the linguist


The linguist reappeared and brought a smile to my very soul. I had suspected that she had fled instead and had recoiled in horror at the thought of my existence. Apart from the fact that I am older than her, we have many things in common… a love of words and their usage, the meanings that are derived from their different usages, the way that different cultures do not have certain words for certain objects because those objects simply do not exist in their cultural environment, the way grammatical differences in language stem from what is more important to the culture to which the language belongs… such as a cheese sandwich or a sandwich with cheese. We love the concept of books… the paper, the words, the story, the literary tools, the history of the author and the reason for writing. The night we went to a concert we both loved the adventure, the music, the beer and the seafood dinner with which we ended the night. Over a cup of tea one recent afternoon she described the conversation as a juicy fruit from which one takes a deep bite rather than just a surface chat about empty topics. She ran to my side of the table and hugged me fiercely and said she’d see me after my trip. I am back now… and yet we wait.


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