I am coming to realise that learning Polish is not the satisfying linear process I had hoped for. Vocab comes and goes, submerging itself when needed and then reappearing at will like an unpredictable hippopotamus. I grope for words that I knew 24 hours ago: the intervention of Anglophone jabber has loosened my tentative ability to talk about tightening a bolt. I am able, by virtue of endless repetition, to ask someone if they have seen Warsaw by the light of the moon, but the words for laundry or lock regularly evade me. Not so automatic baggage locker (bezobslugowa przechowalnia bagazu), which has lodged deep in my left hemispheric cortex despite the very remote likelihood that it will ever be any use.
I like the term language acquisition for describing this process. Acquisition is less passive than learning, more of a struggle. It describes the strong sense of ownership for words gained and also the almost physical sensation of clutching after expression. Language acquired is mental ground ceded and finally reconquered; language fought for, language possessed, language deserved.
Monday, August 11, 2008
Sunday, August 10, 2008
My revelation of the week is that I have a choice. Memories of primary school provide me with an exemplary case.
It is nineteen eighty something. I am friends with Shellee Collett, a girl slightly older than me with long, straw-like blonde hair and a nose that looks like it has been broken right in the middle. It hasn't been- two of her sisters have it too and only the youngest, who metamorphosises mysteriously into a snub-nosed, siren-like changeling as the years proceed, has avoided this inheritance.
They come from a farming family and along with the nose the three older sisters also have ample buttocks that my brother claims are perfectly designed to fill a tractor seat. The second sister is in my year and on the first day of school, when she stands in front of the class to be introduced, she has a smear of something orange beside her mouth. I have a mental snapshot of this moment which has somehow escaped erasure from my archives: Lori Collett standing in front of 20 children, with a home cut fringe, a pair of terrified hazel eyes and something unidentifiable caught up in the fine blonde hairs along her upper lip.
The details of how I came to be friends with Shellee Collett are lost in the mists of time, but I remember that she had an enviable way of flinging the long blonde hair over her shoulder. She lived with her family in a large farmhouse with a wraparound verandah and took showers instead of baths. I don't think our relationship lasted very long, since I can only remember being inside the house once. In fact, I think it was over in the moment I am going to describe to you.
I am sitting with her above the oval, watching the boys playing soccer. There is a row of rose bushes along the embankment where we sit. It is morning, before school starts on a warm day, probably early summer. We are watching the game and I make some forgotten comment on the tomboy girls who have joined in the match.
Suddenly she stands. She says, I'm a tomboy too, you know. She flings her hair over her shoulder with a determination I have never seen in her before, and plunges down the hill to join the game. I am burning to follow her, having long harboured my own fantasies about sportive inclusion, but I am far too scared of being mocked or rejected. She is absorbed into the game without comment while I peer down bitterly from amongst the rose bushes and curse my own timidity. From this moment onwards, she is one of the girls who has the right to join in all boyish activity on the school grounds.
Twenty five years later, I am finally magnanimous enough to openly admire the tractor-arsed Shellee Collett for this magnificent decisive act. It is possible to simply decide that you want to live a certain way, and do so. This is a lovely possibility and I will bear it in mind from now on.
It is nineteen eighty something. I am friends with Shellee Collett, a girl slightly older than me with long, straw-like blonde hair and a nose that looks like it has been broken right in the middle. It hasn't been- two of her sisters have it too and only the youngest, who metamorphosises mysteriously into a snub-nosed, siren-like changeling as the years proceed, has avoided this inheritance.
They come from a farming family and along with the nose the three older sisters also have ample buttocks that my brother claims are perfectly designed to fill a tractor seat. The second sister is in my year and on the first day of school, when she stands in front of the class to be introduced, she has a smear of something orange beside her mouth. I have a mental snapshot of this moment which has somehow escaped erasure from my archives: Lori Collett standing in front of 20 children, with a home cut fringe, a pair of terrified hazel eyes and something unidentifiable caught up in the fine blonde hairs along her upper lip.
The details of how I came to be friends with Shellee Collett are lost in the mists of time, but I remember that she had an enviable way of flinging the long blonde hair over her shoulder. She lived with her family in a large farmhouse with a wraparound verandah and took showers instead of baths. I don't think our relationship lasted very long, since I can only remember being inside the house once. In fact, I think it was over in the moment I am going to describe to you.
I am sitting with her above the oval, watching the boys playing soccer. There is a row of rose bushes along the embankment where we sit. It is morning, before school starts on a warm day, probably early summer. We are watching the game and I make some forgotten comment on the tomboy girls who have joined in the match.
Suddenly she stands. She says, I'm a tomboy too, you know. She flings her hair over her shoulder with a determination I have never seen in her before, and plunges down the hill to join the game. I am burning to follow her, having long harboured my own fantasies about sportive inclusion, but I am far too scared of being mocked or rejected. She is absorbed into the game without comment while I peer down bitterly from amongst the rose bushes and curse my own timidity. From this moment onwards, she is one of the girls who has the right to join in all boyish activity on the school grounds.
Twenty five years later, I am finally magnanimous enough to openly admire the tractor-arsed Shellee Collett for this magnificent decisive act. It is possible to simply decide that you want to live a certain way, and do so. This is a lovely possibility and I will bear it in mind from now on.
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