brent Berlin and Paul Kay chatted about everyone else chatting about colors. Ed Sapir took it all further. Kenneth Pike even further. These guys are feminists. Now, I hear you all saying to me: No way. So I'm asking you, No way What? And most of you say, No way these fellows were women activists. They are linguists. And some of you linguists say, Yeah, and they are structuralists. And I ask, Did I say that?

You see what we're doing, don't you? We're not listening to each other! We're talking past one another. We're assuming linguistic categories differently. "Women, fire, and dangerous things," are not all the same thing in English we all agree until we start reading that huge book of George Lakoff. He is not a feminist but a feminist taunter, I say. And while you're choosing words with which to protest, I add: "And Ernst-August Gutt, whom bible translators are looking to today to appropriate so-called 'Relevance' Theory for their work, is not a feminist either." What? most of you reply while still thinking of how women like Claudia Camp and Frances Young can so easily not be the feminists that Phyllis Trible is.

You are thinking their positions, and your very own, are not radically relative. Right? You love your own language and how it chunks your own reality for you. You love to see how awfully my language chunks your own reality. Which is Reality. And so you say so really in the space of a blog comment box.

But, my friend, think again please. You are a radical relativist!

Take your letter A, and it's shape. Write it by hand. Type it by finger. Did you write it the same way each time? Now teach it to a NON-native speaker of English, your English. Teach the fundamental absolute shape of the letter A in your alphabet to a native speaker and writer of Chinese. What is it? Do you see how many many different shapes you allow? Just for lower case? What if you chose the other shape of upper case? What if you've worn out the letter A on your keyboard. Wh^t if you h^d to use a different ch^r^cter for the letter ^? Do you see how toler^nt you h^ve been? How rel^tive! You r^dic^l! You w^nt your Chinese friend to underst^nd, don't you? Who t^ught you? Your mother? Your schoolte^cher? Remember how forgiving she was of you? Remember how forgiving you were of yourself?

---

My linguistics prof, Kenneth L. Pike, never called himself a feminist. Then again, he didn't call "emics" and "etics" what anthropologist Marvin Harris called these Pikean terms for "insider" and "outsider" perspectives. Pike was fascinated that scientists (the most rigid observers of all) could use variable language for "light." It's a "particle," it's a "wave," it's a "field." It depends on what's most useful. But Pike went beyond pragmatics. He'd always say, "person above logic." "Logic is formalism." "Persons and persons choosing radically relative perspectives are always above and prior to the formal rules they choose." "Okay, language may have some of the formal properties Noam Chomsky perceives it has, but language is also N-dimensional. N is infinite. We people are infinite in our choosings." Pike also told us his students of a moment when he was a student: One of his teachers one day was trying to overcome Plato's problem when he declared to the class, "What we really need in language is for one word to have one and only one meaning." (The teacher, I think, had been reading too much of Aristotle - but that is my aside to this little story.) Pike tells us his students how he responded to this teacher of his: "But sir," he protested, "how then would we learn language." Do you see how radical a question (how rhetorical!) it is?! Pike knows that learning language depends on it's N-dimensionality. If language for everyone is always and only chunked exactly the same way, then how will our mothers teach us? We need adjectives to modify our nouns. We need metaphors to give nuance to construct differently our worlds. Pike loved to quote Nelson Goodman saying, What we need is "radical relativism within rigid restraints." What most of us want to imagine most of the time (and it is absolutely pure imagination) is that there must only be rigid restraints. Thank God you are a radical relativist!

hidden English "man" of a woman's heart?

But
OOOO that Shakespeherian Rag--
It's so elegant
So intelligent
. . .
There is always another one walking beside you
Gliding wrapt in a brown mantle, hooded
I do not know whether a man or woman
--But who is that on the other side of you?

