I've been here in Marmande for about 2 weeks now. I've eaten the best petit-fours in Toulouse and I've shopped the biggest sales of the year in Bourdeaux (and guzzled lots of their wine). All the while, I'm picking up French words here and there, which is thrilling and whatnot, but I can't seem to get comfortable with not having a damned clue what's going on in the conversations around me.
I can't ask simple questions of the new people I meet to get to know them better; I can't make small-talk with the lovely people in the boulangeries; I'm lucky when someone in the group knows a bit of either English or Spanish, but I don't get my hopes up, ever; I just put on a placid smile wherever I go (sometimes it's actually genuine) and wear my heart on my sleeve and wait for the human interaction around me to slow down or stop so that I can ask Pierre what the hell was discussed. Sometimes, I wish I hadn't asked. My patience waxes and wanes throughout my struggle to meet people, be myself and make whatever connections are possible with what little language faculty that I have. I find myself feeling so alone, so trapped inside my own skin, the words I'm dying to express just swirling around like a windstorm in my mind, and there's no window to open and let out all the built-up pressure. I get really sad when I find myself in a moment and realize how much I'm missing out on - whether it be random drunken stories told by friends who haven't seen each other in years; subtle nuances in the ways in which people are interacting that would tell me much more about how I should conduct myself here; or just plain small talk between a shop clerk and a customer, the things that make them smile or chuckle or make a strange face as they are buying their groceries. I miss out on all of that because of language, and I figure out some way to guess at the meaning of everything by watching intently like a child. Having your language removed reduces you to a child. It's ridiculously humbling.
I'm taking this as a lesson I need to learn if I want to be a true teacher and especially if I want to travel the world. Here, I'm learning how it feels to have your most self-defining asset (language) utterly stripped from you, to the concern of no one around you, and how to cope with that feeling, manage it, and use it as a tool rather than a hindrance. That tactic I mention above, how I'm learning to pay attention to body language and verbal cues rather than the literal meaning of the sounds I hear - that's a bit of what I'm talking about here. I know I'll be all right, hell I may even come out of this remembering a bit of French! But it's not just a mental process, I guess is what I'm just now figuring out; it's also very much an emotional one.
There's another saddening aspect of learning French for me. I truly love learning new words and hearing the sounds of forign tongues change as I become more and more accustomed to them. But at some point, the French that I heard on occasion which had such a magnetic and alluring mystery to it now just sounds like simple funtional noise, nothing to really marvel at. It's like how people say the more you learn about something, the less you want to learn, or something like that. This feels to me like a coming of age story, like it was inevitable that I had to figure out some time that languages are more than just hypnotic sounds that make my ears perk up to distinguish them or figure out where they come from. Language isn't some mystical, intangible frivolity of nature but a direct, purposeful and unbearably functional manifestation of it. I've always been most fond of art that serves a functional purpose - pottery, if you will, or a decorative coat rack. I guess I should think of language not as one or the other - not a mysterious artform without purpose, and neither a staunch and scientific machine. It's a bit of both - look at poetry, for example. That's one of the aspects of language that most fascinates me, how we can study something to infinity, but at the end of the day there's always something new to learn about it and be awed and inspired by.
Here's to life lessons!
Sunday, July 12, 2009
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
France and stuff
Let's see...where to begin? I left Granada last Saturday and spent a total 14 hours travelling by bus to San Sebastian, where I spent my last official night in Spain for the next month. During the ride, I had a connecting bus to switch to but didn't realize it was at a different station in Madrid, so I obviously missed that one, but all I can say about that now is THANK GOD for ticket insurance with ALSA! All worked out in the end and it only meant 1 extra hour of travel time, and NO extra cost to me for a new bus ticket. It was cool to see the andalucian landscape gradually change during the ride. I did the cheesy tourist thing and took pictures from the bus of the sun setting over the green Basque country mountains.
