From Mummies to Aliens: The Power of Language

Alien language in the film Arrival



Coffin of the Lady of the House, Weretwahset, circa 1292–1190 B.C.E. Brooklyn Museum)

I recently visited the Brooklyn Museum and was fascinated by the exhibit, "Gender Transformation in Ancient Egypt." The ancient Egyptians believed in rebirth, and therefore, placed great importance on the rituals of death and burial, including mummification, spells carved on tomb walls and coffins, and the prayers in the Book of the Dead that accompanied the body. 

A curious belief they had was that in order to make rebirth possible for a woman, she had to briefly turn into a man. According to Egyptian belief: the man created the fetus and transferred it to the woman during intercourse. So... a woman alone in her tomb could not conceive the fetus of her reborn self. What do you think they did? Deny women the possibility of an afterlife? Or come up with a creative solution? Like magically transforming a woman's mummy into a man long enough to create a fetus? 

That's exactly what they did. Priests turned a female into a male by the strategic use of male color and language. Red was the color used to represent a man's skin so they painted the woman's skin red -- on her coffin. 

And as a writer, here's what I find most interesting: the "you" in their language had both a masculine and feminine form. On the woman's coffin, and in spells recited by the priest, the woman was addressed with the masculine form of the pronoun, as if to fool the gods that the body buried inside the coffin was a man.

Earlier scholars attributed this to mistakes, but recent research reveals the logic behind the transformation, and the magical power of language to not only affect reality, but to change it. Later, the woman will return to her female identity and be reborn as a woman, but for a brief time, the ancient Egyptians believed that through words she could be transformed into a man long enough to give birth to herself. 

Like everything that explores and demonstrates the power of words, this blows my mind. It reminds me of the film, ARRIVAL, in which a human linguist (Amy Adams) decodes the written language of aliens. Their ink blot language is circular, no beginning or end. As the linguist learns their language, her mind expands to accept their vision of time, and she begins to perceive the world as they do, circular rather than linear. The verb tenses, or concepts of "future" and "past" no longer have any meaning, or at least not the meaning we attribute to them. The film's central idea demonstrates the theory of linguistic relativity -- that the structure of language affects its speakers. Past and future events swirled through the movie in no apparent order -- making it a frustrating experience for some viewers and a very exciting one for others. 

The idea that language shapes our world dates back to the mummies, and long before. Whether or not we believe in the power of words to express our thoughts and beliefs, and even more, to actually shape and determine them -- i.e., to transform gender or to see past and future as a flowing circle rather than a horizontal line -- we can, I think, agree that language teaches us a great deal about who we are, what we fear and desire, our potentials and our limitations. And our responsibility to use language with care.

Words can offer passageways into wondrous realities. Or slam the door in our face. 

As long as we are not chased from our words we have nothing to fear. As long as our utterances keep their sound we have a voice. As long as our words keep their sense we have a soul. 

                                                                                   -- Edmond Jabes

Owning a New Identity, As Writer

My friend and sister writer, Kate Brandes, just published her first novel, The Promise of Pierson Orchard, a powerful, compassionate story that is both relevant and timely. It's my pleasure to turn today's blog post over to her. She has very insightful words to share about what it means to be a "real writer." Take it away, Kate!

OWNING A NEW IDENTITY, AS WRITER

If  I had to select one photo of truest self, this would be it.

Working on the very last edits of my novel before it went to press.

A photo of me as a child with the word "thinker " written on the back

At the age of 46, after seven years of working on my novel, it will be published this year :)

I didn’t start writing until I was in my mid-thirties. Before that I worked as an environmental scientist and didn’t think of myself as a creative person.

I found after my first son was born that I wanted to try making something that would reflect my view of the world. I’ve always loved reading fiction and understand the world better through stories.  I’ve also kept journals all my life, used mostly for working out problems or making important decisions. So perhaps it was inevitable that I turned to writing as the creative outlet I found myself searching for.

Even though I had two small children, a full time job, and more volunteer commitments than any sane person should have, I crammed in time to learn how to tell a story on paper. I worked hard, whenever I could. And eventually, after years of rewriting and rewriting, I got a publishing contract for my book.

Part of the job when you have a book coming out is to seek out successful novelists and ask if they’ll do you the favor of reading an early copy of your book and, if they like it, write a short “blurb” you might feature on the cover or inside pages of the final novel.

So last fall, this is what I found myself doing and it was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. I had to ask established writers that I admire, all people I didn’t know well, if at all, if they would read my entire novel and say something about it even though I could offer nothing in return and they were busy with a million other important things. Some said no, but to my surprise several said yes and were gracious and generous. I will always be grateful to them.

I confided to one of these writers how hard it was to reach out to her and ask this favor because, I told her, she was a real writer with commercial success, and I was just pretending to know what I was doing.

She quickly emailed back and told me she had two words of advice for me and they were: Own It.

