houston – Page 26 – hannah ananas

‘One Spanish-speaking Boyfriend, please’

I said to myself yesterday that I needed a native-Spanish-speaking boyfriend, or else a native-Spanish-speaking friend, because I need Spanish in my life, and I need to use the language more than I currently do (hardly at all).

Tonight, at dinner, the waiter, who might also be the manager or owner or something, brought over to our table a handsome-looking young man, probably right around my own age, and explained that the guy knows very little English, and, if I would like, would be willing to work with me on improving my Spanish, if I would help him learn English. And no, I hadn’t told him about yesterday’s declaration.

Isn’t life awesome? 😀

To give a little context, – the waiter was not being crazy or anything, with his suggestion that the helper and I work on language together – I had asked the waiter, after interacting with him a few times in English, if he would speak to us in Spanish from now on. My mom had studied Spanish in high school, and then briefly in college, and has had plenty of interactions with Spanish in the years since then. I spent a summer in Spain while in high school, and had just used Spanish all over for a couple years after that. So, while it could be difficult at times, I figured we could handle it.

The waiter was delighted at the request, and instantly spewed out fast Spanish. My mom told him almost immediately (in Spanish), “But you have to speak more slowly, because I am a gringa.” (It’s essentially a term for foreigners.) We all laughed, and he acquiesced.

As the meal went on, the waiter would pause and chat with us here and there. He moved here from Mexico when he was 17 or 19 (I forget which), and don’t even know how to say ‘please’ in English. To help himself learn English, he watched the American movies, and had on the English subtitles, and action I fully approve and support, and which I have done plenty myself. He also spoke of how strong the Spanish-speaking community is in Houston, and that I need only get involved, and they will turn me into a Latina. He learned that we are not studying Spanish; that I speak Spanish, but just never use it; that I just lived back from Japan; and that I just have no friends here who speak Spanish. So it made sense that he brought over the guy later. And it wasn’t weird.

When we left, a while later, I gave the young guy my number on a napkin.

Post-a-day 2017

Good morning… fancy an earthquake?

This morning, I woke up around five in an extreme panic. My bed was shaking, and my subconscience was sure that the building soon would be tumbling down – this was a massive earthquake, and it was lasting… already almost a minute before I could get my bearings and turn on a light.

And then, as I discovered where exactly I was, – in the USA, and specifically Texas – it took me another moment to discover what was happening. I knew that it was not an earthquake. It was not the gymnasium over my head, either, as it was in a place where I briefly worked immediately after arriving to the US. So, what was it? ‘What is going on?!’ my insides demanded to know.

And then I heard it: a wind-filled noise, accompanied by a soft chugging sound of deep iron. It was a train. While the sounds of trains have never much bothered me, even when I lived beside tracks in the past, I’m not sure that I ever noticed a shaking tied to the passing of one. Nonetheless, I experienced it in full force this morning.

After I realized that it was simply a passing train, – though, I was still surprised at how much it shook the house and its contents – and not an earthquake, I mentally noted that I didn’t even have to start panicking. A few seconds after this noting, my body finally began to respond to the threat of the earthquake. It had been as though I were in a fight or flight mode, and so hadn’t had the various responses tied to the fear in the perceived situation. Once I was safe, they all kicked into action, and I began shaking all by my self. I was physically panicking now. My breathing tighted to a near non-existence, and my heart raced. My skin prickled all over, and I had to force myself to swallow and then take slow, deep breaths.

I wonder if it will happen again this morning…

Post-a-day 2017

at night

“Y’all have a good night,” I sat in a casual, comforting, and somewhat raspy and deep, womanly voice.

“You, too… be safe,” they both respond, accompanied by a casual wave, a smile, and a dip of the head by both of them.

This happens as I walk out of the school, close to 10pm, after the theatre production. These two men are the police officers on duty.

I love this…. these kinds of interactions. The men would have been ignored in so many other places I have lived and visited. They are sometimes ignored by people here. But it is also normal for that little interaction to take place, especially around here.

Yes, I love this, I think to myself with a smile, as I walk to the car. I love living here. I love the South.

Post-a-day 2017

My real voice

In college, I spent a summer studying in Germany. It was a language school setup, filled with foreigners, but in such a small town that everyone knew that we were studying German, and so everyone always spoke to us all in German. I had already studied abroad a few times before this adventure, and I had learned firsthand about what works and what doesn’t work, in terms of language immersion. I was dedicated to learning German, and so I made sure that I only spoke in German with others, even if they spoke to me in English. This made friendships hard among the people in my program’s group, since they all used English together; I came across a bit snobby, but I was just really committed to learning German.

