Away With Words

Communication can be difficult.  I remember groping my way blindly through my third semester Italian class.  That's the semester we learned to formulate hypothetical statements which in the Italian language is a complex and nuanced art form which like painting or gold smithing, can take years or even decades to truly master.  

I remember one day another student, in the middle of a grammar exercise, cried out in frustration,

"I just can't tell the difference between reality and imagination!"

"That," responded our professor who was wise and Sicilian, "is the result of watching too many Disney movies as a child."

And it makes me laugh to think about it now, but there's an unexpected bit of truth in it.  Language is like a filter in our brains through which all of our thoughts have to pass.  It affects our perception of time, of essence, maybe even of where the line is between what is real and what is hypothetical.  It's one of a million reasons that two people having the same experience can perceive things differently.

As for me, although I would not consider myself fully bilingual, I do live bilingually, in constant flux.  But "bilingual" is a term I don't like. I have always been resentful of it because it implies that there are two different systems that can be kept separate, that there is a switch that you hit or a line that you cross and suddenly everything has changed.  Now in English.  Ora in italiano.  

If only the world were so clean and clear cut!!!!

Linguistically speaking, it's more of gooey, melty, sticky mess.  Picture a dog eating peanut butter.  When I think about writing, speaking or social interaction within this inescapably bilingual context, a life experience that comes to mind is the time I almost drowned in one of those playground ball pits when I was a child. I feel like I'm constantly flailing around, grabbing for something, for anything that is solid.  Searching for the right words, you take what you can get and hope to make it out alive.  It's chaotic and confusing and crazy, yet somehow in the end, I always find myself wanting more.

Of course, I expect that there will be some lingering traces of English in my Italian.  It's my native tongue after all.  What I did not anticipate is the way that Italian has crept in and taken up residence in the English-speaking part of my life. 

The idioms and Italianisms are inescapable!  Suddenly, I find myself asking my friends if they would like to take a coffee with me.  I picture myself running up to the counter with a ninja suit on, grabbing the espresso and making a run for it.  

We don't say that in English, I remind myself.

And come in language, cosi' in life.  I find myself feeling like I am constantly caught between two different cultures: too American to be proprio italiana and too changed by my experiences abroad to be simply American.  

At moments, it's a priveleged position.  I've always enjoyed having the opportunity to be the go-between, the translator, the mediator.  Building bridges suits me; it's a role in which I find fulfillment.  But at moments, it can also be confusing, frustrating and even lonely.  When my thoughts wander towards the existential, I start to consider questions like where do I belong?  At times, it feels like the answer is everywhere.  At other times, nowhere. The line between the two is astonishingly thin.

But sometimes I find a place where everything falls away into a quiet tranquility.  Sitting on the couch in a close friend's apartment with a glass of wine in hand.  Whatever challenges the universe may present to us, we are in it together.  At the corner table in my favorite restaurant where the waiters greet me with a warm smile and kiss on the cheek.  Somehow food tastes better when you can shake the hand that prepared it. A scenic place to sit in the springtime sunshine. 

These are life's less-discussed joys: friendships that are equally comfortable in silence, glances that say everything without words, the first bite of your favorite meal, the tingling warmth of sunshine on bare skin for the first time since winter.  These things are beautiful, maybe because they don't require words or maybe because they're beyond words.  

Maybe because it's those little things that occasionally leave you speechless.