Thursday, April 7, 2011

teaching english

i finished another class with adil at la maison de l'amitie, and it is often such a bizarre experience. teaching english estranges me from it, when i am asked to explain why "i have been left" is wrong but not "i have been gone," everything starts to sound wrong. the insane grammar i somehow internalized as a child starts leaking out of me, nipping at my sense of linguistic truth. its a kind of schizophrenia being with those students. There are people who became so cripplingly conscious of their tongue's acrobatics that they can no longer speak. i occasionally feel that way in class, as if i've been a priest giving a sermon in latin, or maybe as if i was a wizard who'd been casting spells all my life and suddenly realize i don't believe in or understand magic. what insanity when you can't take anything for granted, if we had to interrogate and justify the grammaticality of every sentence.

i have returned to blackader and i am so tired.

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