Quixotic

Educate Me

This map cannot be correct, can it? 

What have you people been doing while I have been overseas?  Because I am flabbergasted.  Get it?  I'm... oh, never mind.

A Certain Mood

It was because of my taxes;

I searched for documentation in old archives.

And because many of our subject lines were ambiguous,

I pored through dozens of messages, silently.

He wrote messages like, 'You know who called again, about you know what.'

But I don't know who, and I don't know what.

Reading his emails puts me in a certain mood.

Things I Enjoyed This Weekend

1.  This graffiti in Seville in big, red letters: TE KIERO.

2.  The prospect of a new All-American board game.

3.  What I would call constructive criticism.

Also, I'm reading french post-structuralists again, so I may not be myself again for a while.  That was a little joke, see... may not be myself again... oh, never mind.

Turning and Returning

On the canvas of our minds, irony and satire paint themselves in brushstrokes. 

A half-buried memory resurfaced last night as I was washing the dishes and trying to work out the meanings of merienda and piñera.  I heard merienda yesterday when I went to retrieve my child from the neighbor's house; it was apparently what they were about to do.  I understood it to be some sort of meal from the aroma of cooking food emanating from the doorway.  Merienda.  I thought I heard it as marienda and spent several minutes in fruitless online searching before it occured to me that I may have misspelled the word, which turns out to mean "afternoon tea or light meal".  What did immigrants do before there was Google Images?

I have yet to discern the meaning of piñera, if that is in fact what Isabel is saying.  She is never wrong about words, so it must mean something.

Somewhere in the dishwatery thoughts I remembered with a snort and a chuckle that I was given the Spanish Award in high school for my superior language skills, all of which vanished in the span of twenty years.  I was selected among the entire school as The Best Spanish Student, and let me tell you: I was shocked and surprised to hear my name announced that day.  Really, I was not exceptional in Spanish, which makes me think that I was absolutely correct in my assessment at the time that the Palm Beach County school system was (and probably still is) grossly inadequate.  Anyway, reminiscing is not exactly a favorite pasttime of mine, so this memory was more of a jab at myself for underestimating the difficulty of living, working, shopping, eating, and breathing in another language.  Because, really, to think for a moment that conjugating a few verbs could qualify me for a career in Europe is self-delusion rivaled only by early 17th-century novels about madmen and windmills.

Then I recalled that I received another award that day, one which I was not in the least bit surprised to receive: the Math Award.  This was a subject that I dominated effortlessly, at least by Florida High School standards.  Which, as you can gather, were not the highest.

So there I was yesterday scraping food into the garbage, loading the dishwasher, scrubbing the casserole dish, when suddenly I stopped and realized that I am practicing engineering in Spain.  And this is so obvious, so amazingly predictable, that it can even be traced all the way back to 1985.  The signs were there, I just followed them to their inevitable conclusion, no?  Of course shortly after receiving these accolades in the eleventh grade I spurned education altogether for several years and became a high-school dropout.  Apparently the high-achiever quality in me is more, shall we say, mercurial.

Irony, my constant companion, colors the canvas with broad strokes of reds and yellows.  Satire, my steadfast friend, slathers and slops a spectrum of greens and whites. The fresco emerges.  It looks, oddly enough, like a windmill.  Turning.

Typical Interaction

It is late afternoon, and in a fit of productivity I decide to tackle one more mission.  I pedal my way to Calle Castillo de Constantina, near the hospital.  I never come to this neighborhood; the streets are seedy, as are the residents.

Several times I stop to check the map that I printed from Google.  These sidewalks are not bicycle-friendly; the bricks are uneven; my back tire is low on air and I push heavily past the obstacles: dumpster, open excavation, old man with cane.  I am searching for the store that sells school uniforms for Isabel's colégio.  I have a map, but I did not remember to bring the exact street address of the shop.  But, I think, how hard can it be?

After backtracking a bit I finally decide to enter a tiny store that appears to have children's clothing.  It is typical of shops in Seville: very small, cramped with merchandise, and attended by two women.  The customer does not idly browse, he must wait his turn and then speak to the shopkeeper who locates the requested items, usually stashed away on some high shelf or in the back room.  There are already two customers ahead of me.  I wait.

Suddenly a transaction is concluded and I begin stammering in my broken Spanish.

'Have... uniforms... for... Colégio Irlandeses?'

'You mean Irlandesas?  Yes, we do.'  She looks at Isabel, who is pirouetting.  'What do you need?'

'I have... polo shirts... white.  I have socks.  I do not have shorts.. or...,' my voice trails off as I try to remember the word for "athletic suit". 

'Una chándal?'

'Sí.'

'We have shorts and athletic suits but we do not have her size.  She is a size 2.  We only have size 4.  It is too big for her.  We have ordered more size 2 but they will only arrive at the end of the month.'

I stare for a moment, letting the words seep into my brain before I lauch into an explanation, 'My neighbor... she has two daughters that go to Irlandesas... she give me two shorts... size 2... but they are old... and I want to buy more shorts... but I think she can use these two shorts... from the neighbor... until the new shorts arrive in some weeks.'

All in all, I think I did pretty well.

'What is your name?' the salesperson turns to my daughter.

'Isabel,' she responds.  Another pirouette.

'And how old are you?'

'Three.'  She produces three fingers. 

'Do you like to dance flamenco?'

'No, I am a ballerina today.'

'Do you want to try on some clothes?' 

Isabel holds out her arms as they fit her in a size 4 jacket.  'It's too big,' she remarks.

'Oh, you speak Spanish very well!'

I utter a tiny laugh, 'Yes, better than the mother.'

She takes my name, my telephone number, then patiently explains that she will call me when the order arrives.  She hands me a business card.  We say our hasta luegos and leave the store. 

'Now let's go to the library,' I tell Isabel as I strap her in the bike seat, 'Vale?'

'Vale!'

I take a different route, one with a bike lane, and as we glide effortlessly along the green pavement I wonder briefly when it was that I stopped feeling uncomfortable about feeling uncomfortable.

Next on my Plate: Mañañana

I don't know where to begin so I just will.

My supremely advanced language skills have opened new horizons, for now I am translating poetry.  Here is my first one:

                     luzuz

Brilliant, yes, thank you very much, and in case you cannot fathom my increasingly abstruse humor, I send you off to link-land for further edification.

Go now, be edified; or edificated, as we say in the South.