In addition to getting a lot of practice speaking Spanish during my two years in Colombia, I also got to do my fair share of eating. And while I’m incapable of mustering up much excitement for Colombian food in general, there are two categories of Colombian victuals that are decidedly good: fruits/juices and bread. The tropical fruits are abundant and simply spectacular; as for the bread, there’s a bakery on every corner overflowing with it. When I lived in Bogotá, I’d frequently be too lazy to cook and would scarf down big bags of fresh, hot bread all the time. Panes hojaldrados were my favorite. I admit that I’m a little ashamed to out myself as such a (former) bread glutton, but at least I got a useful word from my Pantagruelic ways: ñapa.

The ñapa is the little extra added to something, and its most common usage is the extra roll that a baker tucks into your bag. You know, a baker’s dozen. I learned this my first weekend in Colombia when I went with a group of people to Medellín. I took a bus with my friend Flavio, we stopped at a bakery beforehand to load up on bread, and he flashed a winning smile to charm the women at the bakery into throwing a little extra bread into the bag for us. He’d been sweet-talking them the entire time. He later explained the custom of the ñapa to me. It’s also sometimes called the vendaje or encime in Colombia. Although it was once very common for people to say Vecina, ¿me da ñapa? to the baker, the custom is slowly dying out as modernization kills those little intimacies between neighbors and economic stress puts a damper on generosity. A real shame, the decline of the ñapa. So, enjoy your ñapa while you still can! I should say here, though, that you probably shouldn’t ask for a ñapa unless you’re a regular patron and know the baker well. Otherwise, it could be taken as a little conchudo on your part–one must also know that they are never entitled to a ñapa. Thus, anytime you’re the recipient of one, consider yourself lucky.

Ñapa comes from yapa, the Quechua word for gift, which derives from yapay, or to give more. You didn’t know you were going to learn Quechua when you stopped by my blog today, did you? As you’d figure, ñapa is used in many parts of South America, and it’s also used in the Caribbean. It’s even used in English! How so? Ever heard of the word lagniappe? (You’re forgiven if you haven’t.) Well, it certainly exists, and I’ve certainly seen it . . . a time or two in my life. Apparently, it came into the rich Creole dialect mixture of New Orleans and there acquired a French spelling. It’s still used in the Gulf states, especially southern Louisiana, to denote a little bonus that a friendly shopkeeper might add to a purchase. By extension, it may mean an extra or unexpected gift or benefit. Lagniappe comes from la ñapa. Nifty, eh? I bet you didn’t even know that you knew a Quechua word. Not that it would be the only one in your vocabulary; let’s not forget lima (bean), jerky, condor, llama, and puma, among others.

One phrase I like is de ñapa. It means that something is said or done as a little unsolicited favor. It’s like, Oh, and one more thing. Oh, and since I’m on a roll. Oh, and since I’m so nice, here’s a little extra.

Nos vimos, hablamos, todo bien, no pasó nada, nos despedimos y de repente me dio un beso de ñapa.

We met up, talked, everything was good, nothing happened, we said goodbye, and then he decided to throw in a little kiss.

Has hecho muy bien con tus diez frases de inglés. Ahora te regalo otra, pues esta va de ñapa.

Good job with your ten English phrases. I’ll teach you one more just because I feel like being nice.

It can also be used negatively to mean “on top of all that” like y encima.

Los muchachos atropellaron a una anciana y de ñapa tuvieron la desfachatez de robarle 500 pesos.

The teenagers ran over the old lady and to top it off had the nerve to steal 500 pesos from her.

Although it had been a while since I’d heard or said ñapa, I was reminded of it last week while talking to a Puerto Rican patient. Well advanced in years, she told me that she felt that the portion of life left to her was a ñapa granted from above. O sea, she had lived a good, long life, more than enough to be grateful for, and she viewed any and all additional years added to that amount as an extravagant gift. I liked her way of looking at life. Myself, I hope I have many more loaves of bread to look forward to.

Did you know about la ñapa or its English equivalent, lagniappe? What is this called in your country? Would you be brave enough to ask the baker for una ñapa? Ñapa or no ñapa, bon appetit!

I thought for a long time about how to incorporate Valentine’s Day into a post. Last year I wrote about an anti-Valentine’s Day backlash in Colombia, and that old post has been peered at by many fresh pairs of eyes in the last week or so. If you want to learn Valentine’s Day or love vocabulary, I’m certain that lists abound on the internet. The world doesn’t need another post on any of that, though. I suppose, then, that I wanted to say something explicit and non-evasive for once about love. The fact is that there is love brimming over in every one of my posts here; each one is an encrypted love letter, some of those valentines more thinly veiled than others. You probably just don’t catch the allusions, quotes, or entreaties. Raised very religiously, I always find myself wanting to confess. I guess I wanted to come clean with my motives. Maybe all writers, though, have their secret reasons for writing. Perhaps a great deal of us write to many what we wish we had the courage to say to one. Like Gabriel García Márquez, soy escritora por timidez.

Speaking of García Márquez, I started to reread El amor en los tiempos del cólera (Love in the Time of Cholera) yesterday. Does there exist a book that is more romantic than this one? No? I rest my case. Not that I’ve read every book out there ni mucho menos, but I still feel secure in making that bold statement. For me, its romanticism can’t be topped. To be sure, I mean all the meanings of romantic, both good and bad. However, I don’t mean romantic as in mushy, kiss-kiss, chocolate and flowers and stuffed animals and all that other cursilería. For better or for worse, this book is romance par excellence. If you’re the romantic type like I am, it may be somewhat of a dangerous read. Of course, I discovered that when it was already far too late. In any case, I already had all of those silly notions safely dwelling in me, so it’s not like the book put them there. It certainly didn’t disabuse me of any of them, though. Ojo, let no one read it as a how-to on love or happiness unless you’re content to wait several decades.

I’ve written once before about rereading Cien años de soledad. A difference with this reread, however, is that I’m reading the same copy of El amor en los tiempos del cólera that I read the first time. (I chose to leave my beautiful copy of Cien años de soledad in Colombia.) The book’s certainly seen its better days. It’s battered and stained, the spine has fallen off, and you can pluck certain pages right out, but it has love and character and a story. I bought it at a used bookstore in downtown Medellín the day before I decided to move back to the U.S. In fact, I bought two books that day, and it was directly because of one very specific word on the first page of the other book that my ex and I decided to call it quits. Of course, I left that book behind as well. We’d gone to that bookstore specifically to look for El amor en los tiempos del cólera, and I just chanced upon the other book while browsing solo in the very cramped and low-ceilinged upstairs section of the bookstore. Who knows, maybe I’d still be living in Colombia if I hadn’t decided to read GGM’s second most popular book or hadn’t wandered up that creaky staircase to curiosear. La curiosidad mató al gato; just like in English, curious cats in Latin America meet a very lamentable fate. What if, what if, what if . . .

Earlier today I reread a fabulous, prize-winning essay out there on rayar libros–writing in books. Do our marginal scribblings give us away? Are the passages that we passionately underline emblems of our souls? What can you learn about a person by reading a book they’ve read? Can you communicate with someone through a book? What about a blog? Why do we spill our hearts in the most ineffectual places? Vaya usted a saber . . . 

I’ve always loved “Marginalia” by Billy Collins, a poem exalting the art of peripheral commentary. Here’s the last part:

Yet the one I think of most often,
the one that dangles from me like a locket,
was written in the copy of Catcher in the Rye
I borrowed from the local library
one slow, hot summer.
I was just beginning high school then,
reading books on a davenport in my parents’ living room,
and I cannot tell you
how vastly my loneliness was deepened,
how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed,
when I found on one page

A few greasy looking smears
and next to them, written in soft pencil-
by a beautiful girl, I could tell,
whom I would never meet-
“Pardon the egg salad stains, but I’m in love.

“How vastly my loneliness was deepened, / how poignant and amplified the world before me seemed . . .” Yes. If this isn’t an effective apologia for marginalia, I don’t know what would be.

What does one find in my books? If they’re in Spanish, hundreds of definitions. Are these the most representative messengers of who I am? Maybe so. Besides vocabulary words, what did I underline in El amor en los tiempos del cólera? ¿Qué me movió muchas fibras? Where did I feel myself most compenetrada, most aludida?

–Aprovecha ahora que eres joven para sufrir todo lo que puedas–le decía–, que estas cosas no duran toda la vida.*

Hoy, al verlo, me di cuenta que lo nuestro no es más que una ilusión.

–Es feo y triste–le dijo a Fermina Daza–pero es todo amor.*

. . . se consagraba a la pérdida del tiempo.

. . . nunca hubiera admitido la realidad de que Florentino Ariza, para bien o para mal, era lo único que le había ocurrido en la vida.

–Rico no–dijo–: soy un pobre con plata, que no es lo mismo.*

Florentino Ariza escribía cualquier cosa con tanta pasión, que hasta los documentos oficiales parecían de amor. Los manifiestos de embarque le salían rimados por mucho que se esforzara en evitarlo . . .*

Fermina Daza había rechazado a Florentino Ariza en un destello de madurez que pagó de inmediato con una crisis de lástima, pero nunca dudó de que su decisión había sido certera. 

. . . la seguridad, el orden, la felicidad, cifras inmediatas que una vez sumadas podrían tal vez parecerse al amor: casi el amor. Pero no lo eran . . .

Esta cuca es mía.

Quería ser otra vez ella misma, recuperar todo cuanto había tenido que ceder en medio siglo de una servidumbre que no la había hecho feliz, sin duda, pero que una vez muerto el esposo no le dejaba a ella ni los vestigios de su identidad . . . quién estaba más muerto: el que había muerto o la que se había quedado.

. . . aquel amor irreal.

¿Por qué te empeñas en hablar de lo que no existe?

I put stars next to my favorite lines. People, don’t you see that you need to drop everything and read this book as soon as humanly possible?

Previous owners of the book had written a few things as well. Doña Duque G. is written in neat, feminine cursive in the margin of page 73, and pages 173, 273, and 373 say D ² G. at the top. While this initially seemed bewildering, I now see that my copy of the book has 473 pages. I guess that from these mile markers, Doña Duque could say to herself, Only four hundred more pages to go . . . only three hundred more pages . . . only two hundred more pages, ¡ya casi! Was this a punishment meted out to her by someone? Doña Duque G., the state will pardon your crime if you read this horribly schmaltzy mamotreto. Or did she shed a tear every time she reached the 73 mark as she was forced to realize that her time with the amazing book was rapidly running out and, similarly, she would one day cease as well?

