Yonder Lies It

bojeo
el futuro
aquel lleno de esperanzas
llano lejos
ya
del allende
que fuese
mas no es
ni sus contornos
entre nosotros
ni quimera
ni efí­mera
idea
siquiera

¿para qué?
si el eterno retorno
como la luz
ante un agujero negro
un vórtice
cuya presencia
siempre presente
se hace ausente
en el peor momento

Y hemonos
aquí­
deseando
como cada primavera
renacer
de nuevo
.

Is there any poetry in chewing ones nails?
Or the dead flesh out of the corners of the nails?
Whilst I munch the extra skin
Spit its excess
Profound thoughts brew on my head
Is there any charm on the detail
As one scratches
To feel the edges of unwantedness
With the pulgar
Or the digits of my fingerprints
Scouring fields to bite off
Swallow drink
As I spew
A half cooked notion
That might make it or not
In someones head
Or
Many heads?
Only a memory can sweeten the deal
A walk on the streets of
L
O
N
E
L
I
N
E
S
S
So no. Here I am. Naked as if.

As the minutes moved on offset by the seconds
I sat still in a catatonic state like
In my green IKEA chair
Listening how the outside stairs augmented the voice of a child no more than 3
Talking with its voice box some jibberish
Unable to regulate it
Obviously under the influence
Of an echo
How loud a child can sound
An ever present cry across the eras
Who next will ponder
On that
And then
Propelled by a dormant nag to clean my dormitory
I went dust bunny hunting
I even lay on the parquetry or what passes off as that these days in Sweden
To secure the layers of dust
Be all sucked by the old German noose
Then a memory happened
Tijuana early 70’s
Ave. Negrete y Dí­az Mirón (4ta)
Where was I on my way?
I saw my mother mopping the floor of a room.
Till this day I assume it was her apartment.
We met eye to eye
Not as mother and child but as individuals first
Then the hoopla of a mother and son happened
I was excited
Today I wonder
How did I knew she was my mother?
The baggage sits hard

There is no doubt many languages bear the grunt of false friends or cognates and surely Swedish can be an entrapment of sorts when it comes to said dubious company as one traverses the landscape of Scandinavian languages and their codifications whatnot and even worse if you happen to be bilingual Xicano that is, fully native in Spanish and English. These sort of false friends words are a challenge to any language learner since they are hurdles on the way to proficiency. Both visual and auditive associations induce a plethora of cognitive dissonance that must be negotiated as a good juggler would.

Exempli gratia:

Words in Swedish which are either homophone or homographs in Spanish that also might raise an eyebrow either when uttered or read. These, according to Chamizo-Domí­nguez (2008) in Semantics and Pragmatics of False Friends can be classified as chance false friends since «there is no semantic or etymological reason for the overlap»:

Both homophone and homograph
lo	 (Lynx) similar to Spanish lo (a neutrum Spanish article)
vete	 (wheat) (conjunctive form of att veta, to know, old, not in use) Spanish imperative for go!.
kaka	(cookie) homophone to caca in Spanish which means feces in Spanish
gata	(street) in Swedish but female cat in Spanish
koka	(boil) sounding like coca in Spanish which is either a drink or a drug
el	(electricity) sounding like the personal pronoun in Spanish él (he) or the definite article el (the)
ser	(to see) but to be in Spanish, in the infinitive
putta	(push) sounding like puta pejorative prostitute in Spanish
pippa	(slang for coitus) but pipa in Spanish which is pipe in English
mina	(possessive plural form of mine in Swedish) Spanish for mine as in mining
en	(one or the article a) Spanish: a preposition (in/on)
linda	(to wrap or namesake in Swedish) but in Spanish it is an adjective (pretty)
basta	(sauna) but enough in Spanish

Sole homophone
oj!	(exclamative which means ouch!) but sounds like hoy (today) in Spanish

Sole homograph
hora	Hour ins Spanish but hooker in Swedish
vi	(we) in Swedish; saw in Spanish as in the past tense of ver (to see)
sur	(sour) similar in spelling to Sur in Spanish which means south

Just the same there are a number of Spanish words which are either chance false friends as a homophone or homograph for Swedish people:

