I haven’t been writing on my blog past week. Became quite irregular. I guess – counting to something gives motivation to write everyday as well, and not counting just allows room for – let’s say – neglect. Even the word neglect is not rough enough to express the feeling of neglect in it. Perhaps Vernachlässigung is more brutally expressive than the fluttering négligence or the battering neglect.
Fine example of this is my conversation with Barwitzki. Where he asked if I am fine, as I was unwell most part of last week. The conversation move to his knees. And here’s where it ended:
Me: what did you do?
Barwitzki (sends me German Wikipedia page on an ailment. After a while he writes to me): Bursitis. How boring. Just Latin with a ridiculous little opera mask, pretending to be a germanic language. Real germanic languages bring all the sensual and sensoric aspects into the lexicon. Real germanic languages want others to know your suffering and pain just by listening to the technical term “Schleimbeutelentzündung” I see a barbarian, in front of his shaman, pointing at his knee and grunting: “Ziz iz my Schleimbeutel. Ziz is entzündet”. And the shaman noods and lectures him about the 87 different words for each kind of bruise, carbuncle, edema, swelling, hematoma, boil, ulcer and pustels in the German language. The main semantic aspect only being how much you intend to disgust your listener. The same barbarian, let’s call him Grimbold and give him a bit of Bavarian “habitus” might grunt: “If you needz inzpiration, describe all the colourz of my battle scarz.”
And that’s how German language is the best to define pain and misery, and it does it so flawlessly – without truly working hard to do so!
ANTHROPOLOGY OF LOVE 