Language & Learning: Reflections & Book Club
Hi, friends. Writing this from the guest bedroom of Mariscal y Javier*, friends of Laura’s (who are wonderful and kind and have invited me to stay with them for the next few days), where I’ve retreated for a couple of minutes to recover from the barrage of self-hate and frustration that comes after trying with every last brain cell—seriously, I could feel my synapses firing like a V8 engine, just hot combustion everywhere—to follow a conversation in a different language but still only catching every eighth word.
I’ll get better, I know, it takes practice, I know, this exact thing happened when I first got to Madrid, I know, but wow is it humbling (the emotion that hits me right after the frustration) to not be able to understand what people are talking about. It’s way worse than when you just don’t know the language at all, and you can sit there in pleasant ignorance, perfectly content to never grasp a thing. Here, I’m sitting on this couch, part of this dinner party, and everyone keeps looking at me expectantly, to see if I have thoughts about the legalization of marijuana or if I am smiling at their stories or if I’m at least picking up on the movement of the conversation (from someone’s brain injury to upcoming vacation plans to whether the new government will be any different from the old? I think?). It’s all I can do to just try to hear the tide of conversation and wrestle a few words down into some semblance of understanding—okay, it’s Juan’s mom who’s fallen and hurt her head—but I can’t follow it all and I certainly can’t interject smoothly. My heart, beating fast under my flushed skin (the ozone is thin above Santiago, y’all, and you’ll crisp in an instant, let me tell you; two coats of SPF50 are not enough), completely stops when someone asks me a question faster or with more words than I can comprehend and I have to decide whether should ask them to repeat it (embarrassing) or pretend I understood and answer something generic (which, if I say something irrelevant to the question, is 10-12x more embarrassing). I’m reminded of the sanctuary that writing can sometimes be—here I get to have a conversation with myself, at my pace, with my content—and why I like writing while traveling alone so much more than writing at home. Here I have unlimited stimulation + very limited ways to express my response to it, and writing is the only way my extrovert brain can process it.
But okay! I need to write about what I’m learning about the history and politics of Chile and its people, but I’ve already started this post writing about language, so I’ll turn it into the other one I’ve been thinking about: books. Others coming soon.
Welcome to the first installment of Kath’s book club!
I visualized these posts as being a less pretentious version of the New York Review of Books that incorporates elements of travel writing—so much of how you read something is the environment you read it in—but I now realize I don’t really want to do that (I don’t want to wait til I’m done with the books and present some final take on what they’re about or whether they’re good; I just want to take you along through my library and what I’m reading and what it’s making me think about). By the way, my library is one actual paper book (well, three, now; Javier gave me two Gabriel García Márquez novellas today, in Spanish, as a gift for me to practice as I travel) and a bunch of ebooks on a Kindle, which I never believed would be me but is SO WILDLY CONVENIENT I COULD KISS JEFF BEZOS RIGHT ON HIS BALD LITTLE HEAD).
Right now, I’m reading three books (memoir, novel, poetry); the first one I want to write about here is the poetry collection I Wore My Blackest Hair by Carlina Duan. I’m halfway through and I’m savoring each page. So much of her writing is about identity and language, and reading it in a place where my identity is made so much more obvious to me (every cab driver points out my blonde hair, every server breaks out their best English after they hear my accent) and 90% of my waking thoughts are about language has made it incredibly meaningful for me.
Duan’s poetry is razor-sharp. She strides through her life with a needle, catching exact moments and pinning them down with honest, perfect diction: her radiator “snaps its throat” (“East Ann”); she “haunted high school bathrooms / each morning with a cotton bag of pads” (“Amenorrhea”); her Chinese grandmother asks her about Michigan: “were / there—or weren’t there—patches / of dumb yellow stars?” (“Morning Comes, I Am Shiny With It”). She leaves no identity unexamined (sister, friend, daughter, granddaughter, American, Chinese-American), and each is made unapologetically real (most vividly, so far, in “Your Mom Tells You to Stop Writing about Race”). Duan switches tenses, switches styles, switches narrators, striking through prose poems and staccato verse alike, showing her range; some of her best work is her most restrained, as in “Calumet,” a poem about teaching poetry writing to juvenile delinquents:
[…]
they wrote. & through
the doors, in came their old loves, wearing
jeans and red sneakers. in came bed frames,
sports magazines, nail clippers. in came brothers,
the feeling of arm hair against arm hair
and baby’s wrists, fire, Drake lyrics,
cups of ice cream, dizzy spins in
the front seat of a black car. then in
came my ghosts too: pattering across the room, arms sagging
with all that had flocked
and gone. the boys said,
We don’t write—the room
filled and filled.
[…]
I think my favorite poem so far is “What I’ve Lost,” where Duan walks through the titular list, starting with the concrete (“teeth, metallic parts of headphones”) and moving into the abstract—belonging, heritage—with the transitional line, probably one of my favorites of the entire collection, “I am lonely, in my lonely chest.”
My lonely chest. I have one; you may, too. Sitting here, reading this collection first on the airplane and then in my hostel bed and now in Mariscal and Javier’s guest bedroom, I feel the contours of it, the tender edges. Duan’s poems fill it briefly, even as they wrench it, and make me—me, with my American values and American hair and American tongue trying to fit into this new place—feel grounded and less alone.
