commute pt.3 [of 3]

Sometimes a scrap of rhythm will catch me. If it is a spoken incident i instinctively begin to speak it in a loop, perpetuating the rhythm. Some other hikers were chatting about the sunlight or the water and a three word phrase jumped out at me. It resounded in my head, and once i'd turned the next switchback i began speaking it as a round, with the consonants becoming drum samples in loose tempo with my footsteps and the tshik tshik of my poletips.

By the time i reached the Colorado River i had explored through beats and instruments, weaving sound from my body around in patterns not unlike the ones made by the trail. I'd taken the connection to language, and watched every word become a pattern like a drum loop, or a switchback, or a waterfall, or the outline of a ridgeline. I felt in my mouth each letter become a movement, like a footstep, like a blink, like a pebble, like a whitecap. I watched these things progress along the strings of a musical staff, dipping through the spectrum of colored light, through vowels, through number-qualities, through depths of Jin Shin Jyutsu

continues...
[as of 02010.01.10 this story has not actually been continued, but has begun to be referred to as translanguaging. -Ed.]