linguistic snot knots
i know i've explored this theme in great detail here in my ds journal, but i was not able to find them and i need to vent.
i told off a mexican imperialist at swim lessons tonight. he was with a child approximately the same age as baby sis (3) and the parental small talk started friendly enough. children have that unifying way about them. the fellow was new to swim lessons and looking for reassurance that his daughter was okay for her current fear of her swim instructor. our 3 have been in swim lessons for long enough to be well adapted.
the problem arose when he turned his heavy mexican accent to bragging about his language skills with such smug superiority that i found myself bracing for the "los gringos no se pueden" routine. your accent gets uglier every time i'm forced to listen that routine, bubba. learning that i studied biology in ecuador didn't interest him in the slightest. his linguistic pride hadn't reached queen isabel's court yet. i walked away. i returned and he was off again as soon as i returned. i cut loose on him in spanish about the injustice of his pride. don't make me listen to your inflated ego when i am not even permitted to speak. of course he answered my spanish commentary in english with his foreign accent growing thicker and uglier each time he answered my spanish in english. that is saying allot since his accent started out thicker than the mexico city smog.
when i returned again, his linguistic pride was on how skillfully he was teaching his child to speak spanish. i didn't ask if she was afraid of her teacher because she doesn't understand english. instead, i began to speak in spanish, with him answering in english, about the difficulties children have in growing up listening to this linguistic prejudice. the child's eyes lit merrily to hear me speaking spanish with enthusiastic overtures of joining the conversation. daddy said good-bye in english while he picked up the confused child and ran. si, mi hija (mija in mexico) se pueden.
vent, vent, gnarl gnash. . .
si, se puede. no crees los racistas.
Replies
does this belong here or in "flock its?" i decided it belongs here because of some peculiar turns in the psychopations. am i using language to "route new neural pathways?" chew chew. . .
i have been psychopating like a beaten crazy dog mama over the need to kill the boy feather babies from last spring's flock increase. the need has been on my logic plate since their first voice changes last fall. chicken baby boys do remind me greatly of adolescent human boys when those first hiccups of manhood spring from their throats to hail the end of childhood. in factual reality, too many roosters spoil the flock. hens will quit laying with gangs of roosters treating fertilization like a team sport. yo! ! ! fellas! ! ! there's such a thing as being over-fertilized! ! ! the egg production has resumed nicely since i closed the surplus roosters into the brood house, leaving one rooster per flock. i am currently cherishing my denial of how many weeks the roosters have been shut in. they do not look like happy campers in there, but still i can't brasso my ovaries bright enough to do the throat slitting, skinning and gutting. eat them? my babies? i've been finding it hard to eat anything chicken at the very thought.
brooding season has arrived. all four nesting boxes in the coop next to the brood house are filled with brooding hens. the mood up there is getting ugly. brooding hens are stubborn and mean in defense of their clutches. with all four nesting boxes taken by the brooders, the ranging hens have nowhere to leave their daily eggs. any hens who are also feeling the brooding urge will attempt to share boxes and the ensuing fights can get as dramatic as the junior high cry of, "chick fight! ! !" chicks hatched into this environment are likely to be killed by the envious hens. envy is a mean demon in any species.
nature has carried the dog mama psychopations into the need to choose which generation to protect. finding happy homes for last year's rooster is highly unlikely. not even **i** want a rooster crowing next to my window. even here on the farm, the crows of 12 roosters is enough to inspire noise ordinances.
a growing dilemma of this setup is that both of the front coops are in the projected commercial compound. covidic politics have that project far enough behind schedule (3 years) that fa has quite forgotten that she is living in the education center. her help has been priceless and we very much want her to feel at home, but for now, two of my 3 coops are in "her yard" and the surplus roosters are quite literally crowing outside her bedroom window. she very much wants to keep the flocks "como en mi pais" and on some level i feel like she has a right to do so. still. . . i can't seem to let go of my free range chicken keeping. the thought of industrially kept chickens on my farm literally turns my stomach. i can't imagine her being any more comfortable processing chickens than i am. she was bred, born and raised in the largest city "en su pais." she can't even handle chicken manure and has the NIMBY suits to prove it,
psychopating. . . fissuring. . . deflecting? ? ?
