You're coming to the United States to lecture Ms. Stein, that implies there are many people who are going to be able to comprehend your ideas.
Look here, being intelligible is not what it seems. You mean by understanding that you can talk about it in the way that you have a habit of talking, putting it in other words but I mean by understanding is enjoyment. If you enjoy it, you understand it and lots of people have enjoyed it so lots of people have understood it.
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Well that's rather hard for us normal Americans to see.
What is a normal American? There are lots of quite normal who do see and how, but after all you must enjoy my writing and if you enjoy it you understand it. If you did not enjoy it, why do you make a fuss about it. There is the real answer.
Click here to listen to this too brief interview with Ms. Stein.
The other day I was driving down the highway and having a moment of flight. A moment when the car lifts up off of the rails of the highway and merges out into the stratosphere. I was clanging from one side of the lane to the other. Invisible metallic barriers containing the vehicle. I looked to my left and to my right. There were two cars on each side. One was a metallic green beetle with a blue and red stripe down the middle part of it. A large fake plastic sunflower installed by the company in the dashboard. The girl driving the car was strange looking, a fringe of dyed black hair hanging over her forehead and covering her eyes ever so slightly. A shitzu was sitting on her lap. The shitzu looked up and said, “The back of my throat aches. I have the flu.” She was flying too. Her beetle. On the other side, a bearded thirty-something man with brownish skin was driving an old Honda Accord. His beard was not trimmed. The hairs crawled down his neck and combined with his chest hairs, an exposed rug emerging from his V-neck T-shirt. The man leered at me and pointed at his laptop on his knees. He seemed to want me to look at the computer. I looked over and saw there was an email there on the screen. It said, “The back of my throat aches. I have not taken care of it properly.” I had no idea what to tell them. What medication should I recommend. Who should I send them to. And at that I lowered myself down to the ground. Pulled off the highway and into a stripmall to rest and gather my thoughts. A woman approached my car obviously insane ranting about a night of misfortune being at her door. I looked left and right attempted to ignore her. I wondered what pill she could take. I hustled into the store and bought a sandwich and drank a glass of free water that tasted of lemonade. The woman outside moved on to other victims.
Don't Participate in the Death of the Subjunctive
The English language has but three moods, and one of them—the subjunctive—is dying. Unlike their abused and misunderstood sister, the indicative and the imperative live lives of luxury, basking in the certainty that they will never be without work, as humans will always need either to be doing something or to be ordering someone else to do it for them.
But not so for the lowly subjunctive, that Cinderella of moods: trampled, despised, ignored, and yet imbued with such fragile beauty that even the most unregenerate misogrammatist would pause if he knew how near his carelessness was bringing her to the brink of oblivion.
But not so for the lowly subjunctive, that Cinderella of moods: trampled, despised, ignored, and yet imbued with such fragile beauty that even the most unregenerate misogrammatist would pause if he knew how near his carelessness was bringing her to the brink of oblivion.
¡Qué romántico!
A ver cómo te lo digo, es que no soy bueno con estas cosas, se me dificulta expresarme, cómo te lo puedo decir bonito...
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