why I’ve always proudly said “no habla espanol” (and why I was wrong)

(this is also “Day 06 — Whatever tickles your fancy.” sorry i got all behind and schtuffs.)

I, Rachel Whitlock, am a hypocritical liar. For years I’ve said something like “learning any second language deserves to be commended, no matter what it is.” What I’ve ACTUALLY meant is “please learn French, but if for some reason you refuse, just don’t learn Spanish.”

Allow me to explain.

My maternal grandma is full-blooded French, and I’ve cultivated a love affair with everything to do with that part of my heritage for years. But a preference for French cannot really be blamed here. I blame middle school and my own stubbornness.

For a few years, while living in Kansas, I went to a magnet school in a slightly ghetto-ish part of town. We were required to take a foreign language, starting in 7^th grade, and for some reason Spanish was the only one available. I was a little bitter. I couldn’t take a language common in foreign language classes across the country, and the one that happened to run in my family. Aside from a unit on the basics earlier in my schooling, I hadn’t taken any before, and 7^th grade happened to be the year where you don’t actually learn the language, but the history of Mexico.

Additionally, there was a TON of Mexican kids at my school. They all hung out together, they all spoke Spanish to each other like a secret code, and they were all mean (I don’t know why). It was like a club that, as a 12-year-old bespectacled loner with her head always in a book, I didn’t want to join.

Fast-forward to high school. I finally got to take French! Oh but then I got to deal with every other person besides classmates and my teacher saying “Spanish is more useful.” More bitterness.

Junior year I was introduced to my first love (okay, yes, after Jesus, but you get what I mean), the Chilean poet Pablo Neruda. Sure, he’d been dead since 1973, but his poetry worked/still works something magical within my soul. I was dimly aware that he wrote all of his works in Spanish, but since I was reading in English and for the first time, this didn’t mean a thing.

The summer after my junior year, I went on my first missions trip to Mexico City. Ten days of serving people in need, from those living in garbage dump slums, to boys playing football (soccer) in the street, to community centers, to dusty clumps of buildings full of smiles and food, to one room churches…I was moved in my heart, and yet blocked by language. Not being able to properly articulate beyond the very basics of my job functions—asking for the amarillo crayon from a child simply by pointing and saying the color—made me want to bang my head against the tent poles.

Then I left. I burned to help the big-eyed Mexican kids fishing for tadpoles in the grimy dump pond, but I did not burn enough to learn Spanish.

Various incidents from that point until today have encouraged my grumbling towards the Spanish language (the immigration debate, Spanish worship music, “please press one for English”…) but my love of Pablo continued unbound (I also discovered Octavio Paz). I’ve recently started researching him more in-depth for my *dum dum dum* senior paper.

Something odd happened last spring to foreshadow my recent epiphany. I was working in the English department and a (male) friend (who shall remain nameless) used the phone on my desk to call his mom. The entire conversation was in Spanish.

Now I don’t know if it’s because I was attracted to this male friend, but for the first time in my 20ish year-old life, Spanish sounded beautiful and special (and, I will admit, sensual). This was not mean Hispanic kids at my middle school talking about Hispanic things with other Hispanic friends. It was not fast and eager words eager to say something that I was helpless to reciprocate. This was love, which came across in the way he said the words, the way he accented them and funneled them through this language that I’d so belligerently resisted.

I was so completely thrown, but then I pushed it out of my mind, thinking it was wholly related to my attraction to that boy. Well, not completely. But it did plant a seed, which suddenly sprouted last week: my derision for Spanish, no matter what I called it, was just that, and the more I examine my favorite poet, the more it lacks sense.

I’m going to work on it. I swear I will. A language-based prejudice, especially for one like me who is quite interested in linguistics, has no place in my heart. First, my attitude, and next, I’ll try to learn.

Perdóname.

(um, I probably conjugated that wrong, but that’s what my translator thingy tells me.)

days 4 and 5: favorite book and favorite quote.

considering i have lots to say about both of these topics, it may not have been the best idea to put them together in one post.

oh well.

since i’m such a book person, i don’t really have ONE favorite book. therefore i am going to approach the question like this:

if i could recommend a single book to anybody, what would i recommend? this usually means the life-changing ones. the ones that changed who i am as a person, how i look at the world, how i think about *things*…yeah.

the answer?

the poetry of pablo neruda

it’s a huge-ass anthology of selections from almost every published collection of his poetry, spanning his life and posthumous works. pablo, as i so lovingly call him, really did change my life. this started at age 17 in my high school creative writing class, and now, at 21, i’ve begun the preliminary research for my (college) senior paper. he’s shown me, probably as much as that passage from 1 corinthians 13, what love looks like. he’s taught me that political poetry isn’t just about pointing fingers at The Man. he makes me appreciate nature. and so on…this anthology shows all of who pablo is, and it’s well-worth both the cost and weight of this tome. if poetry is “not your thing”…well, you’re reading the wrong blog.

favorite quote…s.

a room without a book is like a body with a soul. [cicero]

music starts where the power of words stops. [translated, wagner]

and yet, to say the truth, reason and love keep little company together nowadays. [shakespeare, from a midsummer night's dream]

hope is believing in a world that does not exist yet, a concession towards the kingdom of the heavens. to hope is to believe that life could be better. it is ultimately our belief in this “unbroken totality” that allows for the potential of tragedy. for without this hope, tragedy is no longer tragedy — it’s simply expected. without a belief that allows for a better world, the tragic is fact. [jon foreman]

you are only young once, but you can stay immature indefinitely. [ogden nash]

when heaven meets the earth, we’ll have no use for numbers to tell us who we are or what we’re worth. [sleeping at last, from "heaven breaks"]

we are only asked to love, to offer hope to the many hopeless. we don’t get to choose all the endings, but we are asked to play the rescuers. we won’t solve all mysteries and our hearts will certainly break in such a vulnerable life, but it is the best way. we were made to be lovers bold in broken places, pouring ourselves out again and again until we’re called home. [jamie tworkowski]

we’re just a million little gods causing rainstorms, turning every good thing to rust. [arcade fire, from "wake up"]

we’ll dance like flames for there’s no gravity, for now i’m just a candle trying to stay lit in this windy night. [matisyahu, from "silence"]

[okay, i need to quit with the lyrics. also, um, too many funny ones from shows and movies to even start.]