Scattered All Over the Earth

by Yōko Tawada

Most people’s handwriting isn’t fit for the eyes of a professional calligrapher, so what’s wrong with drawing pictures a real artist would consider worthless? Europeans must think of handwriting and drawing as two completely separate things. If not, why are they so ashamed of a lousy picture when their terrible handwriting doesn’t bother them at all?

I remember hearing about “illegal aliens” on TV as a child, thinking they must be bad people from some faraway country, and yet now, if my luck gave out, I myself would soon be illegal. When you think about it, since we’re all earthlings, no one can be an illegal resident of earth. So why are there more and more illegal aliens every year? If things keep on this way, someday the whole human race will be illegal.

My German friends all love to go for a walk and often ask me to come along. Not just for fifteen or twenty minutes, either. They’ll keep going for an hour at least, and in good weather as long as two without a rest. What’s more, about forty minutes into our walk a friend will finally open his heart to me and confess, “I broke up with my girlfriend”: without strong legs, you can’t even make friends in this country.

Pa was a half-hearted Christian with a blind faith in modern medicine, probably because he’d never been to the doctor.

I once read about a strange theory that says there are very few words you actually meet for the first time, that most of the new words you learn you’ve actually come across somewhere before, and they’ve left tiny nicks in your brain. When you see a word again the nick is activated. So when you learn a language you shouldn’t see it as something entirely new. You should tell yourself you’re remembering a language you used to speak a long time ago.

“Robots should look like robots,” he said. “Robots you can’t tell from human beings are old-fashioned, and dangerous besides. I don’t want innocent children to believe everything a robot says.” “What do you mean?” “The things robots say aren’t really words. They’re mathematical formulas.”