Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Two years and change

of livejournalling. The Neighbs just proved to me that I have written 42 pages since 2004, simply because I felt like it, because for Christmas this year he meticulously put every word, every photo, in a document for me and e-mailed it to me with a header that said:

"My dear, you have a way with words - I think you know this. But, do you know how much you have a way with me? I wanted you to be able to keep this. And, I hope to inspire you to keep writing. I love you. Merry Christmas."

I hope it doesn't embarrass him to see his own words in cyberspace this way, but if he read anything of my blog while he was copying it over--a task I don't even want to think how long it must have taken-- he knows that nothing is sacred, that if he wants to be in my life and wants me to write, he'll necessarily turn up in my thoughts and words. I predict this will be the case for a long, long time.

What a kick-ass Christmas present. Seriously. Perhaps it's a sign he's forgiven me for the night I kept him up almost until dawn reading my own words, cracking myself up, going, I'm sorry, but seriously, listen to this... It's hard to take pride in that stuff, it feels immodest, but now I feel as though somehow I have been given an invitation to do it.

Wednesday, December 20, 2006

goodbye, chunky rice

The neighbs left town today. Just a couple of minutes ago, actually. I prolonged his goodbye time, puttering and stalling, then kicked him out real fast so he wouldn't see me cry.

He was doing that thing where he didn't really want to say goodbye to anyone, where he hasn't really fully understood that he's leaving somewhat more permanently than on previous occasions and doesn't get what everyone else's fuss is about. Meanwhile everyone else is saying all those things-you-say-when-your-friend-is-leaving and he's been patient, very patient while people try to reconcile themselves to the notion he won't be around when we wake up tomorrow. Me particularly.

This is odd for me, having spent most of my time on the other end of this particular telescope: I've never been the one who stayed back before, and rest assured, I will never trivialize what the left-behind person goes through ever again. Because while he's seeing a changing horizon out the window of his car, tunes cranked up, family awaiting him all smiles and embraces, the anticipation of a new task ahead; once his car rumbles off there's nothing here to assuage the sensation of everything having changed for me without producing anything new or promising other than what just walked out the door.

He's not going so very far away, just a couple hours really, and he's going to finish something he started a long time ago and become a teacher, and something tells me he's going to be exceptionally good at it. I can't wait to hear about his first semester in the classroom and he may not know it, but the newness of it all for him has restored to me some of my idealism and enthusiasm in regard to teaching.

Not just about teaching. I think being around him has restored my enthusiasm and idealism in general, made me want things in my life and think maybe I have a shot at really getting them. I so wanted to tell him that before he left but all I got out was thanks. For what? he said. Just thanks, that's all, and that's as close as I came.

In some ways it's better he won't be here because I won't have the option of depending on him to feel happy and good, something that happens effortlessly when he's here but that we both know I need to learn to do on my own. Now he's gone maybe at last I'll get some serious studying done, clean my apartment, pull myself together in another couple of respects. Nonetheless I already feel as though this is some kind of bad joke and we're not even to the punchline yet; my furnace is broken and it gets dark early these days and I don't know if my little dog is enough to keep me feeling warm and safe.

Sometimes I think I'd rather be one of those people who don't ever seem to feel anything deeply, who just skim over the surface of their own emotions and consequently don't play paddleball with their hearts this way. Of course anyone who knows me will tell you I'm a liar.

Tuesday, December 19, 2006

los Detroit Red Wings

So I've often thought about how, when you're learning another language, you go through this phase in which you think like an adult but you have only rudimentary tools to express yourself. The results are often very cubist. For example, I had a student once who told me her car was blue in the summer and white in the winter. I ask myself if she ever would have organized her perception that way had she not been reduced to such a narrow scope of means of expression.

This exam season the task was to define some English words using only Spanish. Here were a few of my favorites:

-Home run:
"My favorite part of baseball, when a player uses an instrument to hit a white object into the clouds."
"It's when a baseball player cuts the baseball to where the people watching the game are, and the player more or less doesn't walk, but walks very very fast. And the team gets the points."

-I.R.S:
"Part of the government. If people don't pay the correct amount of money to the government, people from the I.R.S. come to their house at the door and say, 'where's your money?'"

-Ear muffs:
"When you're cold in the winter, small clothes you use to protect the things you listen with."

-Jack-o-lantern:
"A food that's in the garden. When Halloween comes, people take this food; cut out eyes, a nose and a mouth on the front of the food; and put a light inside the food. The light escapes through the eyes, nose and mouth and is pretty."

Or my favorite: my student couldn't find the word for wings, so he tried to find the word for "bird arms." He couldn't think of "bird," so he was going to say "animal that flies." Forgetting the word for "to fly," he tried to translate "moves in the sky." But since "sky" was also out of reach, he came up with "where the clouds are." So "wings" became "arms of the animal that moves in the place with clouds."

I didn't have the heart to tell him that Detroit Red Wings is a proper noun and does not need to be translated.

But forget cubism; sometimes the results are downright surreal. For example, a student in my high school class was asked, which is your favorite football team? to which he replied: my shoes are my favorite luggage.

This year there were also some items lost and created in translation. "It's too far, I don't feel like doing anything, me neither, y'all are boring" was memorably rendered: "It is very far, I don't have anything to lose, me neither, I am dying." "In any case I wouldn't tell you because you're a loudmouth" became "At any rate don't get down on yourself because you're chubby" and "Whatever, I didn't tell my diary because you are greedy."

My favorite, though, was the sufficiently pessimistic "life is terrible...people are bored and afraid, and work is pointless" that turned into "my life is terrible...people bore me and I fear them, and there are no jobs." Which I think you'll agree is even worse.