the vast majority of these psychopatious meanderings have been in spanish, fissuring often into the cultural confusions of who can and who can't speak spanish, brown people versus morenos, legal versus illegal, which of the 33 latin american and other continental countries of the world we are respecting immigrant rights for, etc., etc., through the cultural collisions. am i using those political debates as deflection for the clear and present need to murder feather babies? am i pondering the conundrum in a less-mastered language in an attempt to reframe the conundrum?
chew, chew. . .
last night's tit for tat skirmish with hubby no open connection to my psychopations over slitting feather baby throats or any of the secrets on hubby's side of the egg shell pile. openly, no. on my side of the egg shell pile, i'm not willing to let the slitting of feather baby throats be volleyed up and down the tit for tat playing field.
much, possibly all of today's residual head noise from the tit for tat skirmish has been in spanish. the wandering wonder of why has carried me back to ecuador and my work with my ecuadorian sponsor (madrina) to set up new alanon groups throughout the province of azuay. during my alanon participation there i noticed strange things happening to some of my meanest psycho snot knots. speaking of those internal conflicts in another language was reframing many of those psychotic ticks into formats i could actually work with. the consistent accolades i received for those reframings was healing beyond measure.
hmmmmm. . . routing new neural pathways around damaged brain centers? maybe? just wondering. . .
for sure, it was while living in ecuador that i began to notice i was not always aware of which language i was thinking in. here in the u.s. i often find myself answering in spanish when somebody interrupts my ruminations in english. that is a HUGE political no-no when speaking with a moreno.
bilingual birthday party today. hubs and fa both have the same birthday and this is our second year of celebrating them together. big sis decorated their cake and only had one "y." she calls hubs, "gampy" and fa's actual name begins with "y" this year they have to share the "y" in addition to the birthday.
the time i most regret having learned spanish is when a new political event stirs the spanish network to the point of being indecipherable within the english newsfeeds. the current newsflash is of a proposed driving law, "sb4." word on the spanish speaking immigrant network is hysterical. do i really have to listen to this? the only english versions i have heard are from spanish speakers. i have researched it some and come away from the research dazed and confused. all sides agree our current immigration policy is somewhere between destructive and dysfunctional. which parts of the current gossip i am hearing is urban myth and which is fact? frankly, my dear, my give-a-damn is busted. none of the sides respect my opinion, so please let me recuse myself from the debate, en cualquier idioma.
the still escalating flood of immigrants crossing the mexican border is generating enough political hoopla to make fa nervous enough to place her in another round of hypervigilance over her illegal status. nothing new there for me. over the decades that i have worked with immigrant communities in the u.s., the rounds of hypervigilance over the continually changing immigration laws just might be the most consistent anxiety i have noted in those extremely diverse communities. the fact that i don't speak or understand farsi, hindi or any of the other immigrant languages is feeling more and more like a blessing.
each and every one of these waves has left me feeling like more and more of a fool for having learned spanish. the assumption that i cannot understand puts me in a position to hear tidbits i would rather not listen to. "estoy aqui por el dinero y nada mas" is a phrase i am hearing with disturbing frequency. can we call being here for the money and nothing else, "avaricia?" greed, pure and simple?
dunno and getting lost in that complex equation --again-- doesn't feel too productive while i am trying to navigate my second parenting career as my 70th birthday approaches. i find myself --again-- wanting to hide behind the cliche that los gringos no se pueden. please, god, get this raucous conflict out of my brain. no puedo hacer nada.
the immigration flood on the mexican border continues increasing. at this point, many speculate that mexicans are a minority in the still growing "colonias" which line the south side of the mexican border. the other "brown people" of the world, irani, afghani, etc., are showing up in increasing numbers. if they keep their mouths shut and heads down, they, too, can pass for mexican, almost as easily as a cuban can pass for mexican. in mexico, cubans talk funny, too. here in the u.s., there is considerable evidence that many citizens of hispano-america can't tell a neighboring hispanic from a chinese or arab.
