Message à caractère informatif

Hier je n'ai même pas pensé à mon blog!
Et cette semaine je n'aurai pas le temps de toute façon, car Chloé et moi partons demain pour le congrès des études inuit à Paris. Donc c'est la panique habituelle, mais au moins j'aurai des choses intéressantes à raconter à mon retour: ça changera!
Bon je retourne préparer le couscous Garbit (très nordique, comme plat), et hop, au travail.


Et coucou Papa et Maman!

The abominable yet

Chloé and I are in the middle of a work session:
C "Listen to this: in my thesis I cited Foucault, and then I said 'yet, blah blah blah'. Can you believe I dared say yet about Foucault?"
D "You yetted Foucault?!"
C "I did. I yetted Foucault."

Lo and behold, the verbalized version of conjunction "yet" was born.

C "what's more, I used Thomas Wharton to yet Foucault and he doesn't even know it."
D "wait until he reads it from my blog. Now that I think of it, in my own thesis I yetted Sherrill Grace and the whole postcolonial theory."
C "well, that's something, too."

Nonsensicality

I find that the most preposterous and fictional concept we have yet invented is that of nonfiction. And there is hardly any we believe in more... actually, our whole civilization is based on a twisted definition of reality!
I'm going to eat a cookie, now.

Food nut

I have just read somewhere that US Thanksgiving will be on November 23rd. So I have a month to figure out how to cook a pumkin pie. It shouldn't be too difficult. Corn on the cob is definitely easy, we had some for Canadian Thanksgiving. Everyone loved it! The brownies were delicious, too. The whole meal was great.
......I'm rambling about food again, aren't I?

Le côté politique de la force...

En général j'évite de me prononcer sur des sujets aussi complexes que l'Afrique du Nord et la France, parce que je n'ai jamais travaillé sur ces problèmes.

Cela étant dit, je conseille la lecture de cet article. Il faut le prendre comme un parti pris, mais ça peut être un bon début de réflexion par rapport à Indigènes. Si quelqu'un trouve un autre son de cloche (à part celui, plus neutre, qui se contente de dire que le visa de Jamel a été refusé sans raison officielle), je suis preneuse, car je n'ai rien trouvé.
SI ce que suggère l'article d'Afrik.com est vrai, on aura de quoi s'énerver.

Sinon je reste sceptique sur l'approche de France 2 du problème, qui relègue la nouvelle du refus de visa dans la catégorie "potins de stars" de son blog:
-- soit ils décident de pousser le binarisme (méchants français/gentils algériens) au maximum, quitte à ne surtout pas se mouiller (une enquète qui remettrait en cause la crédibilité des autorités algériennes risquerait de gâcher l'impact du film, ce qui est un point de vue presque défendable),
-- soit la "peoplisation" de la politique et de l'histoire n'a officiellement plus aucune limite.

The lute connection

Obviously I'm not the only one who feels connected to the Elizabethan age (1575-2006). Sting (Songs from the Labyrinth) does too. Do I feel particularly connected to Sting, now? No. International stardom makes him even more remote than 16C lute players.
I do like the new album, though.

Beowulf is good for you

This post comes as a sort of answer to Matt's post Literary Oddities

Beowulf I first heard of in 1st year, in "Introduction to English Literature". We were a group of maybe 200 or 150 students, at least half of which had no idea what they were doing there (anybody can get into college in France, they don't check on anything. Besides, it's very cheap).

When the teacher -- who is a great medievalist -- started with Beowulf, reading the part about his death in Old English, I heard rumblings of discontent rising. Someone said Old English is not English, so what was the point of all that? I had no friends in college at that time so I didn't exclaim how cool I thought it was, for fear of being hanged there and then by my fellow students. After the lecture, I did spot one student who seemed to think it was great, too. I think she was talking to the teacher, or something.

The exact same thing happened with Thomas More and Utopia. Since it was first published in Latin, rumblings again, "what's the point" again... except I was the one spotted by that other student talking with the teacher after the lecture. Of course, the student was Chloé.