The next day, I crossed the border by car into France and bought cigarettes en la frontera. Driving up the Atlantic coast, we stopped and I got my first view of the Atlantic from the other side. I was thrilled to see signs written in French. We stayed with Pierre's 'aunt and uncle', who are perfectly liberal French hippie types who have a penchant for French beer, an enormous 'herb' garden, and thus a very laid-back approach to life. I spent my first official day in France sitting at a table surrounded by lovely French people, smoking and drinking Rioja and Bourdeaux, eating european pizza, French cheese, and Spanish chorizo in a lovely garden until sundown. There was a break in between where we went to lie in the sunshine near a lake, and I got some guitar time in. I spoke in Spanish the entire time, far too nervous to break out what little French I barely know, but amazingly, my comprehension was quite good! I was able to follow the conversation and participate quite a bit with the help of translation from Pierre, and his aunt spoke decent Spanish so there was that too. I did go to bed more exhausted than I remembered being for a long time - it was the kind of fatigue that comes from being locked into another language, unable to truly follow the conversation of a group of people without putting every ounce of effort into listening and translating and processing the whole time - I think I did pretty damned well, considering we were talking for a total of about 10 hours all-told!
The next day, I got kinda sunburnt on one of the most remote beaches I've seen in my life. We took a break to eat lunch (hamburgers - real, non-Spanish ones!!) and then drove up the coast to the biggest sand dune in Europe (the Dune du Pila). We climbed up the dune and were met with the blazing sun cast over Sahara-sized sand dunes, with the tranquil Atlantic meeting them down at the bottom. Stretching out in the other direction from the ocean were over 300 miles of French forest, one of the biggest in Europe as well. Pierre and I sat on the dunes taking sun for a while, left and said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and drove 2 hours to his house in the countryside near Bourdeaux. We had one day of chillax-down-time yesterday, and today he's off to work while I try to soak up the Frenchness.
As for talleys: so far, I've tried 3 French beers, all of which were excellent and one of which I was already very fond (Stella Artois); I've eaten locally raised duck confit (amazing) and ground horse (very similar to hamburger but with a distinctively different flavor); I've bought bread at a boulangerie; and I've noticed so many similarities between France and New Orleans, France and the United States, the French language and the English language...this looks to be the beginning of an eye-opening holiday.
The next day, I crossed the border by car into France and bought cigarettes en la frontera. Driving up the Atlantic coast, we stopped and I got my first view of the Atlantic from the other side. I was thrilled to see signs written in French. We stayed with Pierre's 'aunt and uncle', who are perfectly liberal French hippie types who have a penchant for French beer, an enormous 'herb' garden, and thus a very laid-back approach to life. I spent my first official day in France sitting at a table surrounded by lovely French people, smoking and drinking Rioja and Bourdeaux, eating european pizza, French cheese, and Spanish chorizo in a lovely garden until sundown. There was a break in between where we went to lie in the sunshine near a lake, and I got some guitar time in. I spoke in Spanish the entire time, far too nervous to break out what little French I barely know, but amazingly, my comprehension was quite good! I was able to follow the conversation and participate quite a bit with the help of translation from Pierre, and his aunt spoke decent Spanish so there was that too. I did go to bed more exhausted than I remembered being for a long time - it was the kind of fatigue that comes from being locked into another language, unable to truly follow the conversation of a group of people without putting every ounce of effort into listening and translating and processing the whole time - I think I did pretty damned well, considering we were talking for a total of about 10 hours all-told!
The next day, I got kinda sunburnt on one of the most remote beaches I've seen in my life. We took a break to eat lunch (hamburgers - real, non-Spanish ones!!) and then drove up the coast to the biggest sand dune in Europe (the Dune du Pila). We climbed up the dune and were met with the blazing sun cast over Sahara-sized sand dunes, with the tranquil Atlantic meeting them down at the bottom. Stretching out in the other direction from the ocean were over 300 miles of French forest, one of the biggest in Europe as well. Pierre and I sat on the dunes taking sun for a while, left and said goodbye to our wonderful hosts, and drove 2 hours to his house in the countryside near Bourdeaux. We had one day of chillax-down-time yesterday, and today he's off to work while I try to soak up the Frenchness.
As for talleys: so far, I've tried 3 French beers, all of which were excellent and one of which I was already very fond (Stella Artois); I've eaten locally raised duck confit (amazing) and ground horse (very similar to hamburger but with a distinctively different flavor); I've bought bread at a boulangerie; and I've noticed so many similarities between France and New Orleans, France and the United States, the French language and the English language...this looks to be the beginning of an eye-opening holiday.
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