On the title page, you can see that a name was once written in pencil before being erased. Oh, what wretched instruments erasers are! The same goes for White-out. They should be banned, rounded up, and destroyed. The last name looks like Posaada. No idea about the rest of it. One of the pages has also been ripped out. Naturally, this literary vandalism also speaks volumes. On the back of the book is an old yellow sticker that $15000←SET. As you can see, I clearly need to go back to Medellín to claim the rest of the set that was never given to me. I also want to buy more books and find more stories tucked inside stories.

So many people travel from country to country and spend so much money on counseling to find themselves, but maybe they would discover just as much, if not more, were they to pore through the books they’ve read and loved and see what stirred them in lives past. Perhaps life is too short to reread books when there are so many wonderful books out there, but it’s also far too long not to remember. And if books can be revisited and relived, then maybe certain times of life can also be returned to and even edited and reissued. If nothing else, marginalia lets us speak out of our loneliness and possibly right into that of a stranger who may even have something to shyly say back to us. Will anyone ever find our navel-gazing blog posts or heated Facebook comment discussions in 3013? Most likely not. Instead, immortalize yourself and emblazon your being on the future with a book and a pen. Someone will tenderly scrutinize it, someone will wonder, surely someone will read your barbaric yawp and care.

I went to a party the other night, and we were all having a merry old time. One of the guests started playing the guitar, and someone asked if he knew any songs by Ricardo Arjona. No, not Arjona, I pleaded. ¡Es muy cursi! Judging by the immediate chorus of indignant gasps and protestations, I had touched a nerve. More than merely defensive of the singer, they took issue with my epithet of choice. ¿Y qué tiene de malo eso, ser cursi? I didn’t stop there. Es más, I said. I’ve found that Hispanics on the whole tend to be much more cursi than Americans. Well, that was it. Se armó la de Troya. The women were then up in arms. Oh, what does she know about love? She’s just a cold, heartless gringa. How could she ever understand the way we Latinos feel and express ourselves? No, they didn’t actually say those things, but it’s what their whelps were basically communicating. As we’re all friends, I took their ribbing in stride. They wouldn’t let me live it down, though–the rest of the night, they kept making a big deal about all the music being CURSI and then looking at me as if to apologize for offending my stony artistic palate.

I wanted to retirar lo dicho immediately, and not because of the outcry from my friends. I knew that no feelings had been hurt, and I still stand by what I said—Ricardo Arjona is cheesy. Immensely so. And his music is not my cup of tea. But if someone wanted to, I’m sure they could lampoon many of my beloved Hispanic singers for being cursi as well–Silvio Rodríguez, Julio Jaramillo, Chavela Vargas, etc. Why does cursi get such a bad rap? And what do we reveal about ourselves when we hiss and glare at this adjective as if it were the devil?

Cursi means cheesy, especially in the sense of mushy, sentimental, sappy, lovey-dovey. Cloyingly sweet, sickeningly sweet. Empalagoso, hostigante, acaramelado. Someone who is cursi oozes miel–honey–and is thus meloso. Think of the Seinfeld episode where he and his girlfriend called each other Schmoopy, and you’ll have a good idea of cursi.

It’s very subjective, though. I guess everyone has a certain degree to which they can tolerate mushiness. Predictably, it’s always other people’s sappiness that gets on your nerves; one almost never views their own actions as cursi unless their family and friends start giving them a hard time about their soft side. That is, we’re all hypocrites when it comes to being cheesy. All of us, of course, but the Spanish speakers.

I had a cursi friend in Bogotá named Jhon Carlos. Here’s how I described him to a friend back in 2010: “He’s kind of awkward, though awfully sweet and tender, also kind of cheesy and… eager. :)” Yes; very cheesy, this Jhon Carlos. And very eager–muy intenso–but so genuine and sincere. He filled my inbox for years with emails full of virtual flowers, cliché professions of love, and lots of melosidad. Although I rolled my eyes at the trite and sappy ways that he expressed his feelings for me, I respected him for being so heartfelt and unabashedly cheesy. O sea, for not holding back and for not apologizing for his cheesiness in an effort to put up a barrier of self-protection in case of rejection or mockery. People who dare to bare their hearts make themselves easy targets, but who wants to be the grinch who goes around ridiculing people for attempting to find and then luxuriate in love? Insecure people, that’s who.

My first boss in Colombia, Alba, once gave me a painfully cursi stuffed lion attached to a fuzzy cup that had two hearts on it and had HAPPY EVERYDAY emblazoned across the top. I was touched. The examples I could give of cursi-ness that I observed in Colombia could go on and on, and I’ve noticed it among Hispanic friends from other countries as well. And it’s one of my favorite things about them–I love my Hispanic friends and the Latin American culture at large for being so cursi. I do. No, I still prefer not to receive stuffed animals from love interests seeing as I exited childhood decades ago, but I will take a cheesy, over-the-top, melodramatic love any day over some serious, respectable, safe, buttoned-down alternative. Yawwwwn. ¡Qué pereza!

Hell, one could date Pablo Neruda and even find him cursi were they to insist on militancy against all sentimentality. Where’s the fun in that, though? And, who knows, maybe even Neruda got exhausted sometimes from the great pressure to be original and not cursi–after a long day of racking his brain for inspired, fresh symbols of love for his poems, perhaps the most he could muster up for Matilde was a little teddy bear he’d pick up at a nearby store. Maybe she even requested them, having been up to her eyeballs in sonnets and odes. There’s nothing wrong with being a little cursi from time to time, and if it’s your MO, well more power to you so long as your partner’s on the same cursi wavelength. Each set of lovers forms their own language and lexicon composed of their significant symbols and code words, and who really cares if some fulano scoffs and labels them as cursi? Ain’t nobody got time for that.

I also think of a gift I once received in Colombia of a set of pillows, one of which had my name crookedly embroidered inside a heart. You can probably guess whose name was in the other heart. As far as cursi goes, I’m pretty sure those pillows take the cake. And yet, very much out of character, I loved those pillows and not in spite of their adamant cheesiness but rather because of it. They were sincere, they were made and given with so much love, and their very existence was a brave, unironic, and unambivalent celebration of something very beautiful and worthy of praise, even if it were to later prove ephemeral. What am I, too good for cursilería? Of course not. Love is always worth celebrating, albeit imperfectly, albeit cheesily, albeit precipitately, albeit years after the fact.

In sum: What is love if not cursi? Love is supremely sentimental and gushy and ridiculous. And love means leaving your self-consciousness at the door, as well as your ego. I feel like you’re not really in love if you’re not regularly making a fool of yourself! But why hide our cheesiness within the safe confines of relationships? I admire people who can unblushingly own their feelings, hopes, and even disappointments without pussyfooting or pretending to not care all that much anyway. Although cursi people could use some work in the originality department, at least they care in the first place. There’s a lamentable epidemic of nonchalance and numbness and self-absorption these days, and cheesiness is a much better alternative to these terrible modes of subpar living. The way I see it, life is about caring. And since people have been caring for millennia, it’s awfully hard to express your care in a way that millions of other people haven’t already done. So, go ahead and be cursi. Those who would snarl and say bah humbug and rain on your parade have their own issues–just feel sorry for them. Ricardo Arjona, I still don’t like your music, but I respect you for sharing your cursi soul with us. There are certainly worse ways to be.

`Your hair wants cutting,’ said the Hatter. He had been looking at Alice for some time with great curiosity, and this was his first speech.–Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland

My hair had wanted cutting for a very long time, and today I finally acceded. I had a few hours in between my morning appointments at work and my afternoon one, and all of a sudden an irresistible flash of urgency came over me. I was either going to get it lopped off once and for all or I’d never get it cut, but I’d had it with my passivity and dawdling. I only realized how out of hand I’d let it get by way of dancing, my main pastime– while it can be sexy to whip my dance partners in the face with my hair while doing turns and spins, it had reached the point where they were getting unpleasantly ensnared in it. Not so sexy.

When my hair was still a manageable length for whipping, 8 months ago

The last time I got a haircut was in September 2011 and before that November 2009 in Medellín and Bogotá respectively. I remember both times well. In Bogotá, I was with two friends, Yadira and Alba, and when Yadi saw a peluquería and decided to get her hair cut and colored on a whim, Alba and I had to join in on the fun. I didn’t even bother trying to guide Leonardo, the hairstylist, with my lousy Spanish. I just let the muse strike him. In Medellín, I went one day to a dirt-cheap salon with hot pink signs across from the metro station closest to my apartment. Filled with young girls who were surely fresh out of beauty school (if even that), I did my best to tell Mabel what I wanted. I paid about $2.50, and did I ever get what I paid for. When I got home and used two mirrors to see the back, I saw to my horror that she had done a complete hack job. Doing my best to blindly fix it with a pair of scissors, I then diligently proceeded to wear my hair up for the next few months. 

Hair is symbolic, so what was I doing holding on to that same hair from Colombia almost a year and a half later? This haircut was long overdue. I suppose in seven years all of my cells will be renewed, and then I’ll have reached a new outward symbol of regeneration and growth (and, inherently, loss). By then, the only tangible link I’ll still retain to Colombia will be this Colombian Spanish I couldn’t shake off me if I tried.

To wit: here’s a bit of hair and haircut vocabulary I remember from Colombia. Supremely personal, supremely unhelpful. If you hadn’t noticed, this blog is moving away from being helpful and trying to be more and more an end unto itself.

Motilarse - motilarse was the verb I usually heard in Medellín for getting your hair cut. If it’s used in Bogotá, I missed it. Very informal, very Paisa and Caribbean. Or so I thought–I now see that it’s in the DRAE. In fact, I’ve learned that when Spanish settlers arrived in Venezuela and Colombia in the early 1600s, they called the indigenous Barí people of the Catatumbo region Motilones because of their short hair. The name has stuck. Motilar, then, would seem to be an archaic Spanish word that is now used almost exclusively in Colombia. The Colombians are in good company–Cervantes himself used the word motilón in Don Quijote. Has de saber que una viuda . . . se enamoró de un mozo motilón . . . (Motilón here refers to lay people who would wear their hair close-cropped like priests.) Motilar shares an etymological ancestor with mutilate. Ouch.

