I’ve got this feeling that everything around me is constant. It whirls and trickles down, swirling with this sort of fiery that relentlessly haunts the thick and humid air around me. Present in a reality that is far from what I knew, not knowing whether it will stick or if someday I will forget about it. The lights reflected in my eyes, the candles bringing warmth to my eyelashes and my otherwise very cold nose. These sensations seem effortless in the moment, but I worry about their significance in the future. The stars that line the streets and shake with the wind and reflect in shadows of the frost that lay on the earth below, a joining of two different worlds, you may even say they are shadows of what there is to come. The constant murmur of voices even in the quietest of spaces and the clanging of my shoes upon the pavement, thick with residue that keeps us safe from falling. Falling in to darkness or perhaps it is light, depending on what your spirituality tells you. Familiar faces, the same commute, words never spoken, but nods of recognition make this place feel more like home. The woman at the cafe who doesn’t speak english, but is patient and kind when I fumble for the right words to say. She sits down with me while I drink a cappuccino that she drew a heart on just seconds before. We talk of home and how we ended up here, both foreigners we laugh about how adapting to this new place comes with a lot of acceptance. Acceptance of others, acceptance of yourself and how a part of you will never really adapt fully because a part of you, a part of us, knows what it is like to call somewhere else home. Then again, five months ago I would have never been able to have this conversation with the woman from Iran that works at the little cafe on the corner because five months ago I couldn’t speak a word of Swedish.
Learning a language brings the most comical and beautiful moments and it is everything. Anywhere you go speaking the language makes people look at you differently. It is almost as if a constant bond is formed and personalities click. I think this may be why so many people fall in love with those that are from the same place that they are. It is easy to love someone who knows what you love and loves what you know, grew up with it, spoke in it, and will always feel a strong connection to it. Everywhere I have lived so far in my life changed when I began to speak the language. It is still one of my biggest achievements that I have been lucky enough to make friends in languages that I have had to learn and did not just know. Fumbling for words to say, one can find many ways to say them. It is my experience that in the describing you begin to find new ways of loving, learning, and accepting. I’m still not sure if I have come to terms with all of this within myself and all that has trespassed these last couple of years in the longing and loss, but I’m hoping that if I keep describing it all, someday I may find some sort of solace.
Sonnet 20, A woman’s face
A woman’s face with Nature’s own hand painted
Hast thou, the master-mistress of my passion;
A woman’s gentle heart, but not acquainted
With shifting change, as is false women’s fashion;
An eye more bright than theirs, less false in rolling,
Gilding the object whereupon it gazeth;
A man in hue, all hues in his controlling,
Much steals men’s eyes and women’s souls amazeth.
And for a woman wert thou first created;
Till Nature, as she wrought thee, fell a-doting,
And by addition me of thee defeated,
By adding one thing to my purpose nothing.
But since she prick’d thee out for women’s pleasure,
Mine be thy love and thy love’s use their treasure.
William Shakespeare
aBroad. 