If Facebook photos are any indication, there are a fair number of men out there whose car (or motorcycle) occupies the position of leading lady in their life. Do you see those pictures too? The ones they post of their hot rods unironically captioned My girl! or My girlfriendwith nary a woman in sight. I get car love, kind of. My little Corolla is shiny and winsome and always looks happy to see me. Still, I liked the buses, taxis, metro and old-fashioned walking in Colombia far better.
I’ve never called anything my boyfriend except, well, boyfriends, but if I absolutely had to think of a runner-up who vies for my affection, the choice would be as plain as the nose on my face: that’s right, Spanish. Don’t tell me you can’t see that I’m head over heels in love with him. If this blog isn’t an ongoing love letter to the Spanish language, what is? Anyone who knows me would tell you that I’m inordinately, passionately, obsessively enamored of Spanish. And I have been for almost two decades now. My true love–surprise, surprise–is Colombian Spanish. Yeah yeah, so I once wrote a post about breaking up with Colombian Spanish (it’s called metonymy, folks), but I didn’t mean it for a second–Colombian Spanish and I are still thick as thieves. So, yes, until I find another half orange (a media naranja), it’s Spanish that’s the one and only apple of my eye. If you’re smitten with Spanish like I am, surely you joined me and the rest of the Spanish-speaking world today in celebrating el Día del Idioma– Language Day. ¡Un brindis por el castellano!
How do I love thee, Spanish? Well, I’ve been blogging the ways for over a year and a half now, 120 posts and counting. You all know that I’m anti-cursi, so don’t expect any blubbering professions of adoration or a bathtub filled with rose petals from me. I’ll just say this: With every fiber in me, I truly love, love, love speaking, listening to, reading and writing in Spanish. In Spanish, I see everything color de rosa, and that’s just the way I like it. Spoken like a true tortolito, of course. I don’t even care how ridiculous I probably sound right now. I become a blabbering, yammering fool with a huge gleam in my eye when I talk about Spanish, and I’ll blabber and yammer to my heart’s content.
Back to el Día del Idioma–The Día del Idioma is generally celebrated April 23 because on this day Cervantes–the famed author of Don Quijote–died. The comic above imagines that if he were still around to see how Spanish has been “perverted” through chat services like MSN Messenger, he’d have some harsh words. I guess nobody ever told him not to shoot the messenger–like it’s his fault people type on there as if they’d declared an all-out war on proper spelling and grammar. If only he could chill out and realize that Spanish is still as groovy as ever. If Cervantes met someone like me, he’d probably be moved to tears by my passion for his language. I’d have to do my best to keep the fact that I still haven’t read Don Quijote under wraps, though. Whoops. It’s at the top of my to-read list, I swear.
Anyone else out there who will confess to loving Spanish beyond all reasonable limits? What are people like us to do? Well, a very happy Language Day to everyone! Happy Spanishing.
I thought for a long time about how to incorporate Valentine’s Day into a post. Last year I wrote about an anti-Valentine’s Day backlash in Colombia, and that old post has been peered at by many fresh pairs of eyes in the last week or so. If you want to learn Valentine’s Day or love vocabulary, I’m certain that lists abound on the internet. The world doesn’t need another post on any of that, though. I suppose, then, that I wanted to say something explicit and non-evasive for once about love. The fact is that there is love brimming over in every one of my posts here; each one is an encrypted love letter, some of those valentines more thinly veiled than others. You probably just don’t catch the allusions, quotes, or entreaties. Raised very religiously, I always find myself wanting to confess. I guess I wanted to come clean with my motives. Maybe all writers, though, have their secret reasons for writing. Perhaps a great deal of us write to many what we wish we had the courage to say to one. Like Gabriel García Márquez, soy escritora por timidez.
Speaking of García Márquez, I started to reread El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) yesterday. Does there exist a book that is more romantic than this one? No? I rest my case. Not that I’ve read every book out there ni mucho menos, but I still feel secure in making that bold statement. For me, its romanticism can’t be topped. To be sure, I mean all the meanings of romantic, both good and bad. However, I don’t mean romantic as in mushy, kiss-kiss, chocolate and flowers and stuffed animals and all that other cursilería. For better or for worse, this book is romance par excellence. If you’re the romantic type like I am, it may be somewhat of a dangerous read. Of course, I discovered that when it was already far too late. In any case, I already had all of those silly notions safely dwelling in me, so it’s not like the book put them there. It certainly didn’t disabuse me of any of them, though. Ojo, let no one read it as a how-to on love or happiness unless you’re content to wait several decades.
I’ve written once before about rereading Cien años de soledad. A difference with this reread, however, is that I’m reading the same copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera that I read the first time. (I chose to leave my beautiful copy of Cien años de soledad in Colombia.) The book’s certainly seen its better days. It’s battered and stained, the spine has fallen off, and you can pluck certain pages right out, but it has love and character and a story. I bought it at a used bookstore in downtown Medellín the day before I decided to move back to the U.S. In fact, I bought two books that day, and it was directly because of one very specific word on the first page of the other book that my ex and I decided to call it quits. Of course, I left that book behind as well. We’d gone to that bookstore specifically to look for El amor en los tiempos del cólera, and I just chanced upon the other book while browsing solo in the very cramped and low-ceilinged upstairs section of the bookstore. Who knows, maybe I’d still be living in Colombia if I hadn’t decided to read GGM’s second most popular book or hadn’t wandered up that creaky staircase to curiosear. La curiosidad mató al gato; just like in English, curious cats in Latin America meet a very lamentable fate. What if, what if, what if . . .
Earlier today I reread a fabulous, prize-winning essay out there on rayar libros–writing in books. Do our marginal scribblings give us away? Are the passages that we passionately underline emblems of our souls? What can you learn about a person by reading a book they’ve read? Can you communicate with someone through a book? What about a blog? Why do we spill our hearts in the most ineffectual places? Vaya usted a saber . . .
I’ve always loved “Marginalia” by Billy Collins, a poem exalting the art of peripheral commentary. Here’s the last part:
Yet the one I think of most often, the one that dangles from me like a locket, was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye I borrowed from the local library one slow, hot summer. I was just beginning high school then, reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room, and I cannot tell you how vastly my loneliness was deepened, how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed, when I found on one page
A few greasy looking smears and next to them, written in soft pencil- by a beautiful girl, I could tell, whom I would never meet- “Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.
“How vastly my loneliness was deepened, / how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed . . .” Yes. If this isn’t an effective apologia for marginalia, I don’t know what would be.
Sometimes people write in books to censor them, ostensibly to protect readers’ innocence. I remember reading And the Band Played On in high school, and then I must have carelessly left it around the house somewhere. When my mom came upon it and read the stark, non-euphemized references to homosexual sex acts inside (the book is about the AIDS outbreak), she took it upon herself to black out all the offending lines (thousands, surely) with a thick marker. I don’t think she made it very far before realizing how futile it was. Censoring is always a fool’s errand. What if I had blacked out that homewrecking word in the other book I bought that day, the one that became the straw that broke the camel’s back of my relationship? Should I have at least taped a piece of paper over it, warning future readers to exercise extreme caution in reading the word if they are in precarious relationships? Dripped some tears onto the page? I wonder.
My own oeuvre of marginalia has been pretty paltry. It wasn’t until I got to college and got to know my friend Anna Laura that I realized one could write in books, or, even, that they should. To thumb through a book that she has read is almost like reading her diary: her heart and brilliant mind are displayed right there on the page, often outshining the text they abut. I’ve always envied her her intellectual graffiti. I wish someone could pick up what few books I’ve read, sniff them, glance at the astute rejoinders in the white columns, and know that they had passed through the hands of literati. Or at least fall in love with me. What does one find in my books? If they’re in Spanish, hundreds of definitions. Are these the most representative messengers of who I am? Maybe so.
In El amor de los tiempos del cólera, here’s but a small selection:
runaway slaves’ hideout (palenque)
mule driver *arrieros somos y en el camino andamos (nos encontraremos) (arriero)
haberdashery, sewing goods store (mercería)
quadroon (cuarterona)
witches’ gathering (aquelarres)
embers; lingering feeling (rescoldo)
Why do I get the distinct feeling that I am the only person who has ever written the words quadroon and haberdashery in a book? Is that my soul, too? What kind of kooky old bat will my great-great-grandchildren or the strangers who acquire this through an estate sale think I was? Should I tell them? Express in my will that I wish for all my books to be cremated with me? Switch to a Kindle? See, writing in books is more eternal and compromising than one first realizes. You have to think these things through.
Besides vocabulary words, what did I underline? ¿Qué me movió muchas fibras? Where did I feel myself most compenetrada, most aludida?
–Aprovecha ahora que eres joven para sufrir todo lo que puedas–le decía–, que estas cosas no duran toda la vida.*
Hoy, al verlo, me di cuenta que lo nuestro no es más que una ilusión.
–Es feo y triste–le dijo a Fermina Daza–pero es todo amor.*
. . . se consagraba a la pérdida del tiempo.
. . . nunca hubiera admitido la realidad de que Florentino Ariza, para bien o para mal, era lo único que le había ocurrido en la vida.
–Rico no–dijo–: soy un pobre con plata, que no es lo mismo.*
Florentino Ariza escribía cualquier cosa con tanta pasión, que hasta los documentos oficiales parecían de amor. Los manifiestos de embarque le salían rimados por mucho que se esforzara en evitarlo . . .*
Fermina Daza había rechazado a Florentino Ariza en un destello de madurez que pagó de inmediato con una crisis de lástima, pero nunca dudó de que su decisión había sido certera.
. . . la seguridad, el orden, la felicidad, cifras inmediatas que una vez sumadas podrían tal vez parecerse al amor: casi el amor. Pero no lo eran . . .
Esta cuca es mía.
Quería ser otra vez ella misma, recuperar todo cuanto había tenido que ceder en medio siglo de una servidumbre que no la había hecho feliz, sin duda, pero que una vez muerto el esposo no le dejaba a ella ni los vestigios de su identidad . . . quién estaba más muerto: el que había muerto o la que se había quedado.
. . . aquel amor irreal.
¿Por qué te empeñas en hablar de lo que no existe?
I put stars next to my favorite lines. People, don’t you see that you need to drop everything and read this book as soon as humanly possible?
Previous owners of the book had written a few things as well. Doña Duque G. is written in neat, feminine cursive in the margin of page 73, and pages 173, 273, and 373 say D ² G. at the top. While this initially seemed bewildering, I now see that my copy of the book has 473 pages. I guess that from these mile markers, Doña Duque could say to herself, Only four hundred more pages to go . . . only three hundred more pages . . . only two hundred more pages, ¡ya casi! Was this a punishment meted out to her by someone? Doña Duque G., the state will pardon your crime if you read this horribly schmaltzy mamotreto. Or did she shed a tear every time she reached the 73 mark as she was forced to realize that her time with the amazing book was rapidly running out and, similarly, she would one day cease as well?
On the title page, you can see that a name was once written in pencil before being erased. Oh, what wretched instruments erasers are! The same goes for White-out. They should be banned, rounded up, and destroyed. The last name looks like Posaada. No idea about the rest of it. One of the pages has also been ripped out. Naturally, this literary vandalism also speaks volumes. On the back of the book is an old yellow sticker that $15000←SET. As you can see, I clearly need to go back to Medellín to claim the rest of the set that was never given to me. I also want to buy more books and find more stories tucked inside stories.
So many people travel from country to country and spend so much money on counseling to find themselves, but maybe they would discover just as much, if not more, were they to pore through the books they’ve read and loved and see what stirred them in lives past. Perhaps life is too short to reread books when there are so many wonderful books out there, but it’s also far too long not to remember. And if books can be revisited and relived, then maybe certain times of life can also be returned to and even edited and reissued. If nothing else, marginalia lets us speak out of our loneliness and possibly right into that of a stranger who may even have something to shyly say back to us. Will anyone ever find our navel-gazing blog posts or heated Facebook comment discussions in 3013? Most likely not. Instead, immortalize yourself and emblazon your being on the future with a book and a pen. Someone will tenderly scrutinize it, someone will wonder, surely someone will read your barbaric yawp and care.
As you all know from the lists of funny search queries that I occasionally post, the sundry ways that people find Vocabat often make me chuckle. Sometimes, though, the specific Spanish questions me dejan gringa, and then I want to know the answer as badly as the lonely Internet wayfarer. When I don’t know the answer or can’t even make heads or tails of the question, I turn to Google and see what I can’t uncover. Usually what I find is of questionable usefulness or importance, but other times I’m fascinated by what I learn. And sometimes, like today, that info comes just in the nick of time!
Yesterday, someone wound their way to my blog with this search term: what does it mean when you find a muneco in a rosca
I had no idea, nor was I sure what a rosca was. It was ringing a bell, but that bell was far, far away and muffled under a pillow. So, I copied and pasted the phrase into Google, and, voilà! My blog came up as the very first result. So proud.
Did I once blog about finding muñecos in roscas and then forget all about it? Is this what it’s come to? No, thankfully not. At least not yet. The search took me to a popular post of erstwhile days, ¡Que te rinda!wherein Grace left me a comment explaining exactly what finding a muñeco in your rosca entails:
. . . cuando festejamos Reyes, comemos la Rosca que contiene unos niños Dios escondidos adentro. Si encuentras un muñeco en su pieza de la rosca, ¡tienes que hacer tamales y atole para el día de la Candelaria!
When we celebrate Three Kings Day, we eat a rosca that has some baby Jesuses hidden inside. If you find one of the figurines in your piece of rosca, you have to make tamales and atole for the Día de la Candelaria! (Candlemas)
Mexican rosca de Reyes
As it happens, el Día de los Reyes was yesterday, January 6. (Epiphany/Three Kings’ Day) In many Latin American countries, children receive their gifts on this day, not on Christmas. Apparently, a very important tradition in Mexico and some other countries for Reyes is eating rosca. As they don’t do that in Colombia, I’d never even heard of it until yesterday. Shame on me for knowing so little about our neighbor to the south! Mexicans, discúlpenme.
