The Accidental Linguist

Of all my favorite things to bring back from the woods, I now have a new one which I’ll have to rank above ticks and lice and that is poison oak.  After almost twenty years without a serious run-in with the plant, I now have a great rash on the ventral side of my body, which has also migrated to the back of one ear.  Particularly afflicted is my belly-button, which has almost swollen shut.  This has made it necessary for me to periodically reopen it and pack it with wadded-up toilet paper to absorb all the puss– which probably sounds gross, but just remember, I’m the one who HAS the rash.

So now each time I clean and dress my orange, disintegrating belly button I am invited to think fondly of the moment when I low-crawled backwards through a big patch of poison oak in the swamp– midst the clatter of gunfire and all those imaginary bullets flying through the air.  At least all that racket we made and the smoke scared the mosquitos off.  Last week I spent five fun-filled days as a terrorist, hiding in the woods and ambushing the new soldiers, then docking the weapon and rioting in front of their base.  What the week was really about, though, was getting back in touch with nature, which is what we did waiting hours at every point because the privates always got lost.

Or if not lost, then they were off the road in the trees, inching forward with wide eyes, expecting an ambush every second.  Even if their mission was just to talk to some unarmed farmers.  I remember those days in training, with leaders-for-the-day afraid to make a call because they expect it (correctly) to be the wrong one.

One animal we got an up-close look at was the Carolina Banana Spider, a giant yellow and black thing that spins a web.  After some fiddling, we managed to make it wrap and attempt to eat a short twig and a piece of mushroom.  It was necessary to take a stick and continually shake the scrap in the web, because if it was still the spider wouldn’t move a muscle.  I guess if I had to wait that long for my meals I’d be pretty set on chilling, too.

The only thing that was more fun than that was when we saw some privates taking trash to a dumpster, and decided to kidnap them.  This wan’t really our mission, but we were already done with the spider and were starting to get pretty bored.  So we sprinted up behind them before they could react, left the trash can in the middle of the road, and sent them back into the woods with a guard where they couldn’t interfere with our ambush.  We gave them some M and M’s, and even got a little info on the guard shifts in their camp.  Then our ambush didn’t come, and didn’t come, and still didn’t come, until a big sergeant on a gator comes crashing through the woods looking wild-eyed and asks where the hell his soldiers are.  So it turns out that they shut down all the training scenarios to look for those two, and all the instructors were pretty pissed.  But we had a good laugh about it.

On my long weekend after the woods, I started and finished The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, just because its one of those books that I’ve had forever and hadn’t touched.  The first seventy pages are the stream of conciousness of a retarded man, and if you want to know what that’s like, you’ll have to read my review, which I’ve posted here.

I’ve finally done my first non-book review, with a most-worthy subject– the Turkish Grill of Fayetteville, North Carolina, which can boast the best Mediterranean food and the best baklava in the area, as well as some of the friendliest owners.  Having been to Turkey myself now, I can judge how the Grill’s cuisine stacks up– and in fact most of it compares quite well.  One important thing is missing, and that is ayran, a salty yoghurt drink which goes great with grilled meat, but would probably be too weird for the un-inititiated American.

I’ve also posted a review of Jared Diamond’s latest book, Collapse, in which he explains why contemporary human history is an accelerating horse race, and why we should all care about the winner.  Painting a rather grim and convincing picture of current ecological damage and its likely future consequences, Diamond uses many historical and modern examples which he skillfully weaves together.

As far as Hurricane, or, *ahem*, Tropical Storm Hannah, for all the doom and gloom that we were made to expect from her, I sure didn’t see much.  I even forgot to close my windows, and she happily deposited a *light* coat of water onto my floor, but that was it.  A little bit of wind and a steady drizzle– good for the drought, but otherwise un-review-worthy.  So no review for Hannah.  I’m still missing a good mid-Western thunder storm.

Well, it’s been a long time out of the blogging business, and there’s no better time to get back in.  I’m married now, and I’m happy.  The rest of my unit is deploying to Iraq and beyond, and I am being left behind like an inconvenient turd.  But I can’t feel angry.  You can’t feel angry about the same stuff forever.

I’ve seen personalities suffocated before.  In fact, I’ve seen more casualties of the beauracracy than I’ve seen casualties of the enemy– I’m not a front-line soldier, and I’ll admit it.  But I think that stagnation is a test of character little different from any other– the strong will push through.  If you have no direction, make a direction.  If there is no direction, tread water, breathe, and keep your spirits up.

One thing that’s become clear to me as I’ve looked back over the material on the site is that there isn’t really one unified theme– and that’s fine.  It’s not a novel.  Anything I post here adds to the knowledge pool of the internet, and if everything else fails I can let Google sort it out.  Also, I plan on being alot less vague and mysterious about my personal details now.  I think that some modesty is certainly called for, but it shouldn’t interfere with the understandability of what you’re trying to say.   I’m not gonna be a spy, so I’ll just get over it.

In other news, the torrential downpours this past week have been good fun.  I’m hoping they drowned all the fire ants, and put the resovoirs back up to pre-drought levels.