Light, air and water

I've just read this post: Environment r us and it made me want to post this:

(Delphine, Laquet sous le col de Lanserlia, devant la Dent Parrachée, Haute-Maurienne, 31 Aout 2006)

Doors and seeds

In Graham Greene's The Power and the Glory, the narrator says "there is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in." The idea is that you're not the one who opens the door, it opens itself without your being aware. And you can only know in retrospect. What I would add is that not one door but many open throughout your lifetime.

The last major door I'm aware of opened in 2nd year, about five years ago. I say "door" but if its appearance depends on the impact it has on your life, then I should call it a portal. First semester of 2nd year we had a course about the British Empire. It was long and difficult because we had to learn about the simultaneous histories of Ireland, South-Africa, India and Canada (there was no Australian studies specialist at the time). That was my first glimpse into Canadian history.

During the same semester we had a literature class in which we studied Alice Munro's Lives of Girls and Women, and Kazuo Ishiguro's An Artist of the Floating World. We were all divided into groups for this class, and the teacher I ended with was Claire Omhovère -- the big Canadian studies specialist there (she wrote her thesis on Robert Kroetsch). She told us about art, about paintings, about words, about what it means to create, about the world you can see in just one work if you learn how to look. She planted so many questions, so many seeds in our little brains, that to this day I still feel the consequences of that class.

During the second semester, my friend Chloé and I received an email by that teacher, telling us she had invited a Canadian author for a reading, and he'd make an appearance in her 3rd year class before the reading, and would we be interested to come? We naive little students couldn't believe our luck. The teacher we admired so had remembered us, and we would get to meet a Canadian author. So of course we went to the 3rd year class, whose students didn't seem much impressed or enthusiastic. Or maybe that's just because we were insanely impressed and enthusiastic. Anyway that's how we "met" Thomas Wharton, whom I hope now we didn't scare. Thankfully we were way too shy to speak and talk nonsense. The reading was great too, he first talked about the process of writing Icefields, and then he read the first pages of Salamander. Both novels I read as soon as I could.

A couple of weeks later Claire Omhovère invited us to a colloquium where PhD students presented papers on their research. All in Canadian studies, of course. It was a very small group, and I think I was the only student who had come to just listen (Chloé was in England). I had lunch with them, and yet again, I couldn't believe my luck. They were all grown-ups to me, and I had no clue why the teacher would want me there. It is very clear now that she was simply making sure some of those seeds she had planted in my brain would have a chance to burgeon.

So the door that opened in 2nd year led me to choose Mme Omhovère's 3rd year class without a second thought. The name of the class was "Inarticulate Arctic." It was about explorers in Canada, Franklin's expeditions, travel writing, clichés in Robert Service's poems, Wiebe's A Discovery of Strangers, appropriating voices, Canadian postmodernism, and so on.

And see now the plant of research is slowly growing in that brain of mine.

Grog-gy

Highlight of my day so far:
Hot water, thyme (from my mother's garden), lemon, honey (from my grandmother's hives), green tea, and a twist of marsala (that I brought back from Italy in August). It tastes like heaven!

All is well...

Yesterday night, 9 pm, as Chloé and I were having dinner:
D "oh"
C "oh what?"
D "oh, my throat is slightly sore on one side."
C "and that means...?"
D "that means I may come down with a pharyngitis or something"
C "oh that so wouldn't be the right time!"
D "well it would be typical of me: the week I have to work both on the "agreg" and on my research, I have to fall ill. I mean with all the work I have to do, it wouldn't be half as fun if I didn't end up stuck in bed, would it? Anyway I hope it's not going to happen."
C "you should take care of it right away"

Right now: I have a sore throat (all of it), I'm aching all over, and my head feels heavier than the rest of my body. Stuck in bed, I am. Chloé called and said "take care of it right away. If you don't it'll get worse and worse and I'll have to carry you to the conference next week. Sleep at least all day today and all day tomorrow." And I promised I would.

She will give me the third degree when she finds out I took the time to write this post.