A Motilón/Barí woman

Hacer estragos - I remember Jose (not José), a psychologist at the school I worked at in Bogotá and with whom I once went on a date, saying me hizo estragos when talking about a botched haircut he had just received. It doesn’t specifically have to do with hair per se, but I’ll always think of hair when I hear it. It means to wreak havoc, to ravage, to do a number on.

Trasquilar - Speaking of haircuts gone wrong, I shared above that I got one myself while living in Medellín. It was my own fault, though. I did my best to offset the damage, but my hair was still very crooked. I kept insisting that I’d go somewhere and get it fixed, but I never did, hence the updos that I sported over the next few months. My positive takeaway? I learned the word trasquilar– it means to butcher a haircut, to cut hair badly, to make someone look like they got in a fight with a lawnmower. One friend, Lina, thought my lopsided hair was the height of hilarity, and she could never resist teasing me about my pelo trasquilado every time we met up. It got old fast, but the word stuck. Now that I’m poking around the internet, I’ve stumbled upon the phrase ir por lana y salir/volver trasquilado – to get more than one bargained for, to go for wool and come home shorn (never heard it), to have things backfire on you. You break up with someone to be with someone who seems better and then the new guy turns out to be a dud and you’re single again, worse off than when you started. You move to a new city to take a job that pays more but you never even see those extra earnings because you have to pay more in rent, transport, etc. I love the ovine imagery of the phrase, and I’m committed to using it as much as I can.

Peluquear - Another common way of saying cortar el pelo in Colombia and some other countries. In others, though, it doesn’t even exist. A peluquero is a hairdresser or barber (also barbero). I remember that Alba’s dad was a peluquero. It’s a funny word, if you think about it, because a peluca is a wig. I once bought a purple one off the street in Bogotá. Another word that’s related to peluca and is very common and useful is despelucado/a – with messy hair, with bed head, unkempt, scruffy. There’s also despeinado/a.

Pelucada with Jose

Ligero - Another one that has no obvious connection to hair. I feel like getting something off my chest, though. So, when I was getting my hair cut in Medellín by Mabel, I naturally tried to speak my very best Spanish but inevitably failed. I remember her asking me at one point ¿Te crece ligero? And I thought, ligero, ligero, ligero. What the dickens did it mean? I could only remember ligero meaning light, as in the opposite of heavy. And then I thought I recognized it from a book of Horacio Quiroga stories I had read. I thought it meant smooth, straight. (I was confusing it with lacio.) As my hair is naturally straight, I said something to the effect of oh yeah, it’s totally straight, I don’t even own a comb or brush, aren’t I lucky? And she looked at me uncomprehendingly like I was from another planet, shrugged, and kept on mutilating my hair. Much to my dismay, I realized my silly error later on. Ligero in this context meant fast, a common way of saying it in Medellín and other places.

Those are the first hairy words that come to mind. A few others are espeluznante, rapar and raponazo, and peliagudo, among others, so I’ll try to write another installment the next time I do something to my hair. I’ve been wanting to dye it burgundy, so maybe then.

Oh, and today while driving home, I was listening to NPR and they were talking about someone suing somebody for damages. A guest commentator said something like, “We don’t know which people they’ll give a haircut and which people they’ll just touch lightly.” My brow furrowed; I don’t think I’d ever heard haircut used that way. To give someone a haircut? Apparently it means cleaning someone out, causing them to lose a great deal of money. I guess there’s getting a haircut, and then there’s getting a haircut, whether your hair wanted cutting or not.

From a comment on a recent Wall Street Journal article on Bogotá:

Do not wear bahamas clothing, this place is cold (9K feet altitude) and do not search for coconuts (this is not a tropical island).

Sadly, I’m sure this needed to be said. You just know there have been Americans who have caught a taxi from the airport and asked to be taken to the beach. I hope that once they got over their disappointment they had fun in what the article calls “the Hollywood of South America.” (Which of these lines is funnier? Hmm.)

Did you catch the play on words in my last post’s title? I grilled three friends on it, and none of them got the allusion. Hmm. I’m generally a person devoid of snark, but for the sake of education I’m going to employ some major snark right now and use a Colombian phrase that’s apropos: ¿Te lo explico con plastilina? Should I break it down for you using Play-Doh? Would some clay figures help you get it? Do I need to spell it out for you? Here, see if this helps.

Get it? A man . . . amanecer. Ahhhhh, ya caigo. We see what you did there, Vocabat. Nothing ingenious–I know–but not too shabby either, right?

Now, back to the phrase of the day: ¿Te lo explico con plastilina? Plastilina is putty-like modeling clay. Its official translation to English is Plasticine®, but I’d never heard that word before. I guess I should have, though. Plasticine is what clay animation features like Wallace and Gromit, and Gumby are made with. There’s also a reference to Plasticine in the Beatles song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.”

Picture yourself on a train in a station,
With Plasticine porters with looking-glass ties.

In Spanish, the word plastilina is also frequently used for Play-Doh, even though there’s a world of a difference to the discerning fingers and noses of children. Play-Doh has a base of flour, salt, and water; is totally edible; and it hardens. Plasticine, on the other hand, is derived from clay and is oil-based. It’s not edible, and it never gets hard. In some countries Play-Doh is known as just that: Play-Doh. 

Explicar algo con plastilina, then, means to have to explain things in very basic terms to those who might be a little slow on the uptake. To put things so simply that even a child could understand. It’s like when we say, Do you want me to draw you a picture? in English, though you can also say ¿Te lo dibujo? in Spanish.

It appears that explicar algo con plastilina is a Colombian phrase, with possibly some usage in Venezuela as well. Thanks to the internet, I now possess an equivalent phrase: it looks like explicar algo con manzanas expresses the same idea in some other countries. Personally, if I was having trouble grasping something–say, how the Federal Reserve works–I’d much rather have it explained to me via Play-Doh than apples. More power to you, though, if you could look at the cross-section of an apple and instantly understand monetary policy.

Ese tipo no entiende que no quiero nada con él, toca explicarle con plastilina.

That guy just doesn’t get that I’m not interested in him; you have to come out and make everything so obvious to him.

¿Quedó claro o tocará explicarte con plastilina?

Does that make sense, or do I need to dumb it down for you?

Bob Willey explica con plastilina el posmodernismo.

Bob Willey explains postmodernism to us in layman’s terms.

I learned this phrase in Bogotá from my friend Carolina, who currently lives in Tokyo. She grew up in the U.S., and she had a time of it trying to learn Spanish when she moved to Colombia 10+ years ago. She told me that she would have to ask ¿Cómo? ¿Cómo? ¿Cómo? so many times that her friends would gently tease her and say, ¿Te lo explicamos con plastilina? In anticipation of these insincere, smart-aleck offers, I would love to carry around a small tub of Play-Doh in my purse. Then, when I inevitably draw a blank at some point in a conversation, I could take out the Play-Doh, hand it to the other person, and say, ¿Dizque guarilaque? Qué pena, pero no sé qué demonios querrá decir eso. ¿Será que me lo puedes explicar con plastilina? Or when they say, ¿En serio que no sabes qué significa eso? ¿Te lo explico con plastilina?, I’d whip it out and say, Bien pueda. Hágale. Their expression would be so priceless.

. . . right in the middle of a doctor’s appointment you’re interpreting, at least if your day goes anything like mine did. It was just a routine allergies visit filled with words I hear and interpret almost daily: pollen, dust mite covers, saline solution, antihistamines, mold. So routine I almost do it on autopilot. And then the doctor said a phrase that jolted me awake:

hard freeze

Hard freeze? She had said something like, You can continue taking your medicines until the first hard freeze in November or so. And I went all Porky Pig, stuttering and stammering like an idiot. It’s so uncharacteristic of me to lose my cool, but lose it I did. Hard freeze? I think in ordinary circumstances I would have known what that was and recognized it, but it totally caught me off guard in this medical context. Hard freeze? A good description of what happened to my brain at that moment. Try as I might, I simply couldn’t thaw it in time.

Hard freeze? The more I scrambled, the further away I was getting from an answer. I was grasping at straws and not catching any of them. I couldn’t even picture a hard freeze in my mind–I just saw snowflakes on the ground every time I tried, and that wasn’t any help. Sometimes I wonder if I’m a city mouse or a country mouse, and this was one moment where it became embarrassingly obvious how removed I’ve become from the intricacies of nature and her rhythms. What takes place during a hard freeze, anyway? Or even just a freeze? I would settle for that. I can do a brain freeze, a hiring freeze, a credit freeze, a computer freeze– but an actual honest-to-goodness freeze? It had been far too long since I’d experienced one of those in English, and forget about Spanish. I lived in the city of eternal spring in Colombia. The book I’ve been reading is taking place in the sweltering heat of the Colombian coast. The music in my car right now is joropo from the Colombian plains–not much freezing going on in any of those places. I guess I’ll have to go scale some snow-capped mountains in Chile to authentically experience and understand a Spanish freeze.

I ended up doing my best to explain the idea to the patient, but I was frosty–I mean fuzzy–on it myself. So, I came home with my tail between my legs and am now trying to do penance. I will never let myself be caught off guard by a freeze again–hard, soft, or anywhere in between.

It looks like a freeze is una helada. Looking on linguee.com, I see hard freeze translated as helada fuerte. Hopefully that would do the trick. Wiktionary defines a hard freeze as: A freeze sufficiently long and severe to destroy seasonal vegetation and lead to ice formation in standing water and hard ground. Three degrees Celsius below freezing is considered a threshold in the US. If I were interpreting at a gardener’s convention, sure, I’d make certain that everyone was clear on exactly what kind of freeze we were talking about. I don’t think meteorological exactness was necessary today, though. (But speak up if you don’t agree!)

I see that frost on the ground is escarcha. Ahh. Now I do have some experience with escarcha. When buying a refrigerator in Bogotá, I remember the units at the stores boasting on their tags that they were anti-escarcha– no frost. I’ve also heard the word used for glitter. Escarchar exists as a verb; a rather ugly one, to my mind. Thinking about freezers in Colombia, I remember once sticking a few pairs of new shoes stuffed with water-filled bags in my freezer in Medellín to stretch them out. When someone later opened it, their eyes bugged out of their head when they saw my footwear just chilling out in the freezer as if that were the most natural place for them to be. Crazy Americans.

Frostbite? Congelación, congelamiento, quemadura por frío, sabañones (chilblains). Even in English, it’s congelatio in medical terminology.

