Questions

Today The Man had some questions for me. He has been translating a book by a person who does not have a way with words (to put it mildly), and there were some bits he did not understand. He wanted me, as a native speaker, to explain them to him.

I am fairly sure that the last time he translated a book and had questions for me I was able to answer most of them. This time, however, he has become cleverer. He only asks me about bits that I can't understand either. The whole experience has left me feeling a little irate. Why is it that New Age-y writers are so bad at writing? I know they are frequently sloppy thinkers, but do they have to be sloppy writers as well? Why can't they at least write clearly?

How, for example, can ordinary reality be both superseded AND infused by some kind of non-ordinary reality? I was unable to explain that one. I wondered at first whether non-ordinary reality could be like a tea bag. You infuse the tea bag, and then put it aside to be superseded by the cup of tea. But no, I realized – 'infused and superseded by' means that the water is infused by the tea bag and then superseded by the tea bag, so you'd have to throw out the cup of tea and keep the tea bag, and that couldn't be right. (Just as well, too. It would be terrible to waste a good cup of tea like that.)

Also, and this was another one, what happens when you reach a crack in the universe and 'return from the place from whence you came'? I simply could not get my head around that sentence (possibly because it was still spinning after the tea bag thing). Does that mean that the crack in the universe is the place from whence you came? No, that doesn't work, because you just got TO there, not FROM there. So let's see, you get to the crack, then go to somewhere else (unspecified) that you originally came from and then ... return from it? Why would you return to a crack in the universe? That doesn't sound right. And anyway, what is a crack in the universe? I couldn't even explain that much.

AND. . . did you know that a medicine man 'causes rain by doodling with a bug'? The Man wanted to know how you doodle with a bug, and I'm afraid I was no help at all, even after I stopped laughing. I have only ever doodled with a pen or pencil. Doodling with a bug sounds, somehow, rude, or at least impolite. (Especially if you're a bug.)

Those were the three things that baffled me the most.

I learned something, though. I learned that if you see an extraterrestrial it will be surprised. They are not used to being seen, apparently, although I am not quite sure how you can tell they are surprised. (Perhaps their antennae stand on end.) This has led me to suspect that The Man is actually possessed by an extraterrestrial because quite frequently I surprise him exactly like that. I look at him and say something, and he responds by jumping and screaming loudly. This never fails to disconcert. He always tells me (after we have both stopped screaming) that he thought I wasn't in the room and he didn't hear me sneaking in, but I find this explanation unconvincing. I do not sneak. Sneaking is not my style. It's that stupid surprised extraterrestrial that must have taken up residence right next to his startle reflex. Perhaps we should hold an exorcism. Does exorcising work on extraterrestrials, do you think?

(Actually, considering the kind of sentences The Man has been trying to understand for the past few months, I am not surprised that he has been concentrating so hard he does not hear me entering a room. The world could have blown up while I was trying to understand those tea bags, and I would not have noticed a thing.)

Anyway, if anybody has any clues about any of the unanswered questions above (the supersede/infuse thing, the doodlebug thing, and the return from the place from whence you came thing), please enlighten me. While for most of his other questions I was able to tell The Man what I was fairly sure the author was trying to say, for those three my answer was either, "Leave that sentence out," or "Make something up," which was not particularly satisfactory.

If nobody else understands them either, though, I won't feel quite so unprofessional.