Visitors We Have Gotten

To-day I read the new Sirenia Digest which contains "Crotalus (Murder Ballad No. 13)" by Caitlin R. Kiernan. It was good, a mysterious, disjointed linking of recollections related to a strange occurrence. I thought of both Picnic at Hanging Rock and Tristram Shandy. One of the narrators of "Crotalus" also talks about getting off track from the intended narrative. Maybe it's easier for me to take from Caitlin because she isn't trying to tell a hundred jokes a minute. Also, the narrative skirting around a description of a sinister object in the sky is ultimately more interesting than the humorously hinted at destruction of Toby's genitals in Tristram Shandy.

I found myself also thinking of the Japanese junior high school where I work because the story features something we could literally call a UFO--an unidentified flying object--and one narrator is preoccupied with the proper use of past tense and past participle. In talking to another teacher, I discovered the use of "got" as past participle ("I have got a present") is actually the normal thing in most English speaking countries and has been since the 17th century and only we Americans have clung to "gotten". That's according to Google, anyway. Yet other English speaking countries still use "forgotten" so I don't get it. George Elliot used "chase-gotten" and "ill-gotten" as past participle adjectives in Middlemarch.

"UFO" is one of the new vocabulary words for second year students. The teacher I was working with asked the class if they'd ever seen a UFO. One girl said she saw one by a train station, that it was shaped like a triangle. A boy said his father saw one and took two pictures. It was visible in one picture but not the other.

I sure wish I would see a UFO. Especially one with aliens.

Here's a song I've been using to teach future tense:

Twitter Sonnet #1670

Encroaching rest absorbed the wealthy night.
Refreshing plants described the tower wall.
Enraptured vines assist the luckless knight.
Between the walls resounds a lover's call.
Before the dancer's choice was made she ran.
Beside the moving car a cheetah sleeps.
Announcements brought a golden cutting man.
Condemned below the house a secret keeps.
Director lists began the day with lunch.
Descending feathers pull the jerkin down.
Advancing humans ruled the beauty bunch.
Majestic seats reject the golden clown.
For golden busts, the treasure voyage stalled.
Asleep, the dreamer asks if devils called.