I made friends with other foreigners rather easily, though, and especially ones in higher levels of German, which was even better for me. My German was improving immensely. But this led to a unique situation one day.

One day, near the end of either my time at the school or my friend Paul’s time there (he’s British), I found myself faced with a desperate Paul, actually begging me to speak English. Why?! was my repeated question to his pleas.

“Because I want to hear what you sound like!”

I don’t know if he was pleased or not by how I sound in English, but I spoke a little for him. And it was way weird, using English with him, despite the fact that I’d heard him speak English loads, and that it’s our common native language. I had just never used it with him.

And then this brought up a unique and interesting sentiment. He wanted to hear me, and that meant speaking English. I can guess that my native tongue was the one in which Paul believed my identity to lie. I know that it felt like I was setting aside a sort of mask when I switched to English with him. I even felt a little called-out… as though I had been hiding somehow, and it had been behind German. The real me (I) lay in English, in the English part of me.

Yet, years later, here I am, missing the parts of me that belong to these different languages in which I have lived. A part of me, true me (I), exists only on German, and others in French, in Spanish, and in Japanese. So much so that the real me (I) is this whole combination of languages – I feel a huge emptiness and feel not myself when I am using only English in my daily life. I listen to Spanish-speaking radio when I’m in Houston, mostly because I don’t get to use Spanish often enough. I read every night in French, and trade off an English book for a German one at times for my evening reading, too. I regularly pull out a Spanish book to read, or my German audiobooks. And I have noticed that I have been searching for a tolerably satisfying way to have Japanese in my near-daily life, too. (For now, it has just been the occasional music, and a perpetual repeat of a certain song being stuck in my head.) When I don’t have them all, it is as though a part of me is missing, and suddenly getting to speak with someone in them, almost reminds me of that mask I was setting aside in Germany with Paul… like I am again setting aside some mask I have been wearing.

Perhaps it is now a mask of monolingualism, pretending that I only speak English, while I long for the world to talk to me in several languages, all the time.

Anyway… I’m exhausted. And I miss Paul. He was studying opera, and was a really great guy. I wonder if he’s been really successful with opera these past several years. Maybe I can go see him perform one day. That would be awesome. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

An Evening of Moon River, and more

Moon River, wider than a mile, I’m crossing you in style some day.
Oh, dream maker, you heart breaker,
wherever you’re going I’m going your way.
Two drifters off to see the world.
There’s such a lot of world to see.
We’re after the same rainbow’s end–
waiting ’round the bend,
my huckleberry friend,
Moon River and me.

So go the lyrics to the beautiful song that is sung by Audrey Hepburn in the film “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, and which was written for the occasion. They have been in my mind all night tonight. I likely still will be singing them and humming the song tomorrow, and possibly the next several days or weeks, too, imagining Miss Holly Golightly sitting on her windowsill in jeans and a gray sweatshirt, strumming her small guitar, singing the song while her hair dries in a towel on her head. That was her one genuine moment, where there were no airs put on and no facades blocking the view; dreamy longing and total honesty were there, coming to life in her music.

Why, you ask, is all of this on my mind? Well, because of just that. My cousin makes jewelry from guitar strings. (I do a little, too, but not to the same degree.) Since that particular scene had Holly being simple and honest, showing her core, she loved the scene. Since it included Holly’s playing the guitar, it became relevant to my cousin’s jewelry. You see, this neat art gallery in Galveston decided to do an “All About Audrey” exhibition, in which all of the selected pieces were submitted by various individuals in the community. The only requirements were that the art be vegan and be somehow about Audrey Hepburn. So, my cousin used guitar strings and fake pearls to construct her own version of the famous “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” necklace (with the aforementioned information taking part in creating the idea).

Tonight, the art show had its opening, and my cousin’s piece was part of the show. So, my mom and I attended the opening. The opening happened to be a costume party, with the theme being ‘your favorite Audrey’. I genuinely liked the honesty moment in “Breakfast at Tiffany’s”, and the fact that it directly related to the reason we were going – to support my cousin’s guitar string jewelry inspired by that scene – made it an easy preference for my attire for the event.

