September 4
The drunken man who falls from a cart does not die, however fast the cart is going. His limbs are like those of others — but his spirit is whole; he does not know that he is falling, and so the fall does not break him.
The True Book of the Welling Primal Source (freely rendered)
Listening mode
The drunken man who falls from a cart does not die, however fast the cart is going. His limbs are like those of others — but his spirit is whole; he does not know that he is falling, and so the fall does not break him.
In a foreign language you sometimes slip into a flow. You are telling something that matters to you, and the sentences find their endings almost by themselves. Then you notice how well it is going. In the next sentence you are searching for the article, and the conversation stalls at a point that a moment ago was no obstacle at all.
You knew the grammar equally well at both moments. All that changed was where your attention was pointing: before, at what you wanted to say; afterwards, at yourself saying it. This second direction of gaze means well. It wants to prevent mistakes and produces them, because it makes you stiff.
The difficulty is that you cannot simply switch it off. The resolution not to watch yourself is already a way of watching yourself. Nor would you want to do without it entirely. It was what taught you the language in the first place, ending by ending.
If you go looking for the flow, it rarely comes back. It is more likely to return when the person you are talking to asks something that interests you so much that you forget which language you are answering in.