I think my IQ is back to what it was in 1983:

1575-2006

The highlight of my day is related to a bishop who lived in France from 1513 to 1593: Messire Iacqves Amyot, Evesqve d'Avxerre. He was not just a bishop, he translated the works of Plutarch from ancient Greek to French (the man must have gotten up very early every day...). The "morals and philosophy" part of the works was published in 1572 and again in 1575.

Not four hundred years later, an original copy of the second edition found its way - almost by accident - into my family on my mother's side. It is a huge, thick, leatherbound book in a fairly good state. It is gorgeous.

And today, during my first class about Shakespeare's Coriolanus, the teacher told us how Jacques Amyot's translations - though not the same part, actually - are the main source of the play, through the English translator North, who used the French version. You have no idea what it felt like, hearing the teacher and thinking "God, one of these books is in my family, it's an heirloom!" Next time I open it, I'll be thinking "Shakespeare was eleven when this was published."

Somehow I didn't expect to feel strongly connected to the sixteenth century today when I got out of bed this morning.

Autumnal Nancy

My father took this picture last April. He was standing on the place Stanislas outside the Musée des Beaux Arts bookstore, and I was inside, looking out. I "autumnized" the picture with Photoshop. I love the reflection on the window.

The place Stanislas webcam.

Carrot purée

Several things I feel happy about right now:

- my big - and only - brother has a job. A job he likes, after three years of unemployment. He is an engineer.

- I love what I do. Even linguistics and phonology. I only hate that it is a competitive exam and so few of us will pass.

- Tomorrow I'll be working all day on a paper about Atanarjuat, Van Dyke's Eskimo and Inuit orality. My friend Chloé will be working on "Echoing Inuit voices: the indigenization in Postmodern Canadian Arctic Literature." -- We're taking part in the 15th International Inuit Studies Conference. Quite intimidating for two little, inexperienced students like us, I can tell you.

- I went to the local "Shopi" today after class, so tomorrow I can cook pasta and a chicken curry. Maybe I'll make cookies, too. I love my kitchen. I used to love carrot purée as well:

A.I.

The logic of amazon's response to an unsuccessful search bemuses (and amuses, which used to be the same) me. I am desperately looking for this film :

which is apparently not even out yet, or not in DVD anyway. I ask amazon.com for "ten canoes" and it suggests two things: a dvd of Nine Lives and a book called Canoe Paddles: A Complete Guide to Making Your Own. I pictured myself going for the dvd solely because its title is grammatically similar to the one I was looking for, and buying the book because I need something canoe-related to do while watching the film-with-the-nearly-right-name.

I suppose artificially intelligent devices are not ready to take over the world just yet.

Blog name

I've realized that I never explained where the title of my blog comes from. Besides, as I borrowed it from a novel without permission, maybe it could get me in trouble. I really don't know much about copyrights and ownership and all that. I'll add quotation marks to the title.

So, "from one lifetime to the next" comes from the first sentence of A Discovery of Strangers by Albertan writer Rudy Wiebe. The full sentence is "The land is so long, and the people travelling in it so few, the curious animals barely notice them from one lifetime to the next."

Wiebe's style is so fluid that you feel literally swept along. It is like a river of words. And like a river, it has depth, and rapids and falls. In this first sentence, there are at least three concepts borrowed from northern indigenous populations: the idea that the land is long -- and not wide --, as well as the animals' point of view, and the belief in several lifetimes.

To the Inuit, traditionally, elements are defined as being either linear or areal. Motionless objects or small expanses of land are areal because mentally you easily grasp their limits, and moving objects or vast expanses of land are linear because then what matters is the track the moving objects make. A vast territory is conceptualized as a sum of potential tracks and paths that link you to other objects. Therefore it is long.

As for the animal's viewpoint, it is simply the belief that there is no impervious boundary between earth and animals and human beings... so an animal has thoughts and a soul can travel from one species to the next, and it can do so from one lifetime to the next.

I don't know if it is clear or if I'm just carried away by my own enthusiasm!