And so, I put together the clothes, had my mom help me with a white hand towel on my head (I had to take out the seams to make it long enough to tie correctly.), and looked up “Moon River” chords. I only have a full-sized guitar with me, so I figured my ukulele would do well for the completion of the outfit. Since I was going to be carrying around my uke, dressed as a character who sings an incredibly famous song, I figured it only fair that I make an effort to learn to play the song myself.

And it was a good thing I did! Not only was I requested to play, but I was asked to play three times. The third time was the coolest, because the second time had already been a sort of sing-a-long for a lot of the people at the gallery, but the third was everyone. I was on my way out of the gallery, heading to dinner with my family who had been in attendance, when a lady at a table complimented my outfit and asked me to play. The man at the table asked if I could play, because, of I could play, he could sing. And so I started up playing, singing with him, only to be joined after only a few seconds by the entire gallery. It was so beautiful, it was almost spooky. People had all different reasons for being there tonight, but we all shared the experience of true bliss and community as we sang together tonight. Reasonably fitting end to the week that included International Peace Day (Thursday), I think.

There are two other fun aspects to this. The first is that we the went to dinner, all of us dressed in our various outfits. Most everyone looked to be in normal-ish attire for our current life and times, and it was even somewhat high on the classy side, and all black and white. My mother, however, was in a genuine formal 60s dress that is just about the color of Tiffany’s boxes, and is floor length, polyester, and very 60s. I was in jeans and a sweatshirt, and had a towel on my head. Just imagine seeing our party at a casual restaurant – what on Earth would you think?

The second fun aspect is that this isn’t the first time we’ve done something like this. For the 100th anniversary of the Titanic, we attended a tea and luncheon that was tied to the Museum of Fine Arts’ temporary exhibit on the Titanic. The idea was to experience tea like back in the day at an actual teahouse in town, and then gonover to the exhibit. We did exactly that, but dressed in period-appropriate attire. Aside from the servers at the teahouse, we were the only ones dressed up. At the museum, someone asked to sketch me (and did), people took pictures of us, and we had several inquiries about whether we weren’t part of the exhibit. It was a grand old time, and felt somehow totally normal to me. I guess that’s just how we roll in my family. Cool, huh? 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Malts

Today, I did what one would call volunteering while my mom was at work, and then she and I went to a shake place, so we could get a malt. I even called ahead to verify that they had malts. We didn’t want a shake. We wanted a malt. My mom briefly suggested that we just make our own at home, but I pointed out that half the purpose of going to get a malt was to be out of the house.

So, we went to the Galleria, the huge, high-fashion shopping complex in Houston, so we could try out this shake place. We got a chocolate malt to share, and then walked around the complex a bit, drinking simultaneously from straws in the same cup, as though we were little kids who could wait to have their malt. As we first walked out and saw various store names, we discovered that neither of us was even interested in window shopping. So, we finished our malt, watching the kids ice skate below, which was far more interesting than shopping.

It was a good time.

As a whole, today was on a completely different level from yesterday, and in a very wonderful way.

Post-a-day 2017

Swiping Nuts

My mom steals nuts. She really does. Well, sort of, anyway… She doesn’t actually steal in the traditional sense…

Every time we go to this specific grocery store, I somehow forget about this fact. That is, of course, I forget about it only until my mother walks up to me and offers me some nuts. “You want some nuts?” she’ll ask, and proffer me a handful of mixed nuts. The first time she did it, I didn’t understand. Where had she gotten a handful of nuts? Did she bring them in with her, and I just hadn’t noticed? But it quickly hit me.

“Did you get those from the …?”

“Mmhmm,” she cut me off, and then offered me the nuts again.

Naturally, I accepted. They were a bit old that first time, but that was it. Today, they were actually quite good. I really enjoyed them.

Perhaps you are wondering how it is my mother gets these nuts in a way that I do not feel any guilt or obligation in eating them. Well, you could call it a sort of recycling, in a way. You know how some stores have the pull-down dispensers for nuts, and sometimes even for cereals and other grains and such in the dried bulk foods section? And you know how there are almost always those same dried bulk foods spilled around on the little shelf below all of the dispensers? Do you see where this is going?

Hopefully, you aren’t entirely repulsed by this idea. It isn’t as though there is anything else on the shelves – they are cleaned constantly, as is required for something in such proximity to unpackaged foods.