Both homophone and homograph
linda	(to wrap or namesake in Swedish) but in Spanish it is an adjective (pretty)
basta	(sauna) but enough in Spanish also in the Swedish frozen phrase ”och med det dí¤r basta!” and with that said enough!
ser	(to see) but to be in Spanish in the infinitive
gata	(street) cat in Spanish
ropa	(clothes in Spanish) but shout in Swedish
pisa	step on it In Spanish but in Swedish means to pee
por	(preposition through in Spanish) but sounding like porr in Swedish which in turn is porn
loka	(Sounds like insane in Spanish (loca)) which in Swedish is a renowned beverage except its spelled loka

Sole homograph
sur	(sour) similar in spelling to Sur in Spanish which means south
paja	(slang for masturbation in Spain but hay in Mexico) but in Swedish means broken

English takes the lot though when it comes to chance false friends which tend to cause a lifting of the eyebrows for English speaking persons:

Both homophone and homograph aka homonyms to a degree
bra	 (good in Swedish) sounding like bra in English suffice to say, ugh! damn homonym
men	 (but in Swedish) near homonym to men in English
hen	 (S/he in Swedish) recent coinage though a chance false friend homonym in its own right
sex	  (6 & sex in Swedish) chance false friend homonym & butt of jokes in Swedish
titt or the name tittis	 (look or namesake?) near homonym to titty in English.

Sole homophone
fack	 (union or slot in Swedish) near homophone to fuck in English

 Sole homograph
hora	(hour in Spanish) but prostitute in Swedish
barn	 (children in Swedish) though a farm barn in English
slut	 (finish/end in Swedish) though prostitute in English
kiss	 (pee in Swedish) but kiss in English
bad	 (shower in Swedish) but bad (wrong) in English
gift	 (poison or married in Swedish) but present in English
kock	 (Chef in Swedish) but near homonym to cock in English (often a fauxpas for Swedes as in I want to be a kock, they mean they want to be a chef)
dog	 (die in Swedish) but homograph to canine in English
spring	 (run in Swedish) but homograph to Spring in English
driver	 (golf club in Swedish or to jest) but homograph to driver in English
hem	 (home in Swedish) but homograph to hem (as in stich) in english
fall	 (case in Swedish) but homograph to fall (autumn) or present tense of fall in English
jerker	 (namesake in Swedish) but homograph to jerker (slang for masturbator) in English
fan	 (devil in Swedish) but a homograph to fan in English
rape	(canola in Swedish) but a homograph to rape in English

Those are a few examples that if you happen to have English and Spanish as a mother tongue it surely creates a disarray in the head. Onne is often warned of said evilish words though no one really goes through the ropes when it comes to not just to head the warnings but going through the ropes of understanding that the words (or graphemes thereby) have several meanings (polysemy) in different languages. Nor how the brain goes about organizing said words to be readily read in the different languages in due process without having to stumble upon the various meanings of the words. I suppose that after a few stinging or negative reactions you just turn off the mother tongue and start treating every word with a new meaning and only afterwards compare the word with one’s L1. But one inevitably starts off by making fun of the weird similarities until they completely become more of a burden than a fun fact.

I suppose that habit makes habitual to understand the different impacts words have on the being. A clear example is the Swedish word for cookie in Swedish which is kaka. Now, kaka sounds very much like the word caca in Spanish which in turn means feces. Caca so happens to be a repulsive word for Spanish speakers and we tend cringe at the very utterance of it. It is unpleasant and brings about a plethora of nasty images. I suppose that time allows the brain and one to allow for versatility and juggling the many associations and even with time meanings we no longer use get relegated to the back burner or use it as an analogy at parties to friends of the same feather.  We are able to negotiate the associations by sheer comprehension that the rules and norms governing a meaning of a word are always subject to the ruling and existential conditions in which the word is uttered. I am not reinforcing the idea of language being subject to the idea of nurture but in a sense language does become subjected to its environment since caca while being a homophone to the Swedish Kaka the fact of the matter is that the party that doesn’t share the same cultural baggage the meaning and thereby consequences upon hearing the word will become null and void. And since only one party feels the sting then it becomes obsolete in a sense. The impact has lost its sting.