Apollinaire et la guerre

14 juin 1915

On ne peut rien dire
Rien de ce qui se passe
Mais on change de Secteur
Ah ! voyageur égaré
Pas de lettres
Mais l'espoir
Mais un journal
Le glaive antique de la Marseillaise de Rude
S'est changé en constellation
Il combat pour nous au ciel
Mais cela signifie surtout
Qu'il faut être de ce temps
Pas de glaive antique
Pas de Glaive
Mais l'Espoir

Guillaume Apollinaire (1880 - 1918)

En haut c'est une photo du monument de la Butte de Chalmont, sculpté par Paul Landowski. On l'appelle communément "Les Fantômes". La photo est prise par beau temps, mais la pluie et le vent conviennent mieux à l'atmosphère du lieu.

Pour mieux comprendre le poème: la Marseillaise, de Rude.

Mailbox delivered books

Today I received two books. It made my day.
I knew they would arrive today and I paid for them, but really, a new book is always like a Christmas gift to me. I open the mailbox, standing on tiptoe because it is the top row of mailboxes, which always makes me feel like a kid. And there it is: the ugly, battered cardboard parcel waiting for me. It always looks as if it was dragged through the whole country, but all I care about is that the books are safe inside. I start tearing at it on my way back up, in the elevator. Usually, by the fourth floor -- where my appartment is -- the cardboard is nearly in shreds. My attitude would make more sense with, say a long-awaited letter from a friend. But books I ordered ?

Add-on

I re-read yesterday's post. It is... completely self-righteous! I won't erase it because I still mean what I said about the need for perspective, but I am aware that what each individual feels is personal and not always rational. I won't modify it either, because the process of calling oneself into question should be an end, not a means. So, mea culpa.

Much ado

People seem to have an extremely low pain tolerance when it comes to relationships.
Apparently, a break-up is necessarily traumatic, and it can only go from sad at best to violent and unbearable at worst. And wherever you end up on that scale, building a true friendship and thinking of the separation as a positive experience is simply not something a human being is able to do - along with growing wings and flying away or breathing underwater.
The only two options, it seems, are either hating and despising your ex, or spending your time worshipping an icon of him/her, both until you are "ready to move on," weeks, months, or years afterwards.

My aim is not to dwell on the specifics of my experiences, but I am starting to wonder which planet I come from. To me things happen when they must, and everything is always good, in the end.
It can be hard for several days, the time it takes you to "readjust" yourself to a new situation, to question what you thought to be true. But really, every single experience makes you learn about yourself, about others, so what is it with all the bitterness ? Why do so many people think that forgiving an ex is either weird or courageous ? It is nothing but the most relieving thing, it frees you from pain and anxiety and fear. It is a favor you do to yourself.

I suppose all the people who tell me that's impossible sacralize either their relationship or themselves. Or maybe it is plain fear of being alone. But come on, death, illness, accidents, loss, violence: there is more than enough to worry about in this world, without waiting for years before "moving on" after a relationship. Life is not going to wait, is it ?

Someone even told me once I was emotionless (!). I think maybe I just come from Planet Perspective...

Ben Akeeagok

The picture is staring at me.
But I know it isn’t. The subject who once (whenever) posed for that picture (wherever) is now somewhere living his life, unaware of my scrutiny/me.

I find that a photograph inescapably entails a dislocation of time and place. Somehow the continuum is shattered by representation, for it does feel like the subject will be looking forever into the lens, straight at me, when in fact I am the one looking. Such a reversal. And does not feeling something make that “something” real? I know that's a bit far-fetched, and the meditation could go on forever.
The truth behind it all is that the beholder that I am feels comforted in her loneliness by the delusional feeling of reciprocity the portrait affords. Self-deception is a mighty drug.


[The picture: Karim Rholem. Uvattinnit: le peuple du Grand Nord = The People of the Far North. Trans. Donald Smith and Brigitte Vincent-Smith. Montréal: Alain Stanké, 2001. 53.]