(I’m sure there’s nothing like pairing an ice-cold Frosty with a hot, steaming Brosty [a popular name for fried chicken chains in Medellín].)

Jack Frost? Try Juanito Escarcha. Frosty the Snowman? Frosty el hombre de nieve, or Frosty el muñeco de nieve. Robert Frost? Roberto Escarcha. Easy peasy.

Just when I was starting to confiarme, it was good to get thrown for a loop. What was the last word to utterly discombobulate you?

(I know my play on words with A Man for All Seasons was a bit obscure, but if you don’t get the one in this title . . . ¡debería darte pena!)

In Medellín, I knew this really wonderful woman named Uva. Her full name was Uvaldina, but most people seemed to call her Uva. And, believe me, her name was the least interesting thing about her. That woman was a trip. Very dicharachera, she was full of the most colorful (and frequently off-color) and wild expressions. As her speech was crackling with idioms, sauciness, and playful wit, there was never a dull moment by her side. She would relentlessly create double entendres where none originally existed and make a scandal out of everything. Boisterous, over-the-top, ribald: these are all great words to describe Uva. She was also incredibly warm, loving, and generous. She made me feel like family from the start (and still does), even though I was lucky if I could understand even half of what she said. Actually, I was probably pretty lucky that I was spared many of her groan-worthy comments. Still, Uva was a lot of fun. I know I’ll never meet anyone like her.

I remember once being out with her, and I must have said some big word in Spanish. Who knows what it was– maybe retroalimentación, maybe envergadura, maybe pernoctación. (She surely would have had a heyday with all of those words, especially envergadura.) Whatever the big word was that I struggled to spit out, she then looked at me and said: ¿Se te cayó una calza? Huh? I had to request clarification. It turned out that a calza is a filling. (usually called an empaste) In very informal speech, caérsele una calza a alguien means that you struggled so much to pronounce a big, fancy word that a filling plum fell out. I’ve scurried hither and thither on the interwebs to find you some more examples, and here are my loose, idiomatic translations. I assume this phrase is very Paisa (Medellín and surroundings), and, oh man, I really wish you could hear this question asked in a thick, beautiful Paisa accent. I’d record myself saying it, but my accent just isn’t what it used to be–alas!

Juemadre, se me cayó una calza pronunciando interdisciplinaridad.

Geez, I cracked a tooth trying to wrap my mouth around interdisciplinaridad.

Hola Stavrula: (Casi se me cae una calza tratando de pronunciar tu nombre!)

Hi Stavrula: (One of my fillings almost fell out as I tried to say your name!)

¿Ya pusieron el video de nuestro presidente pronunciando Djokovic? Casi se le cae una calza.

Did they already put up the video of our president pronouncing Djokovic? He almost choked in the attempt.

Si en español podemos decir multitareas y no se nos cae una calza de la dentadura, ¿para qué decir multitasking?

If we can say multitareas in Spanish and keep all of our dental work in place, what would make us decide to say multitasking instead?

Is there a more natural way to say this in English? The only one coming to me right now is to say that something is a mouthful. Anyway, the takeaway is that you have to be careful with those big words in Spanish! If you’re not cautious, you’re liable to lose not only your pride but also a few fillings in the process. Maybe dentists in Medellín send patients with new fillings home with instructions to avoid caramel, avoid hard candies, and to strictly avoid all foreign words (especially of English and Slavic provenance) and words over six syllables. As I don’t have any fillings, though, I have no excuse for being timid about pronouncing the big words. Maybe one day I’ll even be able to effortlessly say programaremos (a tricky word for me) sin que se me trabe la lengua.

Tu nombre me sabe a hierba
de la que nace en el valle
a golpes de sol y de agua. - Joan Manuel Serrat

I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journey-work of the stars. - Walt Whitman

Hierba común, señora. De esa que comen los burros. – La hojarasca, Gabriel García Márquez

Such is life; and we are but as grass that is cut down, and put into the oven and baked. – Three Men in a Boat, Jerome K. Jerome

One of life’s chief pleasures is walking barefoot on grass, don’t you agree? I think one of my favorite things about being back in the U.S. has to be that I have two small parks of my very own– my front yard and my back yard. Down in Colombia, I didn’t have a single blade to call my own–ni una brizna. In Bogotá, it was all concrete; in Medellín, bricks ruled the scenery. There are undoubtedly some advantages to living in dense, urban environments, but I think my soul is generally happier and more at peace when it has a carpet of green.

I’ve just remembered that when I first started this blog back in 2011, the header was an image of me lying in a bed of grass in Medellín. If you’ve been reading me that long and remember back that far, you definitely deserve a prize! Or a kiss. See, even in Colombia I dreamed of green. That is, especially in Colombia.

I told you a while back that I was considering moving back to Latin America. I wrestled with it for a long time, but I eventually decided to stay put while sitting on my front porch one day and just surveying my idyllic neighborhood. I had been dwelling for several days on one of my favorite songs, Mercedes Sosa’s Canción de las simple cosas. Its wisdom is so very poignant for me.

Uno se despide, insensiblemente de pequeñas cosas . . .
Uno vuelve siempre a los viejos sitios donde amó la vida 
y entonces comprende como están de ausentes las cosas queridas. 
Por eso, muchacho, no partas ahora soñando el regreso, 
que el amor es simple y a las cosas simples las devora el tiempo.

Without even realizing it, you say goodbye to little details. And when you later realize their worth, it’s too late to go back and recover them. So, think long and hard before you take off because you won’t be able to just waltz back when you realize how good you had it before. Don’t blithely leave only to be haunted by wistfulness and regret down the road. These oh-so-simple things, like love, all evaporate over time. Ah, how this song gets to me. Who’s got a hanky?

Cortacésped anti-crisis

Well, I thought hard about what small details I take for granted now but would come to miss immensely. I didn’t want another bout of the regret I experienced after my last departure, even though I knew full well at the time how much I would miss what I was leaving behind. And as I sat there on my porch, I knew that what I would miss most would be the open spaces, the green, the tranquility, and the quiet of my city. I don’t need the stress, chaos, hustle and bustle, and anonymity of a large Latin American city right now. So, that was that. Of course, my job, friendships, family, and personal projects were strong incentives to stay as well. But, grass ended up being the clincher. Of course, I recognize that grass wouldn’t be enough to motivate another person to stay or come.

Flowers have enjoyed their day in the sun before here on Vocabat; here, then, is an ode to grass.

There are several ways to say grass or a lawn in Spanish. There’s hierba, grama, pasto, and césped. In most places, césped best transmits the idea of a manicured lawn, though I usually hear and see jardín for a front or back yard. Patio and yarda also do the same thing (yarda is obviously out-and-out Spanglish). Pasto and hierba really convey the idea of long, lush pasture, the kind that livestock grazed on once upon a time. I know that grama is strictly Latin American. It’s la grama, ignoring that -ma, -pa and little -ta rule you may have learned in a Spanish classroom. Each country will have its particular ways of saying grass, but it’s good to know them all.

And here’s the most recent word I’ve learned for grass: zacate

Nice, eh? I happened to learn it just in the nick of time for summer, and I’ve already heard a few patients use it. Thank goodness I picked it up; I wouldn’t have had a clue otherwise. It’s very Mexican in origin, but check out its purported modern-day diaspora: Mexico, Central America, Philippines, California, and Texas. Zacate comes from the Nahuatl word zacatl which is either a type of grass or merely dry weeds and grass, and the Mexican state of Zacatecas is so named because zacatl apparently is or was common in the region. I’m obviously being a bit lax today about my usually obsessive precision.

Two impetuses started me down this grassy rabbit hole: a patient used a word I didn’t know to say lawnmower, and I later learned how to say sickle-cell disease.

I only knew cortacésped for lawnmower, and all I know is that this guy was saying something else. Now that I’ve looked it up, I’d bet good money that what he said was podadora. It appears to be the most popular word in Mexico for the tool you use to cut the grass. For me, podar was always to prune, but I really like the idea of pruning the grass.

When confounded by sickle-cell disease, I couldn’t make heads or tails of how to translate the components in English. Sickle? I couldn’t even remember what that meant. Ahh, a sickle! Like the hammer and sickle (hoz y martillo). Like the Grim Reaper’s sickle (actually, it’s a scythe–guadaña). You see, sickle-cell disease is characterized by red blood cells that assume a sickle shape. So, a sickle is an hoz, and by moseying about in the dictionary I came to learn that segar is the verb to describe that motion of an arm swiftly reaping tall grass with a sickle. No surprise, then, to learn a few weeks later that segadora is another way of saying lawnmower, especially the large industrial ones.

I never was very sure of how to say the classic line, The grass is always greener on the other side of the fence, in Spanish. Once I tried looking it up, though, I went dizzy with all the options and gave up. If you know how to say it, please fill me in!

When I worked at a high school in Bogotá, I’d tote my laptop to and from work every day so my students could use it for presentations. I once accidentally banged one of its corner into a wall and then watched its slow deterioration over the next few months. The protective covering on my screen fell off one corner to expose several wires I always expertly avoided, until one time when I didn’t and shocked myself a few times. This left the whole left side of my body feeling like ice for several days. I remember that one of my surrogate moms down there recommended that I walk barefoot in grass to discharge the electrical current in me. A little easier said than done when you’re living in the concrete jungle of Bogotá (she was in Medellín, where green’s a bit easier to come by), but I was charmed by the suggestion. If I ever move back to Colombia, I’m going to have to keep a Chia pet or something in my apartment so I can follow these old wives’ tale remedies to the letter next time.

From Los tres cerditos (The Three Little Pigs)

And now to go out and sit–where else?–in the grass. Do pour yourself a glass of wine and join me.

The word I keep running into the past few days (or falling into, if you will) is cráter and cráteres. I had no idea that crater in Spanish is simply cráter. Not the most melodious of words, but there you have it. One of the times I saw the word it was referring to moon craters, but the other times were talking about Bogotá’s breathtaking potholes. Craters is just the word for these eyesores (not to mention footsores and tiresores).

Bienvenidos entonces a Bogotá, 2600 (y de pronto más) cráteres más cerca a la luna.

Welcome, then, to Bogotá: 2600 (and maybe more) craters closer to the moon. (You have to know about Bogotá for this to make any sense.)

Potholes don’t really do the streets of Bogotá justice. If we insist on a kitchen analogy, they’re more like cauldron holes or refrigerator holes. They’re bad.

