tongues

Never imagined I’d find myself watching boxing on TV in a room full of Germans. Being in the presence of multilingual, even bilingual, people makes me feel dumb and lazy. I love language, but I cannot speak another language well enough to communicate. I’ve spent many hours and pencils memorizing grammars and reading the codes. In high school, French, but that was high school, and not having spent any time around the French, the nasally strings of vowels are half-sleeping in me. In college, Latin and Greek (the latter of the ancient variety, which is nothing like the modern spoken variety). I haven’t spent any time around long-dead toga-wearing folk either. In a room with only three native English-speakers, the dozen Germans that night for the most part spoke English.

I continue to find myself with polyglots. They’re speaking to each other, to me, to waiters, reading menus, and I’m looking like a deer. One girl, Polish, told me I’m lucky to know English because things are easier and more accessible that way. I suppose this is true, but that isn’t my way of life. Making things more difficult than they need to be is part of my personality. (Why? I asked the tree. It could not tell me. And so I licked it.) Meanwhile I try to rake back languages I’ve learned and begun to lose, by bobbing my head in occasional buckets of it. You should see my wet wet chin.

And there are other sorts of languages to learn: those of boxing and football. Before I die I will understand why it’s engaging to watch two men pummel each other when they’re not angry about anything (and maybe why people pay hundreds of dollars to see this done live). I made some headway regarding football, the American variety, this weekend. Why learn these languages? Because I don’t want to leave any avenue untouched. Because I’m a pervert in the park.