1. Language choice

Right now, I don’t quite know which language to use.

It was said, ages ago, that I had the gift of tongues, and I add: a built-in retrieval system to sort them all out. Now, they haunt me, shreds of words stretched out of shape, muddled up, spiraling helplessly toward the outer fringes of my ageing memory; a maze of vaporous translation layers, half-erased, imprecise. More like galactic debris.

The first language I ever heard must have been French, then probably English. As I matured, learning to vibrate at the sound of Italian- or Spanish-speaking boyfriends, I hurried down the path of romantic eloquence - a linguistic apprenticeship very much like a gravitational pull, primeval and triumphant, my entire metabolism then transformed into instinctual vocal energy bound in orbit around earthly pleasures.

Today (for reasons to be explained at some other time) I try to speak Chinese.

To be honest, this zigzagging across languages has meant frequent and prolonged exposures to many agitated worlds, sufficiently to deeply compromise my structural integrity.

Yes, I’ve ended up off balance and do realize, without being entirely surprised, that my situation is totally unpronounceable.

From all the outer spaces that I have known at one point, I have begun my descent, soon to be a burning, incandescent one, at an explosive velocity that will, I have no doubt, rip me apart.

I have therefore very little time, my lovely ones. I am broadcasting on all channels to reach you: I am your grandmother and there are a few things that I must share with you. I will do so in (often bad) English, mainly because the keyboard wants to. And also because I do not know which codes you will be using when you reach school-age.

Laolao