Make no mistake: I was certainly at this point in my Spanish at one time. Back when there were no blogs for my professors to publish my flubs. If you think it's unethical or unfair for me to poke fun, just remember I'm not naming names here. Or I could perhaps mitigate things, or at least even the score, by reminding you of the time I tried to buy Q-tips in Mexico and the girl came back with a box of Tampax.

Not that it matters. My life is terrible. People bore me and I fear them, there's a job for no one, and no one will ever link my blog. Sigh.

Friday, December 15, 2006

proot

So I have a hard time, sometimes, when I'm trying to get into my own blog. It seems like every time there's something else I have to do to log in. Every time I think, okay, I'm going to remember exactly how I did this this time so that next time I don't have the same problem, then the next time I come back and try to do exactly the same thing, and then I'm like was I shooting up the last time I did this?

The computer goes: okay, gimme your user name. So I go, splitsville. Then it goes, okay, what's your password. And I go, **********. And it goes, no, that's not it. And I go, well, yeah it is, actually.

Then the computer goes, yeah, I'm gonna need you to spell this word I wrote all funny, to prove you're a human being. And it goes "proot." So I write p-r-o-o-t and it's all like, nope, nope, that's just not what I meant at all.

So I request e-mail assistance, and it says it sent me a message but really it didn't. So I try again. This time it says, spell "cytomman." I have no idea what it's saying to me, or why we're having this spelling contest when all I want to do is jump on here and navel-gaze for a minute, but I spell c-y-t-o-m-m-a-n, mostly because I am getting a big kick out of trying to come up with some clever definition for "proot" and can't wait to find out what other nonsense words the computer has for me. Bring it on, computer, I say. I can spell all day.

Taboy, it says. Merweam ingroph ennin. Audandup.

I'm not kidding, that's how many times I tried to log on before I finally remembered that, last time this happened ("repfa," said the computer on that occasion) all I had to do was do exactly what I remembered I was not supposed to do, and that, as usual in this life, that would produce the effect I had intended. So now here I am and I forgot what I came here to talk about, but I'm sure it was very profound and might even have changed your life.

Friday, December 8, 2006

neighbs

My neighbor, the Jets, made me bangers and mash for dinner tonight. This turns out to be much tastier than it sounds.

So the Sharks is back in Puerto Rico for now, leaving his outrageously homely dog in the care of someone not me. Which is exactly where he, and she, and I, belong.

The Jets. Buck thirty dripping wet and five pounds of that is eyelashes. Uncanny capacity to make me laugh. Calls me neighbs, which he spells naybs sometimes, but I prefer the version more closely connected to word origin. Has a mild crush on gravy, probably as a consequence of having lived in England for some time. The only person I can think of whom I could drag to a hockey game and a tango ball on the same night. Once came after my ass with a mechanical mixer, but in an affectionate way. I could go on and eventually I will, sometime when I'm not borrowing his computer to compose this post.

Thursday, December 7, 2006

if you were my student...

you would have met me at the café today to answer one of the following nine questions:

-what are the best Spanish classes to take at this university?

-why is it hard for students to save money?

- would you rather go out and party or stay in with a couple of friends?

-why do you think the stereotype of "the ugly american" exists?

- do you think it's important to study slang and swear-words in a foreign language class?

- do we have better communication now that most people have access to the internet?

- when and where shouldn't people use their cell phones?

- under what circumstances is it okay to go out with your best friend's ex?

-do you know a happy couple? what's their secret?

you would have paid half price for your coffee, would most likely have waited a long time, and would have expressed yourself 100% in a foreign language.

as for me, the teacher, I'm about to go piss shade-grown fair-trade mexican for about seven solid minutes.

Wednesday, December 6, 2006

ars poetica

Emily Dickinson once remarked that she didn't care if anyone read anything she wrote. Funny, though, how she arranged for there to be poems in the bottom of her drawer so someone could find them. She had to have known that someone eventually would. No empty-headed cupcake, that Emily Dickinson.

Besides, if she considered her brain enough of a repository for her poems, how come she took the time to write them down? Would she really have been afraid of forgetting them, and if so, why would it matter whether she forgot them herself, since she was the only one she was remembering them for? Nope, sorry. Not buying it.

Make no mistake: I want to be read. That's the only way I can explain to myself the fact that this is my 4th blog in 3 years. Having said that, I have started this one because my life has changed significantly and even people who previously befriended me as a person have canceled their subscriptions. If anyone wants to follow me from that cyberliterary life into this one, welcome, but if not, adios compadre (insert Big-Lebowski-inspired cowboy accent here).

Because I have done despicable things in the past little while (although not lately) and don't blame anyone who doesn't want to talk to me ever again because of them. I ask myself how much anyone I meet from here on in needs to know about the life I led briefly, whether it's dishonest not to disclose what an asshole I've been or whether it's just pointless self-deprecation, because who the hell never screwed up before. Suffice it to say I can look at my life's unexpected belly flop and my subsequent behavior up until not very long ago and go, yeeecch, what was that about?

And I guess all I know for sure is that I've learned guilt is just a self-indulgent and paralyzing and lazy excuse for not getting on with your life. And anybody who would prefer to remember me doing wrong instead of watching me try to get things right this time around is free to do so; hell, criticizing others takes a lot less effort than believing they can change for the better.

Though they say forgiveness burns more calories.

In short. New life, new blog.

Tuesday, December 5, 2006

splitsville 2...electric boogaloo

oh my god. i'm blogging. again.

and only one other person even knows I'm here.

how long can I keep it like this?

he'll never tell.