Sometimes my language students answer a question about language strategy with the idea that they got «lucky» if their results prove to be more favorable than they thought. But there is no such thing as getting «lucky» with language. It’s simply a process which though unconscious, one has made a right turn or decision as to the right answer in the games of what is right and what is wrong in language. The tricky part is raising awareness about said processes [metalinguistics baby!] but also acknowledging that an educated guess is far better than leaving blanks behind because if you do, then THAT is just plain bad luck and poor strategy.

So you acquired a II language by sheer luck. Putting it succinctly: your brain did something which, you, the owner, was not aware of, it, as in your brain, knew it, again, your brain, could do. What next? Let’s back a little just a tad. So if acquisition was done by inherent prowesses alien to you is it acquired though? This is no innocent query since the very idea of a «native speaker» not to mention Chomsky’s «window of opportunity» theory just might have a wrench smash it. Pardon the hyperbole for the sake of a jocund moment.

I rabidly dissent from the use of the word «acquisition» but since the powers to be in the ivory towers are fond of the term, for diverse purposes we bitterly use said ”accepted” term to further our motives. Having left that letter of protest, much to our disgust,  we further our inquiry so as not to incriminate ourselves as vandals and window breakers, again, pardon the jocund tone.

So you got lucky. Is there anything to it? This «lucky» business? I suppose the easy answer is to own it. Like a mechanical bull. You steer it. How? You just do. Here begins the inquiry. Is it fireproof gut feeling? Happenstance? mere hazard of fortune? As you eliminate the obvious, then back in even further. Have you been exposed to said material somehow? Does your mouth salivate like a Pavlov dog at the sound of a bell? The bell being delicious sounding subjects which you passively took in sometime ago?

Dealing with unconscious happenstances, if you will, are always precarious because they start off with hunches, inklings at best which high brow establishment sneer at and define as half cooked notions at best. Yet higher learning buffs are yet to chart a course towards «meta-linguistic awareness». There is no compass or stars to guide us there. Academia can only account for the existence of «meta-linguistic awareness», not how to achieve it. There are, though, some crude sketches akin to an arrow pointing to a vast horizon in the desert. and no, am not digressing. Because the unconscious knowledge of language is still metalinguistics, albeit unawares.

Allow us to delve so far into uncharted sands so as to desire to quench this burdensome idea with an oasis which might or might not be there to aid our thirst for knowledge.

The mirage: a step by step of learning meta-linguistic awareness. Not just mention it as a psychprop to the student but as a strategy the student at hand can use to further its awareness of how language works. The quirk and unfettered notion of it in its purest form. Minutia handwork.

Yet, in the age of the internet how to approximate the lengthy labor of yore?

Based on Bialystok’s model of metalingusitic development (2001), metalinguistic skills have been defined as the ability to reflect upon language, to attend to its form and structure apart from its content or meaning, and to make judgments or evaluate its correctness or incorrectness.

Here, it is adamant we emphasize that we do not subscribe to the idea that metalinguistics is a rib of grammar. In other words, the idea that «psycholinguistic processing operations that access […] internalized grammar»

and to further our own joy gust:

How deaf children can recruit these psycholinguistic processing operations and use their ―ASL language template‖ to manipulate ASL representations and to map them onto the learning of their second language English remains to be studied in future studies.

je ne sais quoi

seriously, I do not know what

this plateau as I call is

whence thence or hence wherefore or therefore alas henceforth

none help

No sé qué pasa

El pasado me tortura

time is the fire in which we burn

el presente y su pretérito perfecto alientan vicios nocivos

y el futuro, ese, ni sus luces

Me chingo unas birrias

para darle sabor a las horas

a veces, caigo en el abuso

y me arrepiento

malusando la religión

para justificar alguna dosis de espiritualidad

El futuro le miro

digo, peyote me hace falta

para darle arranque a esta maquina de piel y sangre

y sueño

salir de la rutina

otra vez,

mientrás

otro dí­a más

avanza, lentamente, a lo inevitable

Alla ska dit!