the political climate over these floods of law disregarding crowds is escalating in direct proportion to the still increasing volume. not even the u.s. has the resources to handle the sheer volume. the mexican government has even fewer resources to bring to the table. my bleeding heart is being torn asunder by the controversy. the needs of my 3 orphans has me believing i need to increase my social distances from that controversy. i donae feel comfortable bringing children into the political frying pans i jumped into in the company of fellow adult activists. worse. . . i feel like my best intentions have only paved yet another road to hell. the true definition of insanity is doing the same thing, over and over, while expecting different results.
my broken brain is going through another round of not wanting so much as a spanish accent in my mouth, ears or brain. i should have listened to the people who told me not to bother learning the language. los gringos no se puedan hablar. my broken brain is telling me what a fool i was for even trying. the subliminal dialogue is physically painful when it slides between the two language centers of my brain. the disparities between the two bodies of dialogues is so vast that my brain canae reconcile them as translations. the two sides are quite far from having the same conversation. my skin color dictates which conversation i should stick to. as rita moreno sang so eloquently in "west side story," stick to your own kind. this gringo really doesn't understand and i am not speaking ANY human language well. yes, i know i am a gringa in spanish, but english doesn't use make that particular gender distinction. no hay "gringas" en ingles. i am currently attempting to stick to the single language center.
round and round and round she goes, where she stops, nobody knows. . .
ouch
healing hopes for all
no exceptions
fa's anxiety over the latest crackdowns doesnae seem to be abating. nor is my own anxiety about how close her illegal status brings the children to the political hotbed. i still worry about my son's in-laws using that fact against us. ?en cual idioma debo llorar?
the literacy center where i taught english as a second language was in a traditionally afro-american community. an old-for-the-u.s. community founded by the buffalo soldiers after the civil. as the name implies, it was originally placed there to address illiteracy issues in the u.s. afro-american communities. by the time i arrived in the 90's, the center was teaching more esl than literacy. hispanics were the majority of the esl students, but the other immigrant ethnicities were solidly present in their rich diversity. on the legality issue, the center director had a standard response to the all-too-many opposers who tried to get her to check for immigration status. "call us switzerland. we are not taking sides in the dispute." her declaration fit my own attitude. i ain't nobody's enforcement official.
one day i encountered a man, dignified but shabbily dressed afro-american, waiting in the parking lot. he approached me, saying, "good god, i love idealists. you are the light of the good lord's love and i love you for it, but. . . will you walk with me?"
i'm not sure i could have refused him. this was one charismatic dude with a gentle, tonally rich voice that verily hypnotized me. that voice continued hypnotizing me as we walked though the 150 year history of his community. for him, that history was coached in terms of aunts and uncles.
"the hispanic migration is forcing us out. hispanics don't like slave descendants and. . ." we were standing in front of a humble but well-loved house. "they are currently harassing my great aunt mabel to the extent that she no longer feels safe in the home where both she and her grandmother were born. your ideals are paving roads to hell for our community. we don't want to move."
girl howdy, it was hard for me to enter the literacy center after that. i was recently returned from three country language study through academia latinoamericana and was freshly indoctrinated to the depth of the adage i have heard my entire silver-streaked life. "los gringos no se puedan hablar." silly me had thought that spoke of abilities. as with the english equivilant of, "you can't," no se puede speaks of permission as much as ability. i was beginning to believe "no se puede" spoke of prohibition in this case.
ouchies for all. . .
as i continue spiraling through puppet show in my head replaying the heart and mind ripping body of my activism in immigration issues, i seem to be getting whispers from the circle of fathers in "the dumb broad show." the most easily recognized whisper is from allen oliveraz. i feel safe enough using his real name because it just might be more common john smith. i have actively looked for allen and insert proverbial needles and haystacks here.
allen was my first mentor in air conditioning installation. he is descended from the pre-columbian texans who never were, nor desired to be hispanic. they fought on the side of texas in the war for independence from mexico. allen's sense of humor was equal to processing the irony of how fast his people became "mexican" after the war was won. his sense of humor was equally up to the irony of current day hispanics who browbeat him about his genetic obligation to speak spanish. he spoke spanish when spoken to in spanish, but i have doubts many spanish speakers were able to appreciate the humor in his punatious mutilations the language. allen was a very punny fella. i liked that about him.