Anyway, this particular store has a sort of tricky system for making those shelves look nice all of the time. Instead of just having it be a shelf to catch the falling dried foods, it is a sort of grate on top of the shelf, and the grate allows the foods to fall through it and onto the shelf, while leaving the appearance of a totally clean and clear shelf, free from food spillages.

So, as I went to get another bite of nuts after we finished what my mom brought over to me today, I had to enlist the help of my mother, because I did not yet know the last piece of information I just shared here. However, she happily showed me her secret means of stealing nuts destined for the trash, and I got my other desired bite of fresh nuts, and I felt good about helping prevent that extra bit of unnecessary waste.

Next time you’re at a grocer with some nut dispensers, perhaps you’ll consider helping prevent waste, eh? ;P Or you could just imagine my mother showing up and saying, “Want some nuts?”

Post-a-day 2017

Say, What?!

Today, my mom and I went around to help out in various places nearby. We still haven’t hit the highest bit of water for our area as a result of the storm (although the rain has stopped completely), but we have another day or two before then, and the roads were really quite passable in many places already today. So, we decided to get out and be active, since we’ve been so sedentary throughout the storm, and we’re likely to be stuck in our neighborhood another handful of days if the upcoming flooding goes as predicted (Fortunately, it keeps lowering its levels in the forecast every 12-ish hours or so, but we prefer to err on the safe side and be prepared for more days of being home.).

All of this is not the main point for this writing, however, so I move onward to my purpose.

As we were driving from our third helping location to our fourth, my mom was responding to a text message using voice recognition. I pointed out the direction we needed to go, accepted my mom’s correction of our very first turn, and then continued in reminding her of the safe way to get out of the flooded neighborhood. As I pointed out a stop sign that was hidden behind a whole line of cars, we herd a beep emit from her phone. We both instantly knew that the voice recognition had just ended.

And that, naturally, it had been doing its best to write up whatever it had been hearing of our conversation. I instantly told my mom to send it as-is to our friend. Why? Because he does that sort of thing to us all of the time. He regularly sends a message using voice recognition without even checking what ended up in the text of the message. He claimed that it is always close enough, so we can always figure it out. So, he knows that he sends nonsense messages a good amount of the time, and he doesn’t mind it.

Therefore, as I read it aloud to my mother, and could barely speak for the intensity of my laughter, I knew we had to send it to him as it was. I gave it to my mom, and told her just to try to read it, go on… She could barely do it herself, she began crying with laughter along with me. It wasn’t just that we were ‘getting back at’ our friend that we were laughing, but the fact that what had been put into the text of the message was hardly even close to what we had actually said. In the whole double sentence that seemed to have developed in the message, we had only actually said the words “No, left,” and “…turn right.” None of the others were words that we had even said.

Having thoroughly read the message, then, my mom sent it on to our friend. Actually, she had me read it a second time aloud, after the first time had been such a total struggle, and decided then to send it. So, I sent the message then, and then I gave it to her to read herself while at a stoplight. It was a wonderful and welcome comic and laughter-filled relief for the craziness of the day. Try it some time, and you’ll see what I mean by the joy we found in the text of the message. Turn on your voice recognition for a message to someone, and then begin conversation with a nearby person. You’re likely in for a real treat of words. 🙂

Post-a-day 2017

Water on my mind

I am unnerved, and I don’t know what else to share. I feel false even considering any other topic, as this is at the forefront of my mind. This storm is scary. Period. The winds were so weak, it hardly felt like a hurricane as it flew above us, spinning along at its loping pace. And the rain has reached such an amount that I might just forever be afraid of rain from here on out. Water is powerful. It is truly powerful. Oh, how I would love to be the kid with the water ring from Captain Planet right now… or that guy from Twilight…

Post-a-day 2017

The weather continues

Electricity was restored only a few handfuls of minutes after it was lost here in our house last night. However, the rain has off-and-on taken up temporary residence around us throughout last night, today, and this evening, giving us more water than anyone might ever want in such a short amount of time. And tornadoes decided to show up with the rain in certain areas throughout the past 22-ish hours.

If we were just talking about rain and wind and thunder and lightning, I’d be quite all right. But that last little addition to the standing hurricane (now tropical storm) has me nervous about going upstairs to shower or sleep.

It is never a good feeling when this is how your town’s winds look.

Again and still, I pray that we all be happy, healthy, holy.

Post-a-day 2017