speaking many languages

[gurdonark]

I spent my morning in a business meeting with a fellow from another country. His English was imperfectly accented, but his understanding of American idiom was impeccable. I'm always amazed at how much English people from other places speak, since my schoolbook German stops a little way beyond all the basic phrases--"Where is the train?", and the like, and in both French and Spanish I know pretty much "where is the hotel", some basic menu items, "how much does it cost, please", "thank you", "hello" and "goodbye". My wife speaks rather good French, which makes our limited Euro travel a bit easier, but I am the proverbial Philistine (who cannot, for that matter, speak the language of the Philistines) when it comes to language.

When I returned to my office, the most wonderful thing was in my e mail. kenmora sent me the first draft for the cover for my novel, "Lonely Distance". He did an amazing job. It's far better than I ever imagined it would be. My book is a simple first person narrative about cyberspace "aloneness", disguised as a science fiction novel. Ken "got" exactly where I was going with it, and drew something right on point.

I thank those who participated in my first poll very much. Lately, I've had the feeling that my journal is getting a bit entrenched in the same themes. The poll responses gave me a set of new places to go, content-wise, and I intend to write an entry on each topic suggested in the coming weeks.

I liked doing a poll. I'll do another one in the near future, but for that one, I will make the answers available to all. This weekend I have many more holiday cards to send, and a few gifts to acquire. I may also have to work, and I definitely want to take a long walk in this rapturously warm winter weather.

Comments

[nickelchief.livejournal.com]

I liked filling out your poll. I'm immensely curious as to how others responded to it, so although I know you're wanting to keep the answers private, I hope to get a sense of some of the responses in your coming entries.

I don't know if this is at all relevant, but "The Habit of Being" is the title of a collection of Flannery O'Connor's letters. She is a writer of infinite fascination for me (why haven't I added her to my interests lists? I better get on that). For some reason that title has long haunted me. Maybe it's because the spine of the book is enormous and the words THE HABIT OF BEING are in huge letters staring out at me from the bookshelf.

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

O'Connor is such an interesting writer! Her life story sounds so twee, but then her writing is so very dark in so very many ways.
She's really something else.

Thanks for filling out my poll. This one I made private so people could speak freely, though in the event I am one of those non-racy journals about people could have spoken about as freely if I'd made it public.

[kenmora.livejournal.com]

...Ken "got" exactly where I was going with it, and drew something right on point

Cool! I'm on my way to LOTR this evening straight from work and I can't check my email at work, so the suspense over whether you liked it or not was killing me. I'll be eager to read your comments and suggestions and will start working on the full layout version this weekend. We'll have to talk book format, dimensions etc. but I can to a lot of the groundwork beforehand.

Do you mind if I obscure your name on the cover and post it in my journal?

[gurdonark.livejournal.com]

Yes, do put it in your journal. Please put Gurdonark where my name is on the cover!

I'll e mail you on the other.