What the w-

the wondering,

the wandering,

the wending,

the winding

Canoeda

What do you do, when you live in France and you have a deep spiritual attachment to Canada? You hang on to such events as Canadian Thanksgiving. So tonight we are organizing a humble meal that will imitate - but not mimic - Thanksgiving in Canada. We are exiled from a country we never lived in! Not that France isn't my home, but Canada is a part of me, now. That part of me is certainly a biased, distorted Canada : after all the first and last time I went there was during a 9 day long canoe trip, and the only people I met were two rangers I came across in the middle of the woods while carrying a canoe on my head. Mosquitoes, loons, eagles and squirrels, lakes and rocks and woods are my Canada.

Et pis stolaire

J'ai enfin retrouvé le mail que j'avais envoyé à un ami il y a quelques années. Comme je m'étais donné du mal, je décide - arbitrairement, mais c'est mon blog - qu'il a sa place ici. Trois quatrins en alexandrins, rimes en AABB, et question formée par les majuscules...

Si vous avez tenté de me faire plaisir,
Ou bien plus simplement provoquer un sourire;
Remerciements mon cher et félicitations,
Sans la moindre ironie je vous donne raison:

Toute peine envolée, et l'ego satisfait,
Une vive réponse j'ébauche d'un trait,
Car enfin je me sais quelque peu endettée
Et ne saurais ma foi ne point m'en acquitter.

Si donc au Mediéval ou tout autre commerce
Où l'on trouve à trinquer, sans aller jusqu'en Perse,
Il se peut, ce soir même, que vous me rejoigniez;
Relisez cette lettre et veuillez m'appeler.

Beware: impious utterance ahead

*reading an essay in Imaginary Homelands*

*sigh*
You know, Salman Rushdie is one of the senior gods in my own secret personal religion - whose dogma is mainly the belief in the almightiness of wit.

Quand on parle du loup...

Voici l'extrait d'un article paru dans un numéro spécial de L'Histoire, "Dieu au Moyen Age"... Attention, c'est passionant!!

--- Au XIIe siècle, comme l'a montré Jacques Le Goff, surgit une littérature populaire portée par l'expansion de la petite chevalerie. Parviennent à l'écrit des récits auparavant occultés, des mots jusque-là déshonnêtes. Ainsi se fixèrent les traces du "voyage" dans la culture populaire et dans la langue du Moyen Age classique, comme par exemple la fée Mélusine. Elles dessinent l'ombre des rituels anciens.
Dans la culture, l'empreinte la plus surprenante est la comptine Am stramgram, venue du nord-est de l'Europe. Elle était si évidente qu'elle a échappé aux inquisiteurs. On y entend pourtant le rythme saccadé du tambour chamanique :"Emstrang Gram, Bigà bigà ic calle Gram, Bure bure ic raede tan, Emstrang Gram", avec le cri final, "Mos!" Elle porte l'incantation qui fait venir le loup sorcier :"Toujours-fort Grain, Viens donc viens, j'appelle Grain, Surviens car je mande au brin, Toujours-fort Grain. A manger ! ". Le brin (tan), c'est la baguette des sorts à qui la tourneuse commande. La nourriture, c'est la voyante elle-même qui s'offre. Grain, en norois Gram ou ManaGarm, c'est "Grain de la Lune", le loup céleste, étoile du soir qui poursuit l'astre au crépuscule. L'ancêtre de notre loup des fabliaux, Isengrin, brutal et glouton.
La suite du loup, l'armée volante des morts, on la voyait passer dans les cieux d'orage : en France du Nord-Est, voici la mesnie Hellequin, "le parent de Helle", le loup; dans le Jura, la chasse d'Hérode, Herrad, "la chevauchée de l'Armée"; dans l'Ouest, la chasse Gallery, Wal-here, "l'armée du Wal". Croyances, mais aussi dangereux charivaris des mâchurés qui se grimaient de suie en criant "haro", "hourvari", Here, Horwere, "Armée", "Garde au Gris" !
Des traces du vieux vocabulaire du voyage s'attardaient dans la langue avant que la Renaissance ne la relativise. Le chasseur trollait, il allait çà et là en cherchant la trace, comme l'avide troll scandinave ou la voyante en chasse dans les airs ; trollier était aussi "charmer" et troille "illusion", magie de troll. L'anglais avait trollop/troll-hlaup, "saute-troll" qu'on traduit "une salope", la tourneuse qui appelle le loup pour qu'il la mange et fait d'hystériques galipettes. ---

(Jean-Pierre Poly. "'Am stram gram...' La chevauchée des chamanes." L'Histoire - Spécial : Dieu au Moyen Age 205 (Janvier 2006): 60-63.)