Apparently potholes can also be called kettles and chuckholes? That’s news to me.

In the dictionary, it says bache for pothole, but the one time I ever said this word my coworker Andrés started teasing me. Ooh, bache! Check you out. So fancy, so proper. Everybody just says huecos for holes in the road in Colombia.

Los huecos evidencian la deplorable gerencia de la ciudad.

The potholes are proof of the city’s deplorable management.

Tantos huecos gigantescos que esta ciudad parece Mario Kart.

So many gigantic holes, this city looks like Mario Kart.

The holes are terrible and ubiquitous, but there is hope, kind of. I remember that there were ghastly potholes galore in my first two neighborhoods in Bogotá. You got so used to them that you barely even saw them. And then one day they were gone, silently filled and paved in the thick of the night. You know, anytime I feel resigned and hopeless about any situation in my life, I should remember those holes. They were so established and fixed and seemingly irremediable, and next thing you know, poof! They were gone without a trace. If those craters could disappear (though I’m sure that for every ten filled, twenty new ones open up), it feels like any crummy situation could miraculously be turned around. It’s kind of sad that what here would be considered so “duh” is a Christmas Day miracle there, but that’s Colombia for you. Like it or lump it! I guess I’ve done both.

Is it getting super hot where you live, too? Ugh. Today and yesterday I went on walks that were more than an hour, and I got home absolutely drenched in sweat. It doesn’t help matters that I’m in a new house (which I adore!) and can’t figure out the thermostat, meanwhile my roommate’s out of town for the week. Suffice it to say, I’m seriously thinking of sleeping in the kitchen tonight– the only room in the house with a fan. Pajamas completely optional.

As it happens, today the word thermostat came up at work and I drew a total blank. The doctor was talking about the thyroid gland, and at one point he said that he likes to think of the thyroid as our body’s thermostat. Hmm. Didn’t know that one, so I just explained it. Can’t say I ever touched or even saw a thermostat in Colombia. Nor do thermostats come up often in books or music. ♫ Oh, it was first love by the thermostat, baby, ooh ooh ooh ♫

I remembered it later in the day, and the Honduran guy I was talking to didn’t know how to say it either. Then someone looked it up: termostato 

Termostato? Sometimes Spanish is just way TOO EASY, as if we couldn’t handle a real word. Is Spanish mocking me? Nah, I prefer to think of it as Spanish doing me another one of her favors. Isn’t she sweet?

While I had my tail between my legs for not knowing how to say thermostat in Spanish, my Honduran friend made me feel better by reminding me that you don’t see thermostats in Latin America because hardly anyone has central heating or air. Excellent point! How had it not occurred to me earlier? The same thing happens when someone peskily insists on a translation for something like a driveway or water fountain. Sure, words exist, but it’s not quite as easy as you might think it should be because these things just aren’t very common in that part of the world (at least in my experience). Can you think of other examples of household words that aren’t culturally relevant in Latin America? (Can’t be food) What about the other way around? I think of the celadores and their little casetas in the neighborhoods of Bogotá. An easy, elegant translation escapes me, but kudos to you if you could translate these ideas at the drop of a hat.

Sometimes it can even be kind of satisfying to be able to say that you can’t really capture something with a translation. To be able to say, well, if you want to experience the ineffable richness of our world, you’re just going to have to learn our language. Your language just won’t do. Not that a thermostat is some deep cultural experience, but I will say that tonight I am valuing it much more than usual now that it’s being all wonky on me. Maybe I will need to write a song to the termostato to thaw him out and get him to warm up to me (and cool down my house!). At least I know how to address him now, and so do you.

If you’re a foreigner who’s living in Colombia, surely this is one of the questions you hear most often. Taxi drivers, new people you meet, even old friends who are just checking in on you–everyone wants to know. What do they want to know? Do you feel at home here? Are you used to life in Locombia? Have you settled in? Do you like it here? Are you happy? It’s a good question to regularly ask yourself as well.

The verb amañarse is a synonym of acomodarse and acostumbrarse and means to settle in, to get used to, to make one’s home. In WordReference, it says this is a Latin American usage. For some reason, I always thought it was a Colombian word, but the dictionary’s not backing that up. Perhaps it’s used more commonly in Colombia, though–I’d have to go live in more Latin American countries and then report back to you.

Barcelona es una maravilla, me amaño mucho allá. Voy casi todos los diciembres.

Barcelona’s marvelous- I feel so at home there. I go almost every December.

¿Sí estás amañado acá en Medellín? 

Are you happy here in Medellín?

¿Ya te amañaste? Estoy en esas, pues creo que voy a sentirme más amañada apenas tenga unos buenos amigos acá.

Have you settled in yet? I’m working on it, I mean I think I’ll feel happier once I have some good friends here.

One phrase I learned in Colombia and subsequently use is a mi amaño (or a tu amaño, a su amaño, etc.). This means as one pleases. However, I can’t find a shred of evidence for it online! Sometimes the internet’s the last one to find out about these things.

Soy tuyo, muy tuyo, y solamente tuyo, y este fin de semana podrás disponer de mí a tu amaño. 

I’m yours, all yours, and only yours, and this weekend you can have your way with me as you please.

Chavismo interpreta la Constitución a su amaño: Iglesia

Chavismo cherry-picks the Constitution: Church.

Cada quien reinventa el amor a su amaño y de acuerdo con sus necesidades y creencias básicas, cada quien lo construye o lo destruye, lo disfruta o lo padece.

Each person reinterprets love as they see fit, and in accordance with their needs and basic beliefs, each person builds it or destroys it, enjoys it or suffers from it.

I got the idea for this post when I ran into two instances of amañado being used in a way I wasn’t familiar with today and yesterday. As it turns out, amañar can also mean to fix or to rig. Here are the sentences, both of them from–where else?–mi querida Colombia.

Que pida al corrupto fiscal de Carranza y a los médicos de medicina legal que se venden por dinero y dan resultados amañados y todos quedamos tranquilos.

Have him ask that corrupt district attorney Carranza and the medical examiner’s office to turn a blind eye for money and they’ll tamper with the results and we’ll all calm down.

Si los dirigentes del Metro hicieran unos cuantos viajes cotidianos en tren, tal vez se darían cuenta de que esta cultura construida hace 15 años es amañada y se cumple cuando el sistema lo permite. 

If the directors of the Metro were to take a few daily trips on the train, maybe they’d realize the culture constructed 15 years ago is phony and happens when the system permits it.

No idea about the relation between amañar and amañarse.

So, you, wherever you are, ¿estás amañado? 

On a side note, happy independence day to Colombia! One year ago, I was down there to celebrate with them.

I was just reading an article from El Tiempo, when a certain word jumped out at me. The story is about an American ex-soldier, Kevin Scott Sutay, who, against many warnings, ventured into a part of the Colombian jungle rife with FARC guerrillas and was almost instantly captured by them. Here’s the sentence that made me cock an eyebrow.

Sutay, un hombre desgarbado, con alrededor de 20 años y con corte estilo militar. . .

Un hombre desgarbado? What does that have to do with anything? I remember learning desgarbado from the Colombian TV show Yo soy Betty la fea. It means ungraceful, ungainly, awkward. This could be because someone’s lanky, gangly, and gawky (such great words) or because they’re a terrible dresser and lack elegance. WordReference even lists oaf and klutz as possible translations. As you can see, it’s not a compliment to be called desgarbado. The word comes from garbo, which is elegance, grace, poise. Just think of Greta Garbo, and you’re good. Calling (or thinking) someone desgarbado is like saying, You’re no Greta Garbo.

No matter how hard I try, I just can’t find a way to make that sentence (never mind the translation) sound good. Or even appropriate.

Sutay, a lanky man . . . never should have been in that jungle in the first place.

Sutay, a klutzy type . . . is now a pawn in the FARC’s hypocritical game.

Sutay, a slovenly dresser. . . is a former U.S. Marine.

Well, I just noticed that the article was written by Reuters, so I set out to find the original. I finally tracked it down, and here’s the line.

Sutay, a lanky man in his 20s with a military-style crew cut . . . 

I see that many people online insist that desgarbado = lanky, but I’m not feeling it. Desgarbado is decidedly negative, and lanky isn’t. The first adjective that comes to my mind for lanky is espigado, which literally is tall and reedy like a sprig of wheat. Maybe I’m dead wrong (there’s always a good chance of it), but I still don’t think desgarbado is a good fit there, at least not to my delicate ears. Of course, I don’t have an insider’s sensibilities with Spanish. What do you think?

Also, why is it telling us that he’s lanky, anyway? As if it would make any difference if he were heavy-set or buff or with an average build instead. All the physical description in the world wouldn’t overshadow the fact that he was clearly operating on precious few brain cells when he decided to go into that jungle. If there’s one thing here that is inarguably lanky, it’s this guy’s judgment.

(This is subjective, of course. And, yes, I realize that I’m likely not even aware of the funniest things I’ve ever said, but I sure hope people went on to publicize my mistakes among their offices and parties and mass email lists and that they caused many a riotous snort and chortle.)

Today’s word of the day is flamante. It means brand new. I ran into it today while reading an article on William and Kate’s newborn baby, and it took me back to you-know-where. But first the sentence.

Un poco antes se desplazaron a ver a la flamante familia los padres de Catalina, Michael y Carole Middleton, quienes mostraron su entusiasmo con el hijo de su primogénita. 

Just before that, Kate’s parents, Michael and Carole Middleton, who showed their enthusiasm about the son of their eldest daughter, went to see the new family.

As I said, flamante means brand spanking new, in mint condition, right out of the box. It’s the kind of word you’re going to hear some street vendor yell into a megaphone to hawk his goods. Used with people, it just indicates a new status or title. It’s not really a word you’re going to use with friends; you’re much more likely to put it in an ad to sell your car on Craigslist, perhaps, or maybe to introduce your new wife with a touch of playfulness. (Wouldn’t it be fun to introduce your flamante amante?) It’s kind of formal and a bit cheesy. No matter what you do, you most definitely aren’t going to blurt it out to an innocent bakery attendant. Unless you’re me, that is– but we can’t all be that unlucky, can we?

