I Solved a Problem in Spanish. It Felt Good.
Something seems to be changing in my brain.
Hola amigas y amigos,
It’s tu amigo, Reese. Half a year en España has exposed, again and again, a Spanish language gap I’m not proud of. When intending to move where a different language is spoken, you may think you’ll simply learn it beforehand. But you won’t, because the move itself distracts from this most important preparation. Moving to another country isn’t merely figuring out what to do with your stuff. It’s not just having documentation in order. Planning the first month’s itinerary is crucial, but even that’s not suficiente.
Here’s what those who move abroad underestimate most: time for friends and family.
And there’s another thing. Moving to Spain from a “culture” of cortisolmaxxing road-ragers with guns — who are pathologically incapable of regular breathing — has revealed my most American of flaws: not taking breaks. Decompression before and after moving is nothing to be ashamed about. Everyone should relax everyday, actually.
Between the siestas, fiestas, and strikes, Americans who move to Spain will feel as if they’ve been strapped to a rusty metal chair with electrodes clamped to their fuzzy nipples in an abandoned parking garage. Spaniards then approach. Some play accordions con mucho gusto. Others spraypaint avant-garde graffiti and maybe something about Palestine on a support column. Then they go in for the (ego) kill by offering their cultural hostage beer, wine, and tapas. The sweating, vein-popping American kicks and squirms and wretchedly screams until final surrender: calming the fuck down.
That’s when the restraints are loosened. Yet, the American stays despite the freedom to leave. Dropping the tension does feel good, doesn’t it?
Learning the language, Spanish in my case, also feels good, and I think that — creo que — breaks are the key. Everybody knows from school that cramming is ineffective compared to controlled and continuous engagement with a subject. How much learning is really happening once our eyes glaze over?
Yet, I’ve tried cramming Spanish. The American in me needs to know Spanish RIGHT NOW GOD DAMN IT. I should know better, given my fluency in other languages… programming languages. Since they’re mostly similar, I can effortlessly context-switch between them. Spending thousands of hours reading and writing in programming languages has a way of lodging intuition about them deep within one’s subconscious. With a mere glance, I’ll notice software issues ranging from the small to the structural.
But had my subconscious mind quit doing its job? After moving, I decided that a brain transplant was in order. Sure, I could — in a controlled environment and with much deliberation — say words, phrases, and sentences in Spanish. My pronunciation seemed to be… sort of okay. However, laboratory conditions pale in comparison to the messy, fucked-up interactions of the real world. These social contexts are not unlike what I had come to expect in America, albeit with subtle differences. Accumulate them, though, and an Americanized world model can’t keep up.
In the same way that moving isn’t just moving, learning a language isn’t just learning a language.
I’m speaking of matters more raw, perhaps emotional, than what is more commonly associated with cultural integration. The psyche of the Spaniard is distinct from that of the American. Forget language for a moment. Spaniards, or more specifically the Galicians that I generally deal with, tend to be raised under different conditions, so they process information in ways that require conscious effort on my part to parse. Since I cannot directly scan their neural oscillations (yet), I’m left with gestures, posture, tone, and facial expressions.
So, there’s no one cringe-inducing anecdote I have of misreading the room; it’s more like I was always slightly misreading it.
I realized that this is what my subconscious mind has been taking its sweet time doing: tweaking and adjusting my world model, generalizing it to encompass both the New World and the Old World. In software, this is what we’d call a “background process.” When it’s working well, it silently maintains system integrity to smooth out the “user experience,” often without the user’s awareness.
Some days ago, this became evident shortly after I, with little conscious effort, strung together numerous sentences (arguably a whole unbroken paragraph!) to explain a problem to a Spaniard, and coherently so. And I didn’t trail off into English (although mixing them is quite useful). I didn’t voluntarily suggest that I only know “a little” Spanish. No request to switch languages. Nah, I decided, I’m gonna Spanish this Spaniard. I’m gonna Español it up. And I don’t care if I sound awkward.
I have words, I’ll use them.
This, mis amigas y amigos, wasn’t a routine grocery run. This wasn’t me stating for the zillionth time that I already have bags, or that I have an INTERNATIONAL! credit card. No rehearsal. Not another instance of me excusing myself out of what I’ve come to learn is the Galician Right of Way™. Indeed, I had explained a semi-contrived situation to a real Española de Español who I’d never met before, fully improvised and unassisted by modern technology. I knew the message had been received the instant she nodded, but for once without the furrowed brow and strained visage of confusion.
She simply continued, all mundane-like, as if engaged in a normal interaction with a normal person…
Meanwhile, I noticed my wife was beaming at me. I had impressed her, defying her expectations by solving a problem rather than creating one. You know, like by accidentally contracting rabies while opining about the moral implications of misplaced scissors.
Do I speak fluent Spanish? Don’t be completamente loco, of course I don’t. Not at all. I’m nowhere near fluent, and I recently remarked to my Spanish teacher that I’ll be in her class for many years to come (which in retrospect may not have sounded like a compliment). I’m just at the point where I can occasionally speak convincing-ish Spanish in improvised and protracted circumstances.
Knowing enough without the need to act everything out, as if in a black-and-white silent film, eases things. I’ve internalized enough words — palabras — to generally apply them. They come more naturally with each passing day.
Tried shaving cream? Improvising a lot of Spanish with inversely proportional conscious effort, for the first time, reminds me of another first: when spelling clicked for me. It was a total lightbulb moment I still remember. I used my little fingers to indent letters into shaving cream sprayed onto a desk. In a moment I went from hopelessly illiterate to actively destroying the English language.
My Spanish language acquisition is a good sign for people who aren’t me, and here’s why: as much as I’d like to be traveloguing in this country anywhere except Marbella,1 my time and energy have been dedicated to laying the groundwork for a software business here in Galicia. Translation: I’m often stuck behind a screen, and yes, I should take more breaks. Compounding that, I’m not exactly a ray of sunshine, and my hobbies are largely asocial.
For neurotypicals, who I’d expect get out and interact more than I do 👽, the learning curve must be shorter than mine. Plunging oneself into the deep end, and confronting all of the friction and discomfort going along with that is the optimal track to acculturation. No doubt. Still, protracted as my learning may be, I do seem to have hit a milestone. It’s unimpressive compared to pretty much anyone else who speaks some Spanish, but it’s a big deal to me. I feel good about it.
Everybody’s integration is different, and with enough time and breaks, we can just let it happen one vino at a time.
Oh, and by the way…
New and long-time subscribers, rejoice!
Bebop Libre has a new getting-started guide. In it, I’ve compiled lists of my “work” to atone for the profound lack of organization around here. Nobody received an email about this because I was trying to respect your spam folders. I am a gentleman, after all, but I’m also a growing boy, and that’s why I require so much tortilla de patatas. Enjoy, and thanks for reading!
To the southwest of Málaga, there appears to be something of an Arkham City for raging grifter assholes not from Spain, at least as portrayed in Louis Theroux: Inside the Manosphere. Marbella seems like a beautiful city, but its depiction in this documentary was… wow, just… holy shit. Watching it certainly made me feel better about myself for actually trying to integrate, and for not being pure evil.