L'autre jour je disais qu'on n'a pas de contes dignes de ce nom, mais evidemment c'est faux. Ce qu'il nous manque, c'est l'habitude de conter et de re-conter. Du coup on oublie jusqu'à l'existence même de la mine d'histoires qui a animé l'imaginaire de nos "ancêtres" (ancêtres pour désigner très largement les hommes qui ont vécu ici avant nous... pas "nos ancêtres les gaulois"). Ce n'est pas une expression de nostalgie ou de défaitisme que de dire ça, après tout nous avons notre propre folklore aussi riche, je suis persuadée, que n'importe quel autre. Mais rien n'empêche de récupérer plus souvent des croyances/contes/fantaisies, quitte à les transformer. Après tout les histoires sont aussi malléables que de l'argile. Et puis il nous reste plus qu'on ne le pense: avec Am stram gram c'est frappant - tout le monde connait ce chant, tout le monde l'a rangé quelque part dans sa tête, et soudain on prend conscience que c'est quelque chose qui nous lie à un temps et à un savoir populaire "passé", et qui nous lie entre nous (nous tous qui partageons cette incantation).

En somme le pouvoir des mots n'est pas perdu (du tout), mais nous n'en avons plus conscience, et notre mémoire collective flanche, sans doute parce qu'on la met toute entière à contribution pour apprendre "quand le pape truc a excommunié le roi machin" (en quatrième), "quel général commandait les troupes lors de je ne sais quelle bataille" (en terminale), "comment se déroule la reproduction des écrevisses" (en cinquième).
Durant toute la scolarité, on nous mâche et prédigère des masses hétérogènes de détails qu'on oublie au fur et à mesure, la conséquence logique du gavage étant la régurgitation. Mais quand nous enseigne-t-on que chaque mot a une histoire qui peut nous en apprendre plus sur nous-même et sur notre façon de penser le monde que n'importe quel compilation de faits ? Jamais, ou alors bien plus tard en fac pour les spécialistes du langage (c'est à dire pas grand monde).
Donc comme des oies gavées, on n'apprend ni l'intérêt du débat d'idées ni celui de la curiosité intellectuelle. D'où le nombre d'étudiants qui, à force d'attendre le bec grand ouvert leur grain habituel, protestent et s'indignent dès qu'il est question de reflexion pure.

Alors que tout est là, à portée de mots.

Not the usual hobby

Today is saturday, and I had no "agrégation" class planned, so I should have been doing homework all day, or at the very least, rested at home. Instead I spent it on campus in a seminar for Master students - not the usual hobby, mind you. I know I should postpone anything related to research for when I am a teacher in a year or so, but I can't help myself. A six-hour-long seminar on orientalism and postcolonialism called Tropes and territories, supervised by my "coach-teacher" Mrs Claire Omhovère, is simply not something I can ignore.
So I went, and it was... entrancing. Well, very challenging and very entrancing. And I realized that research is quite like mountain hiking: it's long, arduous, sometimes nearly unbearable and you wonder if you are ever going to make it to the top, but you invariably have the unbounded satisfaction to know that no one else could have done it for you.

Did I mention that I miss it very much?

Self-whatever

Today a very good friend of mine casually asked if I am okay "because you have looked somewhat down lately." First I was quite puzzled, since I actually feel quite good, apart from, maybe, a general lack of sleep. But even then, it could be a lot worse. So that's what I replied of course. And my friend said "fine, then, if you're sure you're ok. It was just an impression I had but I guess I was wrong."