is allen requesting membership in a yet-to-be-named circle? can i make you the chairperson? do you have a suggestion for the name? yes, sir, puns allowed and even encouraged, especially the bilingual puns.
si, se puede.
it's been more than four years since fa came onboard. four years this month that her status shifted from relief for an illegal immigrant in crisis to her current employee status. i credit her help for the miracle of stabilizing this little ship of fools, despite best efforts from the maskites who feared a flu bug far more than they cared about our little family crisis. fa was, quite literally, the only human being who was here for us in the context a child can understand.
somewhere along this trail of tears, the carribean island of hispanola went through yet another immigration sweep removing the desperately impoverished haitians from the comparatively rich dominican republic. when fa told me her folk version of the news, i had to cut her off and take a therapy break. racial hatred translates far more easily than solutions for the hideous problems which arise from it. i didnae even attempt to introduce her to the fact that the racists **de MI pais" are saying similar things about her, this very minute. they willnae listen to me any better than she listens to my counter-parts in her country. i've never been to her country, but i am quite willing to bet that she has fellow citizens who have made the connection.
these waves of anxiety are rather cliche in the ethnic diasporas of the u.s. nowhere near all the residents of these diverse communities are illegal, but enough of them to create an anxiety pandemic. most of those ethnic diasporas are of "brown people," but nowhere near all of them are hispanic. even educated hispanics have difficulty believing that. so much so that "moreno" is passing into english as another word for "problematic hispanic." i have yet to hear a fellow countrymen of hispanic roots call themselves brown or moreno. in english, moreno is a social class known for social oppression. the current president of mexico's political party, "M.O.R.E.N.A." isnae looking like the exception to that rule, despite the radical move of ending that acronym with an "a" instead of an "o." the spanish language places great importance on the diff between an "a" and an "o" as the final syllable of a word. i've often wondered if the strongest element in these waves of immigration anxiety have to do with how immigration sweeps are handled in their home countries. u.s. immigration anxiety is quite pale when compared to the all too many countries who handle their immigration sweeps with ropes and mass graves. i have nightmares about THOSE immigration reforms regaining acceptance en **mi** pais. alas, my country, too, has a lamentable herstory of such immigration reforms. god please save us all.
i abhor fa's politics, but i love the woman for her contribution to stabilizing our family's crisis in the face of covidic cruelties. we moved her work away from childcare for fear of the mother's family using her illegal status against us, but her work in product development and sales has been exemplary. i am long past being surprised that such intelligent and sensitive people can be so ? ? ? whatchamacallit in their racial assumptions. the blatant racial attacks i witnessed by ecuadorian college professors in their classrooms got me past that surprise. they arenae allowed to teach racism in classrooms, but there are still plenty on intelligent, educated racists en mi pais, tambien. racism is older and as universal as the formation of tribes. i even consider racism useful in knowing one's own family heritage. race decides nothing, but it matters every day. let us channel our racism into self-awareness and compassionate tolerance.
so sayeth the arf. . . i wonder if anyone is listening THIS TIME. . .
i care enough about fa --up close and strictly personal-- that her response to the quasi-predictable anxiety waves in the immigrant diasporas have moved me. despite the absence of scientific proof, i grow ever more convinced that anxiety is one of the most contagious pathogens in nature and that i catch anxiety quicker than an asthmatic catches the coronavirus responsible for the common cold. ignoring an anxiety pathogen is a gateway to deeper infections. i have been treating fa's racism with a gentle compassion similar to how i handle the hardcore racists of my own family tree. it is a slow and tedious process, prone to many setbacks. i still know how to tailor bedsheets. it would be no surprise to me to find plenty of tailored bedsheets in the family closets i am afraid to open.
the governor of florida has been shipping busloads of illegal immigrants to "sanctuary cities" in the north for a goodly while now. the governor of texas followed his example shortly after he shipped the first busload. the shelters, etc., in those sanctuary cities are waaaaaay beyond capacity and the administrators are beginning to sound like southern rednecks.
this current wave of immigrant anxiety is generating personal anxiety over having my 3 orphans caught in the middle of warring factions. my give a damn is busted on which of these warring factions is the owner of all truth.