What is that sound high in the air
Murmur of maternal lamentation
Who are those hooded hordes swarming
(from T. S. Eliot, "The Waste Land")

Suzanne has another compelling post up: this one on the question of whether "the Greek word anthropos, when used for an individual, always refers to a 'male human being'." She quotes from and reviews and offers a counterexample to a statement in Michael Marlowe's "The Ambiguity of 'Anthropos'".

I want to draw attention to another troubling statement in Marlowe's essay, his conclusion:

The usage of words relating to gender and humanity in the Greek language are no less "sexist" than the ordinary English usages which feminists have been trying to abolish for 30 years now, and this may be seen clearly enough in the case of the word anthropos. It is also evident that [. . . writers] have confused the issue with specious arguments about Greek words and linguistics are merely distracting us from the fact that the "inclusive language" debate has to do not with Greek but with our English words and their meaning, and the recent attempts to reform our English usage along politically correct lines. On this question of English usage the professors of Greek have no more authority than any layman who is acquainted with the English language.

I'm so glad Marlowe tries to move the discussion away from "professors" to "any layman" and from ancient "Greek" to our shared "English." We should notice that he himself has a "bachelor's degree in English Literature" and in "the biblical languages. . . the MA degree." I wonder what he thinks of what the man T. S. Eliot is doing with our English language in "The Waste Land." Yes, let's get beyond this authority, this alleged sexism in common English.

So, if we just consider the English language that we all share as lay-men, then is the question of gender in our shared ordinary vocabularies really something that deconstructive "feminists" are abusing and are challenging only "along politically correct lines"? As I asked in my previous post, do men challenging a woman and her language really "hear her"? But do they actually "hear her feel"?

I'm challenging "any layman who is acquainted with the English language" to hear what the (woman) writer Nancy Mairs feels. This is from pages 86-87 of her voice lessons: On Becoming a (Woman) Writer. In this conclusion to her chapter, "Essaying the Feminine: From Montaigne to Kristeva," Mairs starts a struggle, a stuttering adventure in communication with you using the language you know (ambiguous as it is) if you just stay with her:

As my groping here suggests, despite my instruction by a host of gifted feminist critics, I certainly don't yet have a clear vision of what woman's writing might be. Pace Jacques Lacan, I know the phallus is no transcendental signifier--nor transcendental anything else--but I don't know what my transcendental signifier is, if indeed there is any such thing, which I doubt, since the whole concept seems far too located to express my experience of the world. My "I" seems simply not to be the male-constructed "I.": It is more fluid, diffuse, multiplex (giddy, duplicitous, and inconstant, I think men have called it). Maybe we need another sort of signifier for the female self--the "O" might be a logical choice, or rather a whole string of Os: OOOOO. That's me.

The fact of the matter, though, is that when I sit down at my desk to tell a story, I can't begin, "OOOOO woke this morning to the song of a cardinal in the fig tree outside the back door." Radical feminist writers like Monique Wittig and Mary Daly experiment with techniques for reinventing reality by exploding patriarchal linguistic patterns. But in passages like this one--

The Powers to break the framers' frameworks are within women. Dis-Covering our Lust of Be-ing, we can easily swing open the doors to our freedom. We work to attain the Prudence of Prudes, the Courage of Crones, the Distemper of Dragon-identified Fire-breathing Furies. Furiously focused, we find our Final Cause.

--all those hyphens and capital letters and puns and alliterations give me a wicked case of intellectual indigestion, and after twenty pages I'm too dyspeptic to go on. If I want to speak plainly to you about particulars--and I do, more than anything else--I must use the language that I know you know.

I want a prose that is allusive and translucent, that eases you into me and embraces you, not one that baffles you or bounces you around so that you can't even tell where I am. And so I have chosen to work, very, very, very carefully, with the language we share, faults and all, choosing each word for its capacity, its ambiguity, the space it provides for me to live my life within it, relating rather than opposing each word to the next, each sentence to the next, "starting on all sides at once . . . twenty times, thirty times, over": the stuttering adventure of an essay.