Language? Creative writing

I am often skeptical of others' writing, but particularly of their creative writing. There is something objective in writing a paper, but when it comes to writing that is content to explore unfettered by evidence, to prove nothing save that words allow self-expression, I suppose my guard goes up because I am entering into someone else's reality, and I don't know if I will like it.

In spite of that, this will be a creative writing blog, because it is impossible for me simply to notate what I did each day — I was asked to write a blog, and this, to me, is not writing. So in addition to telling you what I did in Córdoba, I will share musings and poems, not to torture you but because that is what comes to the page when I write.

A couple hours ago, I submitted my last written final of the semester: a project on language diversity and cultural identity, focused on the question, "How do definitions of language shape language learning, inside and outside the classroom?" My project took the form of a transcribed spoken word poem, "Realidades," a case study of my experience growing up among three languages, English, Tagalog, and Ilocano, before formally studying Spanish.

These days, as I slowly lift my head from where it's been buried under all the pressures of this semester, I've become aware that my attitude towards the summer ahead is crippled by anxiety regarding how well I can understand and speak Argentine Spanish. This anxiety has some ties to the content of my final project, so I'm sharing with you the last few stanzas of my poem, "Realidades."

(Note: This poem is to be spoken aloud to bring out the differences in each language. Below the poem, the first two stanzas are translated completely to English.)

When I wanted to learn Spanish,

I didn’t want to learn the language

of the Mexican boys who smoked weed

on the far end of the track during P.E.,

nor the language of the brown-skinned

abuela who chatters rapidly on the phone as she

examines tomatoes alongside my mom.

I wanted to learn the thing that made you cultured,

changed the tone in people’s voices

when they learned you spoke

not one, but two languages.

I wanted to learn a topic, ace a class,

I wanted to learn.

Pero no sabía que aprender un idioma

no es solamente aprender, además se ahonda en

permitir que otra realidad encuentra

expresión de tus labios.

From my high school self to the

Mexican guys in my P.E. class and the

brown-skinned abuela buying tomatoes:

I want the music of your language,

the prestige of its other-than-English-ness,

not the knowledge of what realities

have stirred its utterance into being.

That is apart and irrelevant to me.

En la universidad,

sigo tomando clases en español,

tengo un requirement de lenguaje para fulfill,

y ya que sé español, va a ser más

fácil hacerlo con este idioma.

En clase, se muestran películas sobre temas

que todavía no entiendo en inglés,

temas como el neoliberalismo y el

futuro de los pueblos indígenas.

Se mezclan los sonidos usados

para hablar de aquéllos

con los usados para hablar de

lo que entiendo en inglés,

y empiezo a ver, que traducir al inglés

ya no me hace entender.

Empiezo a ver que sí cada idioma

busca expresar realidades distintas,

sino todos buscan con añoranza que los deja

tan cerca a la realidad

como si fueran unidas.

Empiezo a ver, además,

que debido a esto, el sed de palabras que tengo

cuando escribo un poema o hablo en inglés

es el mismo sed que da vida a

lo que encuentro en español,

sea obra creativa o habla cotidiana.

Quotidian is how I describe

the words I know in Ilocano,

my mom’s language:

Jak makaturug, mungang tayong, naimas,

rabiin — except I can’t identify

where one word ends

and the next begins; I only know

how they sound. They are quotidian, they’re

what my grandma grumbles when she can’t sleep,

or when she’s worried it’s getting late;

there’s nothing of poetry in my faltering grasp of Ilocano,

and it doesn’t bother me, until I’m back home

from a semester studying Southeast Asia

and realize, Ilocano is apart from Tagalog,

apart like the mountains and the coasts

stretching between Cabugao and Manila.

So I’m trying to catch the sounds as they dart

from my mom’s lips in sharp, staccato syllables,

Naglutuak te nagimas ti sinigang,

but they lose fire on my lips, they fall limp,

fall to pieces

my mother laughs

I’m learning to let it not bother me,

not to define the inability to speak my mother’s tongue

as a personal failure towards my heritage;

but I’ll keep trying, keep

immersing myself in that staccato reality.

It takes some wrestling to accept

that I have a two-year-old’s proficiency

in two of the tongues

my ancestors carved with their breath

at the same time that I have

perfect English. Yes, I have perfect English,

but sometimes my lips catch on a syllable

and I’m awkwardly suspended between consonants,

caught in a vowel my mouth isn’t in the

proper shape to enunciate.

It doesn’t discourage me, though,

because I have found that a person

is only part what language they speak,

part worlds more,

and that the thirst for words

that gives breath to my poetry and speech

is not enclosed within any language.

If anything, creative writing is

my language, it’s

the way I make sense of my reality, sean las

realidades españolas e inglesas, o las

filipinas y filipina-americanas.

(from my spoken word poem, "Realidades")

And now, lest I condemn them to die at the hands of Google Translate, here are the first two stanzas completely in English:

When I wanted to learn Spanish,

I didn’t want to learn the language

of the Mexican boys who smoked weed

on the far end of the track during P.E.,

nor the language of the brown-skinned

abuela who chatters rapidly on the phone as she

examines tomatoes alongside my mom.

I wanted to learn the thing that made you cultured,

changed the tone in people’s voices

when they learned you spoke

not one, but two languages. I wanted to

learn a topic, ace a class,

I wanted to learn.

But I didn't know that to learn a language

is not simply to learn, more deeply it is

to allow another reality to find

expression from your lips.

From my high school self to the

Mexican guys in my P.E. class and the

brown-skinned abuela buying tomatoes:

I want the music of your language,

the prestige of its other-than-English-ness,

not the knowledge of what realities

have stirred its utterance into being.

That is apart and irrelevant to me.

In college,

I keep taking Spanish classes,

I have a language requirement to fulfill,

and since I already know Spanish, it'll be

easier to do with this language.

Shown in class are movies

about issues that I still cannot

understand in English, like neoliberalism

and the future of indigenous people.

The sounds used

to speak about those issues

blend with those used to speak

about what I can comphrehend in English,

and I begin to see that to translate to English

no longer makes me understand.

I begin to see, that true, each language

searches to express a distinct reality,

but all languages search with a longing

that leaves them so close to reality

as if they were united.

I begin to see, furthermore,

that because of this, the thirst for words that I have

when I write a poem or speak in English

is the same thirst that gives life to

what I encounter in Spanish,

be it creative work or ordinary speech.

If you're interested in reading the full poem, shoot me a message!

#predeparture #language #poetry #creativewriting