Spanish roscón de Reyes
Today at work, I had to ask a patient to tell me everything that she ate yesterday. Everything sounded pretty ho-hum, and then she said that after dinner she had had un poco de rosca y un poco de pastel. Come again? Believe me, if I had not briefly read about the Reyes tradition of rosca yesterday, I would not have understood her and would have had to ask for clarification. A light bulb went off in my head, though, and I went, ahhhh. Rosca! Of course. And then I asked her, ¿A usted le tocó el muñeco? When the provider stepped out for a minute, I got to ask her what roscas usually have in them. For once, I felt culturally with-it—it was a great feeling. Of course, my knowledge was a little belated; next year I will definitely have to be on top of things beforehand so I can actually try a rosca and share it with Mexican friends. I guess I have a whole year to look forward to it. Don’t they look delicious?
Argentinian rosca de Reyes
Did you eat a rosca de Reyes yesterday? Did you celebrate el Día de los Reyes Magos some other way? If you’re from another country, what day are gifts exchanged in your country? Who brings them? All right, people, keep the searches coming! You guys are great teachers, and even when you’re just looking for things like “bat teeth” or “donald daisy duck lovestory,” I always get a kick out of you.
(As a side note, in Colombia, a rosca is usually a clique, exclusive ingroup, or “mafia.” It’s frequently used when talking about not being able to break into a certain job or industry because you don’t know the right people. Or if [you perceive that] your favorite sports team or player is consistently screwed over, you’ll probably bitterly blame it on a rosca.)
I wanted to pop in and wish all of you a happy new year! I know I disappeared for a while– I just didn’t have the mental focus to blog the last two months. I certainly didn’t lack inspiration, though. I learn so many things every day! I also forget so many things every day– I sometimes feel that for every ten new things I learn, twenty silently slip out the back door. Well, this year I’m committed to doing a much better job of guarding those words (by using them over and over again) to make sure they don’t sneak out on me when I turn my back.
I’m also going to blog much more regularly. I’d like to be more whimsical and just blog when words and phrases strike me. For example, I was going through my mountains of papers the other day, when I came across the phrase cortar el bacalao. To cut the cod. Hmmm. Whatever could it mean??? Stay tuned and you’ll find out.
What are your propósitos for the new year in regards to Spanish? I have two. One, I want to start teaching private classes. Two, I am going to massively increase my amount of listening in Spanish, and this will mostly be via watching TV and listening to podcasts. (Of native material, not material for learners) I’ll go into more detail on why sometime later this week. It probably wouldn’t hurt me to start writing again on Lang-8 either; now that I’m not writing regular love letters in Spanish like I used to, my writing skills aren’t what they used to be.
Thinking back on 2012, I’m very pleased that I read a lot in Spanish– I’ll blog about that later. I’m also pleased that since I moved back to the US a year ago, both of the jobs I’ve had have been 100% in Spanish. Plus, I got to spend 5 weeks in South America over the summer. Who could complain?! Not me, that’s for sure. Still, I know I can learn much more this year, challenge myself significantly more, and do more fun and cool things in Spanish that don’t include endlessly talking about Spanish. A little more action, a little less navel-gazing, please. That’s my desire, anyway.
What are your goals? What actions and progress and new habits are you proud of from 2012? Again, just focusing on Spanish. Let’s make it a great year for all of us! May this year be fruitful and fun and very, very pleasurable.
Happy Halloween, everyone! ¡Feliz Halloween! ¡Feliz día de las brujas! ¿De qué se disfrazaron? What did you dress up as? What was your Halloween costume? Me, I decided to put the bat in Vocabat and proudly own my battiness once and for all. Here I am working it as the flyest murciélaga/chimbilá in town. I considered pinning Spanish words and phrases all over me to also put the Vocab in Vocabat, but in the end I chose to not throw off my bat groove. Next year!
Get this look: In defiance of my pitiful lack of crafty skills, I actually sewed this bat costume by hand. It took me about, oh, a mere five hours from start to finish. Stepping on a needle that went almost completely in was, sadly, a part of the process. I made the wings from an umbrella that I cut up. You can find the instructions here. I think we can all agree, however, that my costume is much cuter. Instead of sewing the wings to a baggy sweatshirt, I sewed them to a dress my sister gave me a few months ago. I also went in for smaller ears. I originally had the metal ribs on the wings to make me oh-so-anatomically correct, but have you ever tried to dance salsa with ribbed wings? Yeah, they’re rather constricting. I ended up ripping those membranes right out.
The costume was a huge hit, and I’ll probably keep it and wear it again in the future. I got to wear it to work today (don’t worry, I wore leggings), which was a lot of fun. When people would look at me, they always thought I was a cat. Then I’d spread my wings in all their glory, and they’d realize they were off by a letter. Somehow, it seems much more exciting to dress up as a murciélaga than as a bat. Once again, everything’s better in Spanish.
Hope everyone had a fun Halloween! Tell me what your costumes were.
