Kaalagap 3:21pm July 20th 2009
Nyungarra! Nyungarra! Windjee nidja Nyungaaraaa!!?
Bookadjaa baalap bookadjaa, kaala-ngat nyininy... mai waangkiny, djurrep-kaadidjiny! One day, when the sun is shining, perhaps in spring, perhaps we might meet again, to sing the songs and speak the words by that fire that we all hope we will one day find welcoming us to sit by.
You know that fire!?!
To play in the smoke, to warm your back, to drink your tea and eat those johnny cakes from the pan and dip those dampers into the juices of the yongka and bacon that sit dookeniny... yuret-ngat dookeniny, daartj noonook benaarnginy, djurrepiny, yep we all dream of that day...
Monday, July 20, 2009
Thursday, July 16, 2009
Linguistic hooks iny nj
Continuing Verb ends iny nj, doublegee barbs on kangaroo skins.
The Noongar of old were tracked.
Observers watched them, from afar and up close.
The writer's hand of old moved across the page, and our eyes now follow the markings they made, our eyes follow their lines and make sense of their alphabets, sure, even now as aboriginal writers re-present themselves to the world we follow them too.
For the Aboriginal hand that leaves his tracks on the page has swapped one medium for another.
One such writer I regularly track.
He knows this, he knows I am tracking him, so he doesn't give too much away.
I track his linguistic baggage too, baggage that holds to his fur like doublegees attached to the skin of a kangaroo.
I see by the way he is hopping, he is burdened by what he carries.
The linguistic continuing verb endings hook iny nj into him as he goes careering across the page.
And in speech I am kaadidjiny not 'jenny' or 'jinny' not kaad-did-jinny but, I am kaad-did-jing more like him, than to the others I listen to stumbling upon the linguistic hook.
As I said I have seen these linguistic hooks that lie embedded in them, and hold them down, sharp hooks they fester in their flesh like the wooden barbs of the doublegee.
Now the old man who taught me, his lips danced and curled and his tongue was on fire, like kalamai waarngkiny... he would lick his words and send them on their way. How I wish I could speak like him, and track his talk along the tracks and laneways of his old pads of home.
I once wandered with him, we three his missus and me... we travelled to old haunts of his and her people.
Very often when not playing up for me, the anthropologist watching, I heard him whispering or voicing what the old one's used to say...
He was a Master of the linguistic iny nj, their hooks he'd have used as toothpicks, and doublegees had no hold on him.
And he didn't leave words on the page, he didn't have to.
The lands about him were his pages, and his tracks and those of the ancients lay connected.
His palimpsests and theirs lay about him, names, places and happenings and quick was his recall.
Belly laughs made him convulse, till coughing fits over took him...
The land as you know was read by him, read as text.
And his stories remain in his landscapes, his language remains to be awoken, but, I only hope, that his tracks are cleared of the doublegee and hooks that linguists will surely one day lay, hooks like fence snares for hungry kangaroos - hop beneath the wires if you dare
But then, who knows, across the page and onto the earth you will be seeing hearing 'kaadidjing' them bounding free to see-find their way and true form free from the hooks of the linguist inquistition and impaler...
Free from the hook, the nj that too few understand so that now their fur carries jinny-plenty of doublegees...
The Noongar of old were tracked.
Observers watched them, from afar and up close.
The writer's hand of old moved across the page, and our eyes now follow the markings they made, our eyes follow their lines and make sense of their alphabets, sure, even now as aboriginal writers re-present themselves to the world we follow them too.
For the Aboriginal hand that leaves his tracks on the page has swapped one medium for another.
One such writer I regularly track.
He knows this, he knows I am tracking him, so he doesn't give too much away.
I track his linguistic baggage too, baggage that holds to his fur like doublegees attached to the skin of a kangaroo.
I see by the way he is hopping, he is burdened by what he carries.
The linguistic continuing verb endings hook iny nj into him as he goes careering across the page.
And in speech I am kaadidjiny not 'jenny' or 'jinny' not kaad-did-jinny but, I am kaad-did-jing more like him, than to the others I listen to stumbling upon the linguistic hook.
As I said I have seen these linguistic hooks that lie embedded in them, and hold them down, sharp hooks they fester in their flesh like the wooden barbs of the doublegee.
Now the old man who taught me, his lips danced and curled and his tongue was on fire, like kalamai waarngkiny... he would lick his words and send them on their way. How I wish I could speak like him, and track his talk along the tracks and laneways of his old pads of home.
I once wandered with him, we three his missus and me... we travelled to old haunts of his and her people.
Very often when not playing up for me, the anthropologist watching, I heard him whispering or voicing what the old one's used to say...
He was a Master of the linguistic iny nj, their hooks he'd have used as toothpicks, and doublegees had no hold on him.
And he didn't leave words on the page, he didn't have to.
The lands about him were his pages, and his tracks and those of the ancients lay connected.
His palimpsests and theirs lay about him, names, places and happenings and quick was his recall.
Belly laughs made him convulse, till coughing fits over took him...
The land as you know was read by him, read as text.
And his stories remain in his landscapes, his language remains to be awoken, but, I only hope, that his tracks are cleared of the doublegee and hooks that linguists will surely one day lay, hooks like fence snares for hungry kangaroos - hop beneath the wires if you dare
But then, who knows, across the page and onto the earth you will be seeing hearing 'kaadidjing' them bounding free to see-find their way and true form free from the hooks of the linguist inquistition and impaler...
Free from the hook, the nj that too few understand so that now their fur carries jinny-plenty of doublegees...
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