But then - and I know it's going to sound silly - I truly started wondering whether I did feel good, and after a few minutes of introspection I came to the rather satisfying conclusion that I do. But it also means that I am so self-doubting that I can't even help taking into account the general impressions of friends (however close they may be) about my own state of mind. And then, pouring it all out on my blog like it was some significant thought may very well mean that I am also completely self-centered!

Or maybe I just like compound words with "self-," because we don't have those in french.

La création du soleil et de la lune

Donc voilà la petite histoire qui va avec cette image. C'est un des mythes de création de la lumière céleste chez les Inuit. Accord parental indispensable.

Il y a longtemps, un frère et sa soeur vivaient dans un grand village où il y avait une maison où l'on se rassemblait pour chanter et jouer, et chaque nuit la soeur et ses camarades de jeu s'amusaient dans cette maison. Alors que les lampes de la maison de jeu avaient été éteintes, quelqu'un entra et outragea la soeur. Elle ne put reconnaitre l'agresseur, mais elle noircit ses mains avec de la suie et lorsque l'agression se reproduisit, elle barbouilla de suie le dos de l'homme.
Quand on ralluma les lampes, elle vit que l'agresseur était son frère. En grande colère, elle affûta un couteau et se trancha les seins qu'elle lui offrit en disant: "Puisque tu sembles avoir du goût pour moi, mange." Le frère devint furieux, s'enfuit, en courant ici et là dans la pièce. Elle s'empara d'un morceau de bois (utilisé pour entretenir les lampes) qui brûlait vivement et se précipita hors de la maison. Le frère prit un autre morceau de bois, mais il chuta et sa lumière vacilla, ne continuant à luire que faiblement.
Petit à petit, le frère et la soeur s'élevèrent et continuèrent leur course dans le ciel, la soeur étant devenue Soleil et le frère Lune.

(Pour les habitués des références: Bordin, Guy. "A propos de la cosmogonie inuit." La Grande Oreille 22 (Dec. 2004) 31-36.)

Le soleil et la lune dans une course infinie! Et je viens de penser que la suie sur le dos du frère peut expliquer la face cachée de la lune... pourquoi on n'a pas des mythes comme ça, nous? "Dieu créa ceci", "Dieu créa cela".... pas franchement original. Pour nous, tout était organisé à l'avance, programmé, notre création du monde c'est de l'automatique. Chez les peuples "premiers" tout est accidentel: le monde, les animaux, la lumière, les hommes. Ils savent embrasser le chaos, eux!! Nous on pédale à contre-courant... c'est un autre style.

Bon évidemment c'est du traduit et c'est de l'écrit, donc ça transforme pas mal le produit en fin de chaîne, mais en l'occurence, le conditionnement sert à le rendre utilisable par les consommateurs ciblés: des occidentaux francophones... [hum, je me demande si le mélange anthropologie/ post-colonialisme/ marketing n'est pas pousser l'interdisciplinarité un peu TROP loin.]
Si un jour le temps est mis en vente, et je ne désespère pas, j'en achèterai pour faire des exercices de style à la Queneau avec des contes comme celui-là... J'en achèterai aussi pour faire de la cuisine, et du théatre. Mais c'est tout, parce que ça ne sera pas donné, et je ne veux pas acheter du temps pour travailler plus pour pouvoir en racheter plus. Après, si on m'en offre à Noël, je le garderai pour les voyages.

Les mots les mots les mots

"fundamentally, I mean", comme dirait Kroetsch (http://www.athabascau.ca/writers/kroetsch.html) *soupir d'admiration universitaire*... bref, je suis tombée pas par hasard du tout sur ce site xyloglotte: http://www.cledut.net/xylo.htm

Que du bonheur pour n'importe quel amoureux des mots. Sinon à un niveau purement studieux, voici l'inévitable en matière de dictionnaire en ligne, le Trésor de la Langue Française

Demain je raconte l'histoire qui va avec l'image...

Fifteen men...

...on a dead man's chest, yop la ho et une bouteille de rhum! (don't ask)