When I lived with my ex-boyfriend in Medellín, one night we went to a new bakery adorned in the tacky, garish colors that are so typical down there (think, hot orange and green) that had recently opened on our block. I remember nibbling on something at one of the tables, and then I engaged in some friendly banter with the bakery girl. I probably told her how nice everything looked in my very best Paisa Spanish, and then I asked when they had opened. Oh, just Tuesday, she said. Only Tuesday? Wow. Flamante.

She then scurried back to her counter, and I was left alone with my ex, AKA, accountability time. Had what I just said made any sense? No, no it had not. He had a grieved, concerned expression on his face. I think he first confirmed that he had heard right. Excuse me, did you say . . . ahem, flamante? Did I hear that right? Surely I did not just hear what I think I heard. Say it ain’t so, babe. Of course, he asked this in the kindest, most respectful, most loving way possible, but I knew by the very question that I had just made a laughingstock of myself. Somehow I could just tell that I’d said something ridiculous, that I’d done the bear–hacer el oso. And next thing I knew, I started laughing uproariously.

Both of us started to pee our pants laughing so hard and for so long that it’s amazing we didn’t end up on the floor, paralyzed from our spasmodic guffaws. It’s my best memory of truly splitting myself in half from laughter– totearme de la risa– while in Colombia. Howling, we were breathless and absolutely hysterical. The thing is, what I’d said was so unbearably cute and sincere. I don’t do Spanish in half measures. If I’m going to say something, I say it boldly and really own my words with a zealously faked confidence. So I’d reached for flamante, a word I’d read but never used before, briefly considered the risks, and proceeded anyway. What did Martin Luther say about sinning boldly? I think you have to speak Spanish boldly and just snarl and bare your teeth at those stupid mistakes that are inevitable and that will be a boon for you if you embrace them. Or you can be namby-pamby about Spanish and only say something when you’re 100% sure it’s correct. But if you let the fear of sounding stupid stop you, how will you get anywhere?

I was sincere and self-confident when I said flamante, and I was sincerely wrong. The impression my ex gave me was that it would be like saying, “Oh, just Tuesday? Smokin’.” Or, “Oh, just Tuesday? Newfangled.” Or something just completely out-of-place and ludicrous. I’m just happy I could appreciate how funny it was. For this reason, I love to laugh at language mistakes and am not one of those touchy, uptight types who becomes indignant at anyone who would dare laugh when people out there are trying so hard, bless their hearts. OK, no one’s saying they’re not trying hard; no one’s saying they don’t speak very well. No one’s mocking the language student. Even the most fluent person, though, will occasionally have something come out of their mouth that is bona fide comic gold, and it’s silly to not enjoy these gems. Who knows, maybe having a sense of humor is a key part of making serious headway in language studies. I think it’s served me well.

What’s the funniest thing you’ve ever said in Spanish? For the love of God, please don’t say that you accidentally told people you were pregnant, that is, embarazado. That mistake is so trite it’s not even funny. I’ll especially appreciate your story if, like mine, what you said had no intrinsic humor but was instead funny because it was so side-splittingly, tragically wrong but you were adorably earnest about it. Mega kudos to you if afterward you were unapologetic and made sure to get both the first and last laugh. If only we walked around with little tape recorders to capture all of our conversations! Just imagine how much fun we could have listening to ourselves from years past, as well as the swell of pride we’d feel appreciating all of our progress. Any time you feel bored in life or that you’re getting too stuffy and serious, maybe it’s time to learn a new language! You’ll create comic situations for both yourself and your listeners, and you’ll also have millions of new people to laugh with. If this isn’t a compelling reason to learn a language, I don’t know what is.

Did you hear about the latest uproar in Colombia? No? Why am I not surprised? It has to do with a disappearance, but not the kind that you’re used to hearing about. Instead of a person this time, it’s just one little letter: an l. But what a kerfuffle that l has caused! Más perdida que el hijo de “Limber”, más perdida que la mamá de Tarzán, más perdida que un moco en una oreja . . . yes, I’d say that l is irrecoverably, unretrievably lost and with him a whole South American country’s pride, at least for a day or two.

The World Games are being hosted in Cali, Colombia right now, and it turns out that the gold, silver, and bronze medals all say The Word Games instead of The World Games. Whoops. I guess there’s no use in pointing fingers at this stage in the game, but it’s too fun not to snicker. I think this error garrafal is hilarious, and it was especially funny to me to read it reported in El Tiempo of all places. Now that is el burro hablando de orejas (the pot calling the kettle black) if I ever heard it. Look for yourself; El Tiempo has an abysmal track record when it comes to spelling, even at the exact moments when they have the gall to come down on others’ mistakes.

¡Qué oso! Yep, that pretty much sums it up. And this from a country where they make such a fuss about the “It’s Colombia, Not Columbia” campaign.

Here are a few online reactions that I find funny.

A few events we could expect to see at the Word Games

From Twitter:

-Yo creo que en los Word Games ganaría alguito, pero me iría muy mal en los de Excel y PowerPoint.

I think that in the Word Games I’d win a few points, but it would go horribly for me in the Excel and PowerPoint Games.

-Cada vez que entregan una medalla de los Word Games, un corrector de estilo muere de hambre en algún lugar del mundo.

Each time they hand out a Word Games medal, a proofreader dies of hunger somewhere in the world.

-¿Cómo te fue en los Word Games? Los resultados los van a mandar en PDF.

How’d you do at the Word Games? They’re sending the results in a PDF.

-Lo que pasó con la persona que fabricó las medallas de los Word Games es que el inglés lo entiende pero no lo escribe.

The thing is that the person who made the medals for the Word Games understands English but can’t write it. (Sure sure, everybody claims to “understand” English. Mostly. Enough.)

-Nivel de inglés
-Muy bajo
-Traduzca mundo
-Word
-Utilícelo en una frase
-Word Games
-Contratado

-English level
-Very low
-Translate mundo
-Word
-Use it in a sentence
-Word Games
-You’re hired

Ni que fuera tan difícil escribir “world” . . .

What can I say, I get a big kick out of silly and utterly senseless spelling mistakes like this one. I’ve also just watched way too many Open English commercials on Youtube, so now I’ll go do something productive with my evening. Peace out, word.

Did you experience the Beanie Baby craze of the ’90s? I remember the first one I got was Lucky, the ladybug. I counted her spots and then consulted a book to see if she was valuable (ixnay), and was later crushed when a pet chewed one of her legs, rendering her a worthless invalid. Much better luck has come over the years, though, especially when I lived in Colombia. I swear, I was so incredibly lucky while in Colombia. But maybe it was just people’s generosity. Maybe I took more risks and needed (and noticed) the luck more. Maybe I was just in the right place at the right time. Maybe I got luck I shouldn’t have. Maybe I don’t give myself enough credit and really earned that bounty of blessings. No matter–it’s over now. Here’s how to talk about luck in Colombia, but first a joke I just heard on the radio.

Yo conocí a una ovejita que era alérgica a la lana. Muy de malas. 

I once met a sheep that was allergic to wool. Talk about bad luck!

In Colombia, de buenas means lucky and de malas means unlucky. I remember learning this while waiting forever for a taxi one time with my friend Dayana in Bogotá. As taxi after taxi passed by and it seemed like we’d never get where we were going, she commented that we were muy de malas. Of course, I nodded vigorously and concurred, but I wasn’t quite sure what I was concurring with. For some reason, I was never able to find the answer on the internet, but repeated usage afterward made its meaning clear.

¡No auditaron mi departamento! Estoy felizzzzz. Qué de buenas. Te dije que ibas a estar bien. 

They didn’t audit my department! I’m so happppy. Lucky duck. I told you you’d be fine.

Uno no escoge la familia, ¡pero yo sí fui muy de buenas por la que me tocó!

One doesn’t choose their family, but I definitely lucked out with the one I got!

¿Más de malas que sentarse en un hijueputa chicle? No lo creo.

More unlucky than sitting on a freaking piece of gum? I don’t think so.

No es que seas de malas para el amor, es que no has encontrado a la persona correcta para darle ese privilegio.

It’s not that you have bad luck in love; it’s that you haven’t found the right person to give that privilege to.

De buenas en el juego, de malas en el amor.

Lucky at cards, unlucky in love.

The phrase ¡De malas! is used to mean, Too bad! It makes me think of the Colombian word paila.

¿Así que perdiste tu vuelo y ahora quieres desquitarte conmigo? ¡De malas! Yo no tengo la culpa de que hayas decidido alistar tus maletas a última hora.

So you missed your flight and you want to take it out on me? Well, too bad! It’s not my fault you decided to pack at the last minute.

¡Soy como soy! Si no te gusta, de malas.

I am who I am! If you don’t like it, tough.

The phrase de malas como la piraña mueca means unlucky/screwed like a piranha without any teeth. Just imagine that poor toothless piranha having to slurp on some algae purée while his friends are all digging into a juicy steak. Meanwhile, there’s probably some piranha out there who was born with an extra set of fangs. ¡Tan de buenas!

Of course, there’s getting lucky and then there’s getting lucky, most recently hailed in that catchy song you’ve surely been hearing on the radio as nonstop as I have, Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky.’ Maybe another post.

Take luck! If that means nothing to you, go look it up and change your luck now.

Denuncian que niños autistas están expuestos a ladrones, prostitutas y jíbaros

Parents file complaint, say children with autism are exposed to thieves, prostitutes and jíbaros

I was totally thrown off by that last word when I read it in a newspaper article a few weeks ago. Jíbaros? Don’t ask me why, but for some reason that sounds like an animal to me. Maybe a warthog. It immediately fascinated me, though, a new shiny word for this magpie.

I’ve since learned that a jíbaro in Colombia and Venezuela is a person who distributes drugs in small amounts. He or she is a small-time dealer with no real power or influence, and is likely a consumer themselves. Apparently jíbaro was originally used to indicate someone who sold marijuana, but now it can refer to someone who sells any drug or hallucinogen. The M.O. of the jíbaro is to be a part of or to pass as part of the environment where he distributes: i.e., a student in a high school, a waiter in a dance club, etc. At a school, the jíbaro could be students, alumni, or outsiders who wait outside the school gate and surreptitiously slip small bags of drugs to students passing by. One jíbaro I read about hid his stash in a piggy bank while working; others stuffed it in their underwear.

Related words include jibariadero for a place where drugs are sold and jibariato, small-time drug dealing.

