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TorgoX (1933)

TorgoX
  sburkeNO@SPAMcpan.org
http://search.cpan.org/~sburke/
"Il est beau comme la retractilité des serres des oiseaux rapaces [...] et surtout, comme la rencontre fortuite sur une table de dissection d'une machine à coudre et d'un parapluie !" -- Lautréamont

Journal of TorgoX (1933)

Monday September 01, 2003
04:54 AM

Razor's Edge

[ #14421 ]
Dear Log,

The other day, I was doing some document conversion for the Haida Language Program (the Haidas are a SE-Alaskan group), and in with the megs and megs of language datae, I found this:

«The world is like a knife blade.
When you are walking watch your step.
You will "fall off the edge of the earth".

On hearing this Haida philosophy of world view, a young lad ridiculed it by prancing around and saying, "Hey, look I'm falling off of the world." While prancing around he stepped on a fish bone and developed fish poisoning and died. Thus the old people say he had fallen off of the world.»

Not the coziest world-view. But then, if I owned slaves, I too would have gotten into the habit of constantly looking over my shoulder.


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  • This book [barnesandnoble.com] about Haida poetry and art borrows that saying for its title. I recommend it but it's somewhat heretical, he's not a trained anthropologist but is a poet and scholar of Haida literature. That's his point, he's trying to revise how people think about native art -- not as anthropology but as, well, art.
  • Where do you get this word 'datae' from?
    --

    -- 
    Esli epei eto cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
    Aettot ibrec epesecoth, spakhea scrifeteis.

      • Ah. For a moment there I was worried you were treating data as a Latin feminine singular and making it plural...
        --

        -- 
        Esli epei eto cumprenan, shris soa Sfaha.
        Aettot ibrec epesecoth, spakhea scrifeteis.

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