Lost in Language

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!