In Puerto Rico, a jíbaro is a person from the mountainous countryside, and the idea has become iconic in Puerto Rican culture. As jíbaros have traditionally lacked formal education and are unsophisticated, the term came to be interchangable with hillbilly and hick. Many people have reclaimed and co-opted the term, though, and wear it as a label of pride. After all, the jíbaro is the ancestor and the backbone of Puerto Rican culture, and people are increasingly proud of these rural, simple, hardworking people who represent their roots. There’s even a Monumento al jíbaro statue in Puerto Rico to pay tribute to these country folk. Jíbaros also made their own music, the música típica of Puerto Rico.

Cubans use the term guajiro to mean the same thing, and ranchero is used in Mexico. I don’t know any equivalent word in Colombia besides campesino.

Here are some lyrics from beloved jíbaro music from Puerto Rico. If the only meaning for jíbaro you knew was drug dealer, you’d take away quite a different message from these songs than the intended one.

Y alegre, el jibarito va pensando así,
diciendo así, cantando así por el camino:
“Si yo vendo la carga,
mi Dios querido,
un traje a mi viejita voy a comprar.”

Soy de Puerto Rico y le canto a Colombia entera, soy jibarito y le canto a Colombia entera.

No sé por qué me atropella el recuerdo de mi amada, no sé si estará casada o qué rumbo habrá tomado la que fue ya en el pasado mi jibarita mimada.

Jíbaros are also an indigenous tribe in the Amazon jungle of Ecuador and Peru most famous for their art of shrinking the heads of their dead enemies to the size of a fist. The ritual is supposed to avoid any later revenge taken by the victims in the next life.

Wikipedia clues us in on a few more uses of jíbaro.

• In Cuba, a jíbaro is a runaway dog.
  
• In Colombia, Brazil and Venezuela, Xivaro, or Gibaro, which is pronounced similar to jíbaro, was a name given to the natives of these countries by the Spaniards and Portuguese.
  
• In Ecuador, givaro is the indomitable indigenous person that is endlessly elusive to the white man.
  
• In 18th-century Mexico, a jíbaro was the child of a lobo and a china, that is the child of a mixed-race father (the son of an indigenous man and a black woman) and a mixed-race mother (the daughter of a white man and an Indigenous woman).

The only other word I knew for drug dealer was expendedor, but it doesn’t look like that term is universal. Other words I see are traficante, narcotraficante, narco, tirador (Mex.), camello (Esp.), and bichote (PR). Know any others?

Finally, I discovered that Chicago has a famous sandwich called the jibarito. The specialty is a steak sandwich between two fried plantains, and, yep, it was invented by a Puerto Rican restaurant owner in Chicago. Wikipedia translates jibarito as “little yokel.”

Here’s a line I ran into yesterday while reading about Uruguay’s recent decision to legalize marijuana. This time, of course, jíbaro didn’t give me any problems.

En los años treinta le dio la vuelta a Estados Unidos Reefer madness (La locura del porro), una película en la que tres jíbaros corrompen jóvenes a punta de cannabis y jazz.

In the ’30s Reefer Madness came out in the United States, a movie in which three drug dealers corrupt young people with cannabis and jazz.

One thing I noticed on Twitter was Colombians retorting with the phrase cambia de jíbaro, as in, change dealers (to get a better one). I guess the implication is that someone’s low-quality marijuana (or what have you) is making them say crazy things.

Finally, when the Spanish version of Breaking Bad comes out this fall, I’d bet (and hope) the word jíbaro will appear, as it’s being made in Colombia. If I can step out of my pseudo-scholarly persona for a minute, let me just say that I can’t wait for this series to start! In case you didn’t know, it’s going to be called Metastasis. And if it’s even half as good as the English-language original, it will be excellent.

A peasant, a drug dealer, a head shrinker, a sandwich- Latin America has really gotten a lot of mileage out of the word jíbaro. I’d love to know how in the world it started being used to mean drug dealer in Colombia and Venezuela. Any guesses? I don’t have the foggiest idea over here.

hello, you.  I hope it´s been a day filled with a warm sun and cool breezes and flowers of loud and lovely colors weaving their way through your day. that´s how my day´s been so far, anyway. I´ve been living in Bogotá, Colombia the past two weeks; one week left. my sister Lauren and I have been living with a couple named Salvador and Marta and their children Laura and Diego. Diego´s 25 and a yoga instructor (and I really shouldn´t say this, but there´s no not mentioning it, so I´ll just whisper it– he´s beautiful), and Laura´s 18 and in acting school. here are some thoughts, snatches from my long, langorous days here in South America.

first of all, dispel any ideas you have about it being very hot here and me coming home with a tan. it´s cold, man. it´s officially winter here, though the weather feels more like when winter is shyly turning into spring.  today´s nice, though, as if the sun has decided to assert himself and remind us that he can do more than just sit there in the sky, looking pretty. the house we´re staying in is always cold. it´s sort of small by American standards (most non-American houses are), and the kitchen opens up to a covered patio area which leads to a few other tiny rooms. hard to explain, but it´s kind of like half the house is outside. and they always have all the doors open, meaning it´s no big deal to wander half-awake into the kitchen and see a tiny bird flitting about the pots and pans.

now that I´ve led you to the kitchen, I suppose I have to tell you about food. the juices here are amazing. we have fresh juice every day from the most delicious fruits. mora (blackberry), marracuyá (passionfruit), mango, lulo, tomato-from-a-tree (??), and sometimes feijoa, which grows on a tree out on their patio. they´re so good. actual food-wise, as you´d expect, lots of rice and beans and meat. everything here is so fresh. I open the refrigerator and feel like I´m looking at the produce section of the grocery store– the shelves are overflowing with vegetables. naturally, this doesn´t lend itself to snacking, unless you´re the sort who´s happy to ´snack´ on a carrot (and I, as a rule, am not.)

the driving here is so fluid, and two lanes change into three which change into four in the blink of an eye, or one aggressive taxi driver. there´s so much weaving in and out between cars, and cutting people off is just the way things work. you really have to have quick reflexes. there are lots of motorcycles on the roads, as well as bicycles on the far right. there´s no designated lane for the bikers, but everyone gives them just enough room to get by. you do sometimes see horse-drawn carts, and occasionally even poor chaps drawing heavy carts on their own backs.

finally, there´s one feature of Bogotá that I just can´t get over. on every street corner and sidewalk are several people, men and women, with open boxes like small, brown briefcases filled with cigarettes and candy, a row of lollipops forming a colorful, plastic hedge around the whole thing. people can come up and buy one cigarette, or a piece of gum or two. the vendor usually also has a cell phone, which people can borrow and then pay for the minute they used. I don´t know, it´s just something about the smallness of the thing that I love. I mean, one cigarette!!! the simplicity of it all is so nice. makes so much sense, in a way. in another way, I guess not. anyway, that´s how things are here in Colombia.

_________________________________________________ 

That’s a blog post that I wrote in June 2007, my first time ever in Colombia. It’s in an old, abandoned blog that I wrote in off and on back in college. I was 20. Would you have identified my writing voice immediately? Or am I different now? That trip totally changed my life. Who knows what kind of experience I would have had if I’d met Colombia differently (a touristic trip, say, or a mission trip or in love) or if I’d gone to Medellín or Cartagena instead. I fell in love with Bogotá, and I left knowing without a doubt in my mind that I’d be back. I just had to. Had to, had to, had to. Sometimes I still feel that same certainty, that pull, that sense of inevitability. Today I was craving “tomato-from-a-tree” juice (jugo de tomate de árbol), and I’m still fascinated by cigarrillos menudiados. The honeymoon didn’t last with Bogotá (couldn’t have) and I now see the city as being in decline in many ways (not that that’s irreversible, of course), but there are still so many wonderful things about Bogotá.

Obviously, Bogotá/Colombia and I have been doing the long-distance thing for quite a while. And you know what they say . . . ojos que no ven, corazón que no siente. Also, amor de lejos, felices los cuatro. And amor de lejos, amor de pendejos. This probably can’t last.

Anyway, speaking of longevity and duration, Bogotá turns 475 today. Happy birthday, Bogotá! A chaotic, mistreated, misunderstood little city (actually, it’s immense) that I love a great deal.

Here’s an article that I like a lot that was written a year ago by a bogotano. I especially like his generous, all-embracing definition of a bogotano: bogotano no es solo el que nace aquí, bogotano incluye nacidos e hijos adoptados (bogoteños, en buen caleño o paisa) recibidos con los brazos abiertos por esta ciudad, que es como una de esas matronas que siempre tiene lugar y comida para todos en su casa. Una madre a la que pocos, nacidos y no nacidos, parecen agradecerle su afecto. I’m grateful, and I definitely haven’t forgotten.

I figured I would most likely end up getting a teaching job when I moved to Medellín in July of 2011, but I can’t say I was thrilled about it for a couple of reasons. When I saw a post on a forum for expats in Colombia looking for a Spanish-English translator, I jumped on the opportunity. The person put me in touch with someone named Edgar who said he had about 150 títulos to translate. I assumed he meant 150 diplomas or legal deeds or something like that, so just imagine my surprise when I realized that he meant 150 titles! 150 books! Huzzah! It felt like a windfall of good luck, and I was so happy to 1. finally be able to do something in Colombia besides teaching, 2. get a foot in the door in the translation world, and 3. have the opportunity to translate literature, my love. I happily shelved the job search and settled in to my new job as an at-home translator. (Well, an at-apartment translator.)

Of course, I always wrote Edgar in the most impeccable Spanish I could muster. I’d have my boyfriend at the time double-check what I wrote when he was around, but he usually wasn’t. I thus gained more and more confidence in my writing skills. I was always upfront about my shortage of experience, but Edgar never grilled me about my knowledge or made me pass any sort of translating exam. I have no idea if he understood English and could evaluate my translations, but I came to assume that he couldn’t. He was really putting a tremendous amount of trust in me, and I’m pleased to know that I was deserving of that trust. If I’d been lazy (or just overestimated my skills), I feel like I really could have gotten away with a lot. I know that I went above and beyond in the translations, though, and I don’t have any regrets about the quality of the work I did. When I was feeling highly cynical, I’d let myself wonder if I wasn’t pouring more time and effort into the translations than the original writings ever received. And who was really going to read these poems, anyway?

I first translated two short collections of poems, each of which Edgar called a poemario. Both were about love, and they were rather syrupy for my tastes. I love poetry, but Edgar’s particular style wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. Oh well. I didn’t even realize that Edgar was the writer of the poems until much later. There were misassumptions on both sides, though; he always sent fond greetings to me and the person he assumed was my esposo but, of course, was merely my boyfriend. I never corrected him.