I’ve thought a lot about her response. She’s right. We should own everything we do. I’ve worked more than a decade on my writing. I do have a newly published book and some short stories. And yet... I still struggled to feel like myself in these new writer shoes.

It’s been an interesting journey from environmental scientist to writer. My entire community of people used to know me only as a scientist.  This includes everyone with whom I went to college and graduate school and everyone I’ve worked with over 20+ years.

But lately, some people only know me as writer. In many ways my long-held identity as a scientist is fading to the background as my investment in my writing self grows. It’s dizzying at times.

But what I’ve found is that with each new experience as a writer, which have been many this year with a first book coming out: readings, signings, teaching my first workshop, and more – I am more a writer everyday. I am owning it because I’m having to live it. That’s the way people grow all the time. I don’t hesitate much anymore to call myself a writer.

Working as the science director at the Nurture Nature Center in Easton, Pennsylvania in 2009

With my kids in 2013

Miracles for Breakfast or How I Learned to Love Poetry

The professor I was secretly in love with gave me the book. I’d never heard of the author, Elizabeth Bishop, and I didn’t like poetry.

“I have an assignment for you,” he said.

“I won’t like it if it’s work,” I warned.

“Keep the book by your bed, and every night read a poem until you find the one that speaks to you. Then read it over and over, dream about it, write it out word by word, sing it, draw it, eat it, drink it… until it’s inside you.”

“Then what?”

“Then read it to me.”

The book was slim with a torn cover. It had belonged to him. On the title page he’d written, “For Ruth,” in his confident black scrawl. I breathed in the pages to see if I smelled his solid, sensual, hard scent. Then I set the book on my windowsill, where it absorbed fresh air and sounds from other windows. Each night I restlessly searched the pages, but
“A Miracle for Breakfast.” found me.

At six o'clock we were waiting for coffee,
waiting for coffee and the charitable crumb
that was going to be served from a certain balcony
--like kings of old, or like a miracle.
It was still dark. One foot of the sun
steadied itself on a long ripple in the river.

Each night I read it like a prayer… a love letter… a note thrust into a crevice in the Wailing Wall. I knew nothing about the poet, nothing about poetry, nothing about form. But I knew about miracles, and I knew how breakfast—coffee, a roll, eating crumbs off my palm, the sun rising over water—could be a miracle. I knew nothing... but I tasted this poem. I tasted the poet.

Winter turned to spring, and each night I kissed the words. My bedtime ritual. No matter how late I came home to my tiny apartment, the last thing I did before sleeping was to read my poem. Sometimes only the first and last stanzas. Sometimes I skipped around. I loved these lines: 

Was the man crazy? What under the sun
was he trying to do, up there on his balcony!  

Was the man crazy? Was I? One night, stunned, I discovered the pattern. Six words were repeated creatively, wildly, in each stanza: coffee, crumb, balcony, sun, river, and miracle. I looked it up: a sestina! I was as awed as if I’d discovered a new country, scaled a mountain peak. 

The pattern made me fall in love with the poet. To be able to do that—to disguise the pattern, to use the same words in different order, and yet to tell a story—that was a miracle. That was art. I cried that night, alone in my bed crammed with books, papers, dreams of stories half-written and travels not yet taken. I cried for Elizabeth Bishop, for the narrator of the poem, for my professor, for myself, for all of us waiting for a miracle for breakfast. 

Months after he’d given me the book, I went to his office and read him the poem. His eyes teared. So did mine. I thanked him but it took me years to understand the power of the gift he’d given me. The gift I try to share whenever I can. 

Years later, I learned the poem, written in the mid-1930s, was about the Depression.
Decades later, I read Billy Collins: “They want to tie the poem to a chair with rope and torture a confession out of it.” And I thanked my professor again for showing me how to fall in love with a poem.  

Last week, I watched Jim Jarmusch’s film, Paterson, about Paterson, a busdriver (played by Adam Driver), who creates poetry out of the miracles of everyday life. Each morning over his breakfast of Cheerios, he ponders the beauty and power of a humble Ohio Bluetip Matchbox and transforms it into the flame of his love for his wife. The poem (written by poet Ron Padgett) begins with these lines: 

We have plenty of matches in our house.
We keep them on hand always.
Currently our favorite brand is Ohio Blue tip . . .

Simple, concrete words. William Carlos Williams, the patron saint of the film, said, “No ideas but in things.” He called poetry, “a necessary guide amid the bewilderments of life.” 

Throughout the day Paterson eavesdrops on conversations, walks his dog, drinks at a neighborhood bar, and jots down his lines. Slowly, we see what it means to live life as an artist: to be here in this world, and simultaneously to be there in the world you’ve created. The artist merges the two. 

Every art teaches us how to see. It takes strands of reality and weaves them into something that makes others see what you see, and in the process helps them to see their own reality, transformed into a poem, a painting, a song, a story. Poetry shows us how to see the miracle in the matchbox. 

We licked up the crumb and swallowed the coffee.
A window across the river caught the sun
as if the miracle were working, on the wrong balcony.