Languages and Textuality

In my perhaps-bi-annual attempt to do something linguistically productive with my life, I have purchased a few brush-up French books, including an "Easy Reader" and a verb review, along with an Introduction to Sanskrit book. Why? Because... maybe it will come in handy. I mean, who DOESN'T want to know how to speak Sanskrit? Also, I'm into studying British imperialism. Just saying.

So cool fact: Sanskrit is written in a script/alphabet called devanagari, which literally translates to "city of immortals." This is really, really cool I think. The oral language-- Sanskrit-- means "perfecting" or "putting together," but in writing it becomes immortal. Ties in nicely with what I'm studying in my Shakespeare/Materialism/Textuality course right now: 1623 Hamlet, folios v. quartos, and setting down things in "tables" to remember them-- literally, "tables" were portable blank books with erasable pages. So it really calls attention to textuality and materiality, writing down vs. human memory, and the always interrelated functions of remembering and forgetting.

Also, I got a bottled sweet tea the other day before going to my textuality seminar (because man, I miss southern sweet tea like my mom makes and how sweet tea always meant reading outside on porches come spring, and I needed to remember my roots). But the cool thing about this bottled sweet tea was that the little label on it had a story about sweet tea that started "Remember simpler times? When a text was something you carried in a book bag?"

Too. Perfect.