On materialism. Or maybe just books.

[artisidentity]

Do books count in the "material" of materialism? This year I've found myself reading just to read. Enjoying reading. This is very new to me. Maybe it's because reading in English became sort of a break from reading (and living) in Spanish. My mom sent me my Art In America subscription when it would come, along with stacks of newspaper articles

Comments

Re: books books books, a poem by mims

[artisidentity]

Maybe I grew up in a house with not enough books. It's very possible. (Two-plus houses with not enough books, actually.)

And I was never claiming that English was linguistically superior. Just comparing. The same language that doesn't distinguish between blue and green has like 7 words for the different stages of coconut growth. You define what's important to you. And yes, I'm definitely implying that love might not be important enough to the culture of English-speakers to be defined by more than one word. The Italians have as many words for love as Oregonians have for rain, but even Norwegians have at least two words for different types of love. Although, I'd like to argue that, at least within certain groups, the awareness of the lack of linguistic definition of love is very present. There's love-love, and friend-love... and so forth. We keep attempting to define it, despite linguistic limitations.

I hope that at some point, language catches up and we have words for it all. But until then, I'll just be sad over the colors I can't remember because I never named them...