mother tongue
I got a buddy who lives in Shanghai. For all you South Enders, Shanghai’s in China. 20 million people. 5000 buildings over 30 stories tall. On the South End we don’t have 500 buildings — unless you count chicken sheds and outhouses too — and none of em are more than 2 stories, unless you count tall tales.
We forget sometimes how much the world off island is changing. My buddy visited recently. Brought his two teenage boys who must’ve thought they’d detoured to Mars. Ma was in the garden when they came and I was bending nails whacking together a shed trying to bring the building total up to 450. We sat around the house listening to stories of the New China. Had some homebrew and watched the homemade bread rise while the boys talked about learning Chinese — 2000 characters in their alphabet. For you South Enders, we got 26, even if some of you only use 20 or less.
They talked about pirated X-boxes, dollar DVD’s, the elaborate transportation system of Shanghai, the rural migration of the peasants into the cities which is larger by far than the Camano exodus into Stanwoodopolis. And I thought: we’re living in a backwash up a drying puddle at the end of a dead end road. I thought we’re becoming Anachronisms. For you South Enders, it means we’re living a drunkard’s dream.
Personally …. It’s why I came here. But I admit it’s jarring to realize how much the rest of the world has moved on and how, sooner or later the South End will be a fossil in the fading memories of all us old timers. And how, when the population swells and the high rise condos number in the thousands and it’s an easy subway ride to Seattle and Gomorrah’s teeming masses, we’ll be nothing but legends in our own minds, ghosts in gardens long ago paved over.
Til then though, we got our own work to do. Like wrestling with the language and maybe learning how to use all 26 characters. That, or start working on pictographs for bread kneading and whiskey distilling.
Hits: 28