ouch. . . god please lead us through. just praying.
i wonder if fa has ever spoken intimately with one of the illegal immigrants of her own country. i doubt it. not too many of the illegal immigrants en mi pais have. that would be a quality they share with the hardcore racists in my own family tree. racism works best from a safe social distance.
as the civil rights puppet show in my head continues their loud and angry chaos, i find myself listening to the founding father of my whachamacallit circle.
is that your jocular voice i hear whispering, allen?
wanna do another dumpster diving expedition?
the dumpsters on commercial construction sites are relatively clean and chockful of enough treasures to feed all the starving babies in haiti. allen and i shared a tendency to do more of our shopping there than in shopping malls. not too many mallites appreciate our puns. for much of the time he mentored me, he was working with his 19 year old son. his son was severely crippled in an accident as a small child. the physical health which allowed him to work construction was nothing shy of a miracle. his mental health was fit for a constructo stereotype. brand names were critical to his standard of living. allen and i teased him freely with the mallite stereotypes, especially when we pulled one of his cherished brand names out of a dumpster. somehow, that brand name item wasnae equal to the brand name he paid top dollar for in the mall next door.
yo. . . allen. . . care to share your opine on this latest body of developments?
i sure wish i could find the flesh and blood you. . . my psycho sense says you are still alive and punning, especially over your hideously common name. you sure know how to hide in a crowd.
try not to focus on the paranoid feelings - sometimes when we do, it's like we send out messengers to confirm our fears and we make it a dream come true.
I know also that the invasive thoughts are sometimes our way of holding onto something to keep us company in moments when we have to define ourselves... does that make sense?
sending fuerte abrazos chiquita!
is that alejandro i see talking to allen over there? alejandro's puppet in my head shifted shapes recently. i believe he has died. he was already quite old when we commiserated as over-aged college students in a country which was still reluctant to embrace lifelong learning. even when he was a tenured professor, he paid his rent by bootlegging videos. he jumped on my willingness to share my knowledge of english language cinema like a welfare null on a benefits check. he was enrolled in the still new school of cinematography at UCUENCA, which only added another dimension to our shared movie nights. no, he was not looking for a visa. his daughter was an immigration lawyer in nyc. he had no desire, whatsoever, to live in gringolandia. he was as loyal a patriot as i have ever met, in any language. i fancy that he even grew to love my gringo accent and appreciate his respect of my request that he not promote me to "gringuita." around the time that he took his che poster off his wall, he stopped calling me, "gringa." yes, my english speaking languagephobes. that "a" makes a huge diff in spanish. i canae be a gringo in spanish. mind your o's and a's.
yup, methinks that is alejandro i see talking to allen. i wonder what language they are speaking. alejandro hated the english language and i never once heard him speak it, but i strongly suspect he spoke english at least as well as allen spoke spanish.
hmmmmmmm. . . should i be worried? odd bedfellows often make dynamic duos. which side are you on, boys?
what a welcome surprise to see your comment appear after i posted this last entry! ! !
i might break both of my arms saluting the wisdom focus, bias confirmation and invasive thoughts. thank you for the reminder.
abrazos apreciados. gracias.
(((Hug)) :-)
my living room in cuenca had a stunning, second floor view of a central park with the andes mountains peeking over the rooftops surrounding the park. the view was the main reason i rented the apartment. pragmatically speaking, it was far too big for one lonely old woman, but us american capitalist pigs do like to pamper ourselves.
as alejandro and i enjoyed our last visit in front of that window, we spoke of a movie he had been particularly intrigued with my telling of and especially frustrated at the difficulty he was having in finding it. i had no doubt he would find it in due time. the man's video collection could probably shame your average hollywood movie vault. as i attempted to explain the meaning of the title, "a patch of blue," this explanation popped out. or, at least some variant of it popped out.
hemos pasado por tormentas graves
por peleas feas
dejando heridas que tal vez jamas sanara
pero alla, alla
se parten las nubes
y hay un parche de azul
am i remembering right that the stormy clouds in that window parted in cinematic synchronicity with the telling?
Sounds really gorgeous!