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Re: [aymara] Preguntas

Kamisaki Aymar!
I am an American and I must agree with you about the USA being a "dumbed down" country. I am a teacher and I teach Spanish in a secondary school in Enid, Oklahoma. I also had lived in LaPaz Bolivia for 13 years before that, and I did volunteer work with and for the Aymara people. It makes me very deeply sad that a nation so strong and powerful as the USA has SO many people who do not want to care or know about anything. Could part of it be too much over anylization of things? Too much technological stimulus? My students, who should be creative and discovering the joy and mysteries of the natural world, don't even want to know that nature exsists. I try to make the Aymara personal to them by showing pictures of people I know and telling things to make them come alive for them, but very few of them have any feelings or compassion for the others in this world.
I am in a strange position because even though I am a "gringa" I feel like I am a stranger here. Also in Bolivia I felt out of touch with the "upper class" people and I only wanted to be out in the mountains and with the people in the countryside. I was able to do that a lot because we lived in Mallasilla and I always hiked the road to Achocalla, and I made many friends just talking to people who were walking home in the afternoon from the fields around. So much of Bolivia and the Aymara have become part of me that each morning I greet Tata Inti, and when I do I use the little bit of the Aymara I know; and that seems natural and easy even though I am also not an Aymara.
Even though I do not always understand all things that the people in Aymara list discuss, such as the finer points of the Aymara language, it makes me feel closer to the people that I love in Bolivia to be a part of this. I also am not always able to respond all the time because of sharing this computer with everyone else in my family!!!
Maybe through this list something will happen that will allow me to really be of service to the Aymara. In the mean time I will study the language, and greet Tata Inti each day.


From: "Laura Jones" <lmjones@ptd.net>
Reply-To: aymaralist@aymara.org
To: <aymaralist@aymara.org>
Subject: Re: [aymara] Preguntas
Date: Fri, 2 Mar 2001 10:36:52 -0500

Hey, Aymar, this is great! Yes, I think when we start comparing our actual
experiences, then - something very healing happens. We are still the same
person, but these mental habits don't have quite the same grip on us. But,
Aymar, the word isn't anal! That relates to our backside! But it's my
point exactly about English. There was a good joke I read in the Reader's
Digest once about some immigrants who were discussing their friend whose
wife could not have a baby. She's inconceivable, said one. No, she's
impregnable, said another. I forget the rest, but the joke had 4 words, any
one of which could have meant unable to have a baby! Is Aymara like that?
By the way, I tremendously enjoyed the Akataksa page, when I finish reading
my e-mail for today I will write to Bill Gates and George Soros as I replied
to the page that I would. You see, Aymar, my tactic - because I am such a
small and unimportant person, no one wants to hear me - so my tactic is to
write to a lot of very important people (incl. the Pope and all Orthodox
primates, for a while I had all the NATO heads of state) who then will want
to see what I am saying to all the others, this has been tremendously
effective for me. When I get a new person who is very famous, I send a few
one-day airmails to get their attention. You know, it comes in a shiney
cardboard envelope, large, bright red, white, and blue. Then after I figure
they know me I drop back to regular snail mail - or in the case of the Pope
and Ted Turner, they sent me e-mails that I can use. So Soros already knows
me, for Gates I'm still using the one-day airmails, but he will soon know
how connected I am, and if he doesn't do anything, I will start to nag him,
to put him on a guilt trip. So far, as I say, this has been most effective!
Love to all - Laura
----- Original Message -----
From: aymar ccopacatty <accopacatty@earthlink.net>
To: <aymaralist@aymara.org>
Sent: Sunday, March 01, 2099 7:30 PM
Subject: Re: [aymara] Preguntas


> hello,, I would like to share some oppinions about language molding people
>
>
> I purposefully and effectively dropped out of the culture I
> > was born into at the age of 7
>
> I grew up in America till I was ten, when my father took me back to Peru
to
> meet my Aymara family,,, my grandmother dosn't speak spanish, and so I
> learned Aymara, and the other side to my blood and culture.
> North America is one side of my mind,,, very analitical, almost to a
fualt,
> and I don't want to say anal, but english definetely puts brain cramps in
my
> head because of the overspeed proccesing of millions of technological
> stimulus that routinely scrubs our gringo brains.
>
> my Aymara side is creative,,, ample mental space,,,, aymara has no
> distinction between time and space,,, they are the same,, that says a lot
> about a cultures perception of the world, compare that to western
culture,,,
> we have smaller particles of seconds,,, split seconds. Aymara is
eternal,
> a very ancient mood to words and the frameworks they fit in. not much
room
> for the braincramping over analization of the western mind.
>
> > Americans don't notice, but then they don't notice much of anything, the
> > United States has got to be the most dumbed down country in the world,
>
> I agree, and that to me is language molding culture,,, I can be really
angry
> and vent all my anger in spanish using half the bad language i would need
> to use in english, thats because spanish is more fluid,, musical,,, and it
> Shows in the cultura Latina,,,, they are more free, carefree, musical,,,
> americans are more reserved and worried, Aymaras are just Older
>
>
> over my long winded> dissertations ,,,
>
> to me long winded dissertations are a sign of good old western
> overanalization,,, no offense Laura,,, I do it all the time,,,, I was
RAISED
> that way,,,, saludos,,, suma aromtasina take chuima listan jake ,, Aymar
>
>

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