My friend Yoden writes about the Canadian writer Anne Carson in his blog (http://yo-den.blogspot.com) and quotes some wonderful short pieces called "short talks." I can't resist the temptation of copying one of them.
"Short Talk On Walking Backwards"
My mother forbad us to walk backwards. That is how the dead walk, she would say. Where did she get this idea? Perhaps from a bad translation. The dead, after all, do not walk backwards but they do walk behind us. They have no lungs and cannot call out but would love for us to turn around. They are victims of love, many of them.
Woof. Some strong stuff here. At least three instances fascinate me. Mother's prohibition quoting the custom of the dead, the narrator's reasoning by "bad translation," And the dead's having no lungs.
Anne Carson is a scholar of Ancient Greek (now a professor at the U of Michigan). No wonder she has such unusual association of things!