Cielito Lindo (click here), a famous serenade composed by Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, has been claimed by Mexicans as a second national anthem, and is also known to most English-speaking Americans simply as the “ay, ay ay ay” song. It is also worth mentioning that Spaniards, Cubans, Argentines, and people from almost every other territory of the Spanish-speaking world have jealously claimed that the song originated in their particular area– which is probably more due to the enchanting nature of the ballad than to any serious historical evidence.

It has been one of my favorite songs for more than two years now, though I must admit that until recently the lyrics made very little sense to me. The words “cielito lindo” roll nicely off the tongue, though I couldn’t imagine why anyone would talk to a pretty little sky; and all the talk of contraband eyes rolling down the mountain and moles telling you not to touch them really had me confused. I honestly did not guess that it was a love ballad– if I had not done any research, I would not have known how to translate it. The English translation of the two well-known verses and the chorus is as follows:

Coming down from the brunette mountains
Are two dark eyes like robbers,
Pretty little sky

The mole you have beside your mouth
Do not give it to anyone, for it touches me,
Pretty little sky.

Ay, ay, ay ay
Sing and do not cry
For singing makes hearts happy
Pretty little sky.

The story goes that Quirino Mendoza was visiting the Andalucía region of Spain when he saw a beautiful girl with a beauty mark next to her mouth, and was inspired to write the song. In the first verse he borrowed a metaphor which had been used in local Andalusian folk ballads for many years. The Sierra Morena, or Brown Mountains, were in times past a favorite hide-out for gypsies and thieves, who according to contemporary accounts would descend upon hapless travelers and rob them of everything they owned. From here comes the comparison to the eyes of a girl, coming down from the mahogany mountains of her hair, ready to steal a man’s heart away.

The first time I can remember hearing this song in Mexico, was from a group of about ten older men and women, stopped by the side of a trail in a canyon, singing along with a guitar. This is how I will always remember it– as an uplifting ballad that is meant to be sung and not listened to, that invites people to sing out loud and take a more sunny view of life. I never found it necessary until now to actually have a recording of the song.

In listening to samples from over a hundred different recordings of Cielito Lindo recently, I quickly found out that there were many of them that I do not like. A large number of these recordings are very mariachi-fied, with a prominence of fancy trumpets and such that I really find gratuitous. Other singers try to mess too much with the rhythm of the words or the melody, thinking that somehow they will make the song newer. Still others over-interpret with very slow, wistful singing, as if somehow it were a very sad or tender song– which it is not. It is a teasing, upbeat love song, and it should be sung that way. Also amusing are a considerable number of gringo-rific recordings by North Americans trying to pronounce Spanish.

Mexico has been on my mind recently, but this is not the main reason I wanted to share this song. As the Spaniards, Cubans, Argentines, and even the goofy North Americans who have recorded the song prove, Cielito Lindo has meaning for everyone; and it can belong to anyone who carries the melody in their heart.

You may also be interested in reading the complete lyrics and translation, or Cielito Lindo haiku. I would also like to give credit to Arturo Ortega Morán from El Porvenir for his article on the topic. You can read an English translation of that article here.

It is a funny thing to be angry.  I have always known anger as a passing emotion, because it motivates you to take some action, and that action will remove the anger one way or another.  But it is different to hold in anger.  To choke on it.  I never knew that the sensation could really be so near to choking.

It is like the building excitement you feel growing bigger inside you as you wait to finally live out that one big dream– except that this dream is a nightmare and it will bring down you and your whole house if you ever let it loose.  Anger can be forgotten, too; you can let it go and think that it has floated gently away down the stream– but when new anger is triggered, you will find the old anger is still there, like a bad dream that visits when you sleep but fades with the light of day.

It is amazing to me the disturbance that can be caused merely by my choice of a wife.  I am not the only one who’s getting married.  Why can’t people be happy for me, too?  I hope there would be a similar reaction if some joe married a Colombian Catholic– because everyone knows that most Colombians and most Catholics are terrorists.  So that would at least be consistent.  But since when was bigotry fair?

Really its not being pulled from a desirable job position, or barred from beneficial training, that begins to get to me.  None of those things are important.  It is the stone wall of silence, the implied whispers, the strong implication that all things considered I am worth nothing more than a bag of shit.

Underneath it all, stoking the flames, is my fear.  Fear that all is not what it seems and that the worst may be yet to come.  Because hate them or love them my fate is now tied to the whims of my company’s leadership.  I have not married yet.  The most precious thing in the world is still thousands of miles away.

It is this same love that saves me in the end.  Because no matter what hateful passions flow through my body and pollute my mind, they can never be more important than that sweet promise of a lifetime filled with family; the tender smile which lifts my heart; the great devotion which guides my days; the delicious anticipation of that second first kiss.

Still, some days I wonder if my love will always be stronger than my hate.  Sometimes I forget about everything except my hatred.  Even when I am among friends, and having a good time, it is still there.  When the friends leave, and the fun subsides, hate takes over.  I can bury it, I can juggle it, I can philosophize it and explain it long-hand to the nth degree.  I can wait longing for the day when I can finally drop it, let it go and watch it float down the stream.  But I cannot let it out.  Because its not only me I have to fight for.

As for philosophy, I think one wise man put it best, when he said: you pay to play, man.  You pay to play.