Here’s an excerpt from the first poem. All of this can be found in the preview in the Kindle book version on Amazon. If you have Prime, you can read it for free.

I move toward you, amidst the commotion of this hostile city. Behind me, against the hill, the tall buildings with their vacant terraces and their wilted gardens are outlined. My steps are firm on the dark pavement. In my hand, a bouquet of violets wrapped in paper. Your postcard in my pocket. It’s nighttime and it doesn’t smell like ripe fruit on this steep street, where for a few minutes a perfect blend of scattered music can be heard. I clumsily recreate from memory your lips, your eyes and even your hands. A light rain falls on my shoulders and on the rooftops. My heart beats quickly beneath my thin coat, under which intangible strands of the voices from that dreamland of a concert we attended on Friday remain mysteriously imbued. I walk rapidly toward your arms, toward your kisses, alongside this desolate neighborhood.

(Please know that I didn’t write the part on the title page where it says the title and then “of Edgar . . . ” He added it in after I sent him the final draft. Obviously, I would never make such a basic error. He repeats the same unfortunate error in the second collection of poems.)

Here’s a screenshot.

The font was an interesting choice. Unfortunately, many of the words look smushed together, so the last line appears to be paperyourpostcardinmypocket. But it was long out of my hands (and, thus, my responsibility) by that point.

And the original, found in the Amazon preview of the Spanish version.

Avanzo hacia ti, entre el fragor de esta ciudad huraña. Atrás, a mi espalda, contra la colina, se recortan los altos edificios con sus azoteas desiertas y sus jardines marchitos. Firmes mis pasos sobre el pavimento oscuro. En mi mano, un ramito de alhelí envuelto en papel regalo. Tu postal en el bolsillo. Es de noche y no huele a frutas maduras en esta calle empinada, donde por minutos se alcanza a escuchar una mezcla perfecta de músicas dispersas. Incongruente voy rehaciendo de memoria tus labios, tus ojos y hasta tus manos. Es leve la llovizna que cae sobre mis hombros y sobre los tejados. Mi corazón palpita acelerado; bajo el abrigo liviano, donde en un misterio se quedaron impregnados pedazos intangibles de las voces de ese universo de sueños del concierto al que asistimos el viernes. Camino presuroso hacia tus brazos, hacia tus besos, a lo largo de este barrio desolado.

Maybe it seems simple, but I agonized over every single word. I would save my numerous questions for my ex, and he did his best to help me make sense of the oftentimes senseless. Perhaps I overcomplicated things, but I was bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and very eager to please as a new translator.

Edgar called these books for young people in the Spanish versions, but we decided to label them as being for young women in the English translations. Not that young men should feel discouraged from enjoying these paeans to romance.

Here’s the second poemario that I did, again just an excerpt taken from the preview on Amazon.

Now you and I are full of hummingbirds, luminous tin that the poets call hope, perfect blue games and subtle fires. We arrived one drizzly night to each other, devastated by merciless solitude, affirmed by dreams and flowers, to offer ourselves bewilderedly to the reality of love. Life back then was covered in tin and soot. The sorcerers extolled death from the world’s pulpits, while deaf philosophers and blind mathematicians (in droves) denied us the right to be marvelous Saxon porcelain. The new caresses between us were repeated furiously. They mounted us inebriated, dancing over our hands, our lips, our bodies; and they delivered us from condemnation and cemeteries. We learned to be happy, keeping it far from the eyes of conscience. We learned to be each other’s only geography; to always remain just the two of us located in the two of us.

And the original Spanish.

Estamos ahora llenos tú y yo de colibríes, de estaño luminoso que los poetas llaman ilusión, de perfectos juegos azules y de fuegos sutiles. Llegamos una noche lloviznada a nosotros, devastados por la inclemente soledad, pronunciados por sueños y por flores, para brindarnos perplejos el acto del amor. La vida, para entonces, estaba cubierta de hojalata y de hollín. Los brujos preconizaban la muerte desde los púlpitos del mundo, mientras filósofos sordos y matemáticos ciegos (en hordas) nos negaban el derecho a ser juntos una mágica porcelana de Sajonia. La caricia nueva nos repetía desquiciada. Se nos trepaba embriagada y danzarina a las manos, a los labios, a los cuerpos; y nos redimía de censuras y cementerios. Aprendimos a ser felices, a espaldas de la conciencia. Aprendimos a ser la única geografía el uno del otro; para quedarnos para siempre los dos en los dos.

And so it went on and on and on. The first poem was 13 Microsoft Word pages; the second poem, 10. Some of the lines definitely tickled my funny bone (the line about marvelous Saxon porcelain provoked many tears of laughter from me and my ex), but I tried to take the job seriously. The novelty of translating soon wore off, though, and it became a drag to rack my brain to find the words to approximate the saccharine poetry. I started dreading the work, and I’d waste time doing anything but the translations. (Like, you know, maybe start a blog.) Which of course only dragged the whole thing out. Terrible strategy–I don’t recommend it to anyone. I became extremely lonely while online all day at home, and it’s not like I could take my laptop to a Panera or Starbucks. (But no one had a gun to my head, so Lord knows why I didn’t scrap the job and look for other work before it was too late to salvage some bits of happiness.)

This post has made me rather sad, but there’s no rewriting the past. If only I’d stopped after translating these poems and moved on. Instead, for a million inexplicable and lousy reasons, I stuck with it. I did end up moving on a few months later, but not in the way I wanted to–I eventually had to move on from Colombia and my relationship entirely. ¿Y para qué? For some silly translations I doubt anyone’s even read until now, translations that don’t even have my name on them. (Edgar apologized profusely for this oversight when I pointed it out to him, months after the fact.)

Emotions aside, it was kind of fun to have the experience of translating poetry without the pressure I’d feel if I were translating someone famous or if I knew my translations would be seen and scrutinized by many. Then again, I would have enjoyed and thrived under that pressure. Pablo Neruda or Federico García Lorca he wasn’t, but Edgar did have his own unique voice. And I helped give him a voice in English–I hope I did him justice. I also find it inherently gratifying to find just the precise translation for a difficult, nuanced word or turn of phrase.

Also, how many translators can say that their translations are on not only Amazon but also Youtube? It’s true. Check out the trailers for poem one and poem two.

After this poetry, I translated two breathtaking spy novels. I’ll save them for the next and final installment.

Once we got the poetry out of the way, Edgar started sending me the good stuff: two spy novels. They were really more like spy novellas, as each would be about 70-80 pages in length in a standard book format. But, believe me, they read like tomes. Besides, it’s much sexier to say I’ve worked for a spy novelist. What do you call a person who writes novellas? How do you even say novella in Spanish? The first thing to come to mind is novela mocha. Wikipedia says novela corta.

I’m not a consumer of the genre, but translating spy novels turned out to be rather interesting. Even breathtaking at points. Since most translators translate things of a very tedious nature (demand for literary translations is low), I probably won some translation lottery by getting this bonanza of riveting material, if not particularly remunerative or prestigious. There were high-speed car chases that invariably ended in the middle of a river, shootouts down the dark hallways of an underground bunker, secret trapdoors, police interrogations, lots of drugs, sex scenes, and so on and so forth. Anything but boring, these are two novels you don’t want to reach for when you have insomnia in the middle of the night.

Here’s the official synopsis of the first book (which I wrote, of course), and you can click here if you want to read more.

A powerful Colombian drug lord, deranged, ruthless, and considered to be the richest drug kingpin in the world, hires Al Qaeda terrorists to launch a missile strike on the headquarters of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Arlington, Virginia, and brutally kill active agents worldwide. Only the CIA has the potential to stand up to his madness, employ elite commando units to penetrate his indestructible bunker in the middle of the Amazon jungle—where he’s building dangerous biological weapons—and take him out.

And here’s the official synopsis of the second book. Click here if you want to read more.

A retired Greek soldier living in the Czech Republic, dedicated to producing hardcore pornography, utterly ruthless in the pursuit of his ambitions. An enormous shipment of weapons for a powerful guerilla group in Colombia. A furious chase of enigmatic figures through Bogota, Paris, and Prague. Assassinations of politicians, influential businessmen, and a beautiful French CIA informant . . . A modern thriller with a group of unprecedented and sadistic terrorists thrown into an extremely action-packed investigation.

There are a few reviews and ratings of the books on Amazon and Goodreads. Curiously, there’s never any mention in the English reviews that the books are translations. As I never received any credit for my work, there’s a good chance that the readers didn’t even know they were reading a translation. I also can’t help but notice that on Amazon the first book has an overall rating of four stars for the English version, whereas the original Spanish version has an overall rating of only one star. I am way beyond caring about any of this, though. At least I don’t have any regrets about the quality of the work I did. Not that it matters in the grand scheme of things!

Both books had a sex scene, and I loathed translating those parts. But not for the reasons you’d probably guess. The books were also filled with violence– terrorist attacks, police torture, shootings, bombings, and the like. There was even a woman who had a gun placed in her vagina and was then shot. Incredibly dark and sad. There I was in Medellín with this beautiful weather outside just beckoning, pleading with me to come out and enjoy it, and I was confined inside translating this drivel. And then I wondered why I was unhappy? ¡Qué locura! Never, ever, ever again. Ni de vainas, ni por el forro, ni por el berraco. 

So, now you know about my illustrious but short-lived career as a literary translator. I’ve shared this experience with you because I can’t bear to think that all of that hard work and mental anguish were for naught. I poured my blood, sweat and tears into these translations during five long, arduous months, and naturally I would like to believe that my unmistakable talent is clearly written all over them. Ahem. After losing most of what I had in Medellín, these stories–for better or for worse–are what have lasted: a permanent and public–albeit absurd–memento of an unforgettable time of my life. Until I write or translate something better, these are my literary masterpieces (yikes). The good news is that I am going to write something better. Something much, much better (in English and Spanish). Yep, I’m going to write a book! I’ve been thinking about this for a long time, and everything has lined up recently to enable it. I’m going to announce it more formally when my blog turns two, which will be in October. I’m also going to go back to Colombia for a short while to work on it. Finally, all of my blog readers will, of course, get a free copy– I figure it’s the least I can do for all of the incredible support you’ve shown me over the last two years. More info to come! Un abrazo murciélago.

-v.