12,579. RUDIMENTS, pt. 971

RUDIMENTS, pt. 971

(just too much magic stuff)

Another idea, in line with

this linguistics stuff, that

always fascinated me was,

when I lived up Elmira way,

there were two other small

towns some few miles off.

Their names were fascinating,

and I'm sure there are many

more like this  -  but think

of the lost magic of what

I'm about to show. Each town,

the town origination stories

went, had been named by

settlers, supposedly, who

used the firs things they

saw, defining the area, and

made that the name. What

it all meant to me, of course,

was the usual balderdash.

Local natives (what we still

call 'Indians') would probably

have referred to this as, say,

'Wo-Wo-Kena-Towa, then

meaning 'High Land of the

Raging Waters.' Interesting.

Vivid. Descriptive. What

then do the settlers call these

places  -  dull, ungracious,

blowhard thick-skulls as

they may have been? They

name one town 'Painted Post,'

(because that's what they found

there, an old, Indian, direction

post in the ground, decorated)

and they named the other

town 'Horseheads,' because

it had been an area where the

local natives dumped off the

remnant-carcass bones of

their dead horses. Both of

these towns still exist, and

you're welcome to look them

up or visit. Other than the

inconvenience of being

called a 'Painted Poster,'

the local inhabitants of

that town seem quite happy

with it. But, really, how dull.

And what niche does this

fill in the linguistic travelogue

of words to ideas and cultures?

I think people name their cars

and motorcycles with better

pet-names than these. And

especially when set alongside

the deeply wondrous versions

the indigenous natives had.

Their weak and paltry languages

(?) had more descriptive fancy

and power in one letter than

did the stupid Americanski

versions of the world.

-

It's just reflective of all else.

The St. James Hotel, for instance;

if you tried that today some nitwit

would be jumping all over about

the name bearing a too-religious

reference or something. So,

instead, we get weird crap like

The Renaissance Omni Hotel,'

and no one blinks. Man, you lose

control of that sort of stuff, and

you're sunk. Call up a linguist

on that one. What sort of word

usage is that? Omni? And they

just roll right into it, people do,

without any thought. Weddings

and reunions  -  'Oh, we're using

the Renaissance Omni...' I don't

think so. I don't care if your

working language has a mere

2,000 words, if they're not

based on good, solid, real

premises, they're not worth

much  -  and I grant you, the

idea of 'Painted Post,' and

'Horseheads,' in that context

doesn't sound so bad; at least they

did 'describe' something real,

like Old Mine Road or Apple

Grove Lane. BUT, up against

those great and powerful Indian

names, in that wondrous

tongue scoffed at by

linguists, it pales.

-

Actually, Linguistics didn't get

started util about 1904 as a

'serious' science. Plus, it kind

of defined itself, there being

up until that time mo need for

that sort of deep, sociologic and

anthropologic digging for the

roots of dialects, etc. About that

time, much of everything had

already been discovered, and

too many questions were being

heaved about and left  unanswered.

The great yawning chasms of the

burgeoning universities and

science schools and the like were

raring at the bit to get started on

some new form of identifying

what was around us : where had

language come from? Was it

engrained in people's make-up,

genetically were we disposed

to communicate in these ways?

(Hello there, Noam Chomsky).

How did societies evolve into

the piles of words and languages

we have today, and exactly what

is being communicated anyway?

That was fine enough, but the

immediate problem, then as now,

was that the starting point taken

was always of the primal superiority

of the Western World, called as

Indo-European culture, which

we live. Supposedly. I saw all

that as leaving out the ancient

world, all the Sanskrit and

origination myths and dramas

which had told of all these things,

and in very strange, alien-based

ways, millennia ago, thousands

of years back. There was an

Indian guy I'd gotten to know,

(Asian Indian, from India),

who was a Vedic scholar. He

lived at the beginning of Conduit

Way, just of Inman, in Colonia.

Heavily accented, here a few

years, he was the head of some

Vedic Scholar Society and a

Sanskrit and ancient India

language expert too. His last 
name was Sastri, and his first 
name, I now forget, was one of 
those usual Asian Indian names
with like 14 letters, long, used

to do the printing account for

his societies, and learned a lot

of really bizarre stuff from him;

all those ancient territories and

the magnificent trails they led

through. I was always awed,

and there's not much older on

this Earth than some of that

very ancient Vedic origination

stuff : tales and stories of

creation, landings, Gods, and

beings from distant places,

being upon this ancient Earth;

fomenting ancient and primitive

Humankind, ape-like or not, to

embody energies to communicate

(firstly, with them; then with each

other, to form societies, etc.); to

produce agriculture (which original

Humankind knew nothing about).

The earliest places of social life

on this Earth  -  for purposes of

getting the 'Gold'  -  from deep

underground, but for them, not

us. They needed it, wherever it

was they came from and went to.

Races were created to mine this.

They made us, and all this, into

what we have, led us to talk and

communicate, travel and settle.

Global-wide, it went on; not

just in the Mideast or the Indian

subcontinent. In fact, most of

it was southern Africa. I was

totally intrigued with this line

of though  -  thinking seemed to

circle around 'language,' in an

odd manner, as something that 

we used, as humans, to make

our own recognition of this

Reality for itself off as real.

Ancient viewpoints had it that,

without language, our 'Reality'

didn't exist. That was pretty

stark, but it resonated and, yes,

a deep-down part of me knew

I'd heard it before. Somewhere.

The voice in my head then

began going off  -  I realized

what all those cave-paintings

and weird images were; ancient'

man, defining his world, giving it

shape and name and recognition.

(I'd suppose there were women

around too, yes, females of the 

same species, as artists and 

thinkers, yet, as well, I'm pretty 

sure our gender distinctions, as

we now know them to exist, 

did not exist. The dynamics of 

creative thought and power are 

sexless and quite different).
-
This is part two
-part three follows-