* names have been changed because it feels like I shouldn’t write about people without their explicit permission. I’ve been thinking a lot about journalist ethics and what should apply to this blog and here are the principles I came up with: in general, journalists must be vigilant about ensuring their sources are 1) aware they are on the record and in sync with it and 2) accurate. But this is more of a personal journal than it is true journalism—so the burden of responsibility is less. However, I’m putting this personal journal on the internet, where it will live forever, so I need to be careful about protecting people and myself. And instead of creating release forms, translating them into Spanish, and carrying them around, I’m just going to disguise identities unless I have permission to share them.
——
BRIEF PROGRAMMING UPDATE!
For those of you are interested in my physical location as well as the trips my brain’s taking me on…I’m still in Santiago, where I’ve done all sorts of fun things. You read about my first day here; since then, I’ve:
- climbed Cerro San Cristóbal, the highest point in a Santiago park, and seen the city from its top
- visited Pablo Nerudo’s house and fallen in love with his aesthetics and also his story (it involves sordid acts galore; I started writing a short story about it and may share it here later)
- ate lots of meat + carbs (including my first real ceviche!! I felt bad eating the octopus now that I know how smart they are—thank you Kevin—but damn it, it was delicious) + drank lots of beer + wine
- tried to buy baby carrots at a supermercado and struck out
- gone to the Mercado Central and realized it was just a fish market; went onwards to La Vega, a fruit and veggie market sprawling several blocks and several stories, and drank a mango con leche (a simple smoothie) after I eventually convinced the shopwoman to not put extra sugar in it (Chileans loveeeeeee their sweeteners—there’s a bottle of liquid stevia on most restaurant tables and over the last 5 days I’ve seen people shake it into cocktails, soups, rice)
- spent 4 hours at the Museo de la Memoria y Derechos Humanos (Museum of Memory and Human Rights), learning about the atrocities committed under Pinochet’s dictatorship. It was heavy and tough.
- gone to a concert celebrating the Museo’s 8th anniversary, where poems of the indigenous Mapuche people, translated into Spanish, were performed by a bunch of acclaimed Chilean artists. It was beautiful.
- drunk my fair share of piscolas blancas (pisco mixed with ginger ale) and danced until the club closed at 4 a.m.
- spent a hungover day on the roof of my hostel, reading books and writing and meeting new people and steaming broccoli (fresh veggies aren’t so big here and I missed them)
- moved out of my hostel and into Mariscal and Javier’s place
- had some rough arguments with my new friends (on everything from sexism to girl code) and learned a lot about them, about myself (especially about how I need to work on being judgmental now more than ever), and about the kind of expectations that I should have about friendships on the road going forward (more on this later, maybe)
- climbed a mountain! well, half…it was way too steep (it literally felt like I was just on a giantess’s stairclimber for 45 minutes, constantly hefting my foot up to the level of my hip was and repeating the process ad infinitum) for 3 pretty hungover people still dealing with some interpersonal issues from the night before, so we turned around early—but still, it was beautiful and all my gear (boots and daypack) were put to good use. Also, I was so out of breath after climbing maybe 3,000 feet…I want to do a 6 hour trek up a volcano in Pucón and there’s no way I could physically do that now. WHY did I not train more and how can I make up for it as soon as possible??
- learned how to use the Metro and only gotten lost on it once (…out of the two times I’ve taken it)
All in all, it’s been 5 days of views / learning / growing / experiencing that I am so happy to be having.
Even now, sunburnt and tired, I’m thrilled to be doing this.
Next up: a long weekend at the beach (Tuesday is a day off in Santiago because the Pope will be here!) with Mariscal’s family in Viña del Mar and Valparaiso. Not planning every next move has so far worked out quite well—they invited me to go and stay with them there, too, and I can’t wait to go exploring with them. After that, maybe another day or two in Santiago, and then downwards—probably to Pucón first, then the long trip into Patagonia, to get there before the end of the month.
As always, THANK YOU for reading / writing me / supporting me always. I know this post was a little bit of a mess…I want to write more synthesized pieces on the themes of this blog (writing, reading, women, food, social justice) vs. long daily recaps but I like doing both so I’m trying to blend them together a little here. We’ll see how I evolve the form as I keep trying.
Let me know if you have questions, things you’d like to see more or less of, feedback, et cetera. Ang, since you asked, this post has more pictures. 🙂
Today’s gratitude:
- Laura—thank you for your incredibly useful and thoughtful guide to Santiago and for introducing me to so many wonderful people! Could not have asked for a better beginning to my trip and so much of that is because of you. And you are adored here, of course, which isn’t surprisingly in the least. I’m now part of your fan club on this continent, too!
- Dad—thank you in general for many many things you’ve raised me to be (like well-mannered and confident, both of which are helping me here), and specifically, thank you for my hiking boots. They helped me survive my first real hike here (no broken ankles! a couple of mini rockslides but we made it) and I can’t wait to use them on many more.
- Carlina—thank you for writing such beautiful poetry, particularly in how you understand and articulate what it’s like to grow up and to grow into yourself (in relationships, with family, at home). I appreciate you and am SO proud of you.
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