Scattered All Over the Earth

by Yōko Tawada

“everything from yesterday disappears, then yesterday into long ago transforms.”

What does this mean?

Knowing all too well that when I start talking about language I get so excited I can’t stop, Dorethe quickly changed the subject.

People seem to think that paintbrushes are for a genius like Munch — ordinary people are embarrassed to even touch one. As they see no connection between art and skill, they think that no matter how good a person is at drawing, she shouldn’t do it unless she feels destined to be an artist.

if you just listen carefully to the people around you, picking out sounds, repeating them, feeling the patterns of the language as a rhythm that reverberates through your body while you’re speaking, eventually they’ll turn into a new language. A long time ago, most immigrants headed for one specific country and stayed there until they died, so they only had to learn the language spoken there. Now, when people are always on the move, our language becomes a mixture of all the scenes we’ve passed through on the way.

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.

“You can’t express deliciousness using the first person singular with a transitive verb,”

“First you become aware of the flavor, then you compare it with all your previous experiences, and finally, you connect it to the word ‘delicious.’” said Knut. “Since all that takes place in the brain, shouldn’t there be a linguistic form that matches the process?

languages can make people happy, and show them what’s beyond death.”

Even our brains change sex every second — depending on the book we’re reading, we become men or women.

wearing loneliness like a cardigan

Melancholy vowels dyed the air blue.

I was reading a book in which contemporary society was compared to a multitenant building. The tenants are not bound together by common ideals. While they share a desire to protect the building from fire, the inner sufferings of other tenants mean nothing to them.

This deterioration in the capacity for empathy is what keeps the multitenant building going. “You can never understand how a toilet feels until you yourself are a toilet,”

This is because I am wrapped in layers of cloth like a mummy, and if you unwind that cloth, you’d find nothing inside but a shriveled corpse.

“When the original no longer exists,” he said, “there’s nothing you can do except look for the best copy,”