Todos vamos hací­a allá dice un amigo argelino

unos con prisa

y yo, [¡ahorita vengo patrón!] ni de aquí­ ni de allá.

Hace más de 5 años que escribí­ sobre el tema de la preparatoria sueca aquí­.

Mucho ha cambiado desde aquellos años en que apenas me caí­a el 20. Aunque seguimos aún, como la mayorí­a del paí­s, con los llamados 12 programas nacionales divididos entre teóricos y vocacionales. Mi escuela sigue ofreciendo e impartiendo los siguientes programas de 3 años de duración el cuál al final, o acaba uno como aprendiz de alguna vocación o con rumbo a alguna carrera universitaria.  Los especí­ficos a una carrera universitaria son los siguientes: Economí­a, Estéticas, Ciencias Naturales, Ciencias Sociales y Tecnológico.

Y digo especí­ficos porque los programas vocacionales ofrecen hoy en dí­a cursos extras para que uno pueda adquirir admisión a la universidad si es que uno de repente, se decide por cursar la universidad. Lo usual, para poder cursar la universidad es que aparte del programa vocacional que requiere de 2500 puntos escolares es cursar 300 puntos más, inglés, sueco y ciencias sociales; por igual, son intercambiables o sea, se puede cursar cursos de matemáticas o historia. Un curso, en su mayorí­a es de 100 puntos y dura un año escolar. Por lo general, los estudiantes cursan de 800 a 900 puntos por año escolar.

Los programas vocacionales que existen en mi escuela son los siguientes: Electricista, Carpinterí­a, Construcción y obras, Servicios asistenciales, Infancia y recreación, tecnológico industrial, Calefacción y fontanerí­a y por último, Programa de Trabajos Manuales (peluquerí­a, florista y diseño textil).

Uno se preguntarí­a quienes en verdad son hoy por hoy, los verdaderos estudiosos en Suecia. La diferencia yace en un sistema que aún premia a la inteligencia de las ”humanidades” ya que para poder entrar a un programa con vistas a estudios superiores los chicos tienen que cursar un programa teórico. Me refiero a que la inteligencia es más apreciada si uno demuestra destreza en poder memorizar, calcular o teorizar sobre aspectos abstractos mientras que labores manuelas no adquieren nunca susodicho status, aunque no todo lo que brilla es oro. Lo digo porque no todos los que entran a los programas teóricos son genios que digamos. Mi experiencia es que no todos los chicos que estudian programas teóricos tienen la motivación para estudiar porque aunque se les considere inteligentes por el hecho de estudiar esos programas no todos logran alcanzar esas alturas que solo las buenas calificaciones otorgan o peor, que la sociedad misma exige, requiere y espera de un ”buen alumno”. La presión por dar buenos resultados es enorme para el incauto que desee estudiar esos programas y para más de la mitad, la motivación cae como una piedra al fondo de un rí­o ya que la presión es mucha para chic@s de 15 ó 16.

Y digo quién será el verdadero estudioso porque para los programas teóricos solo se requiere obtener 2500 puntos al final de 3 años de ”estudios” mientras que los que cursan programas vocacionales tienen que estudiar hasta 2800. La diferencia, sin embargo, es que para los programas vocacionales la presión social de obtener las mejores calificaciones es prácticamente inexistente y si el estudiante logra excelentes calificaciones, más de las veces se le mira con tristeza de que no haya estudiado un programa teórico. Aquí­ serí­a menester explicar porqué elige un estudiante vocacional estudiar más. Lo hace, como lo he dicho anteriormente, para asegurarse de una admisión a una universidad, a sí­ de simple y sencillo.

El esfuerzo, sin embargo, matemáticamente es superior al de un estudiante que se dedicará a ”estudiar”.

En mi región, que es la de Jí¶nkí¶ping, se caracteriza mucho más por ser una región industrial que requiere de muchas industrias cuyo labor principal es el manual. Los estudiosos son muchos pero no se dejan ver en una zona que premia la bondad y la humildad y que castiga ostentarse de más. La labor manual será más ajetreada pero rinde a veces hasta más que la de un profesor como yo, que digamos.

No todos los menores se percatan de esto. Algunos están muy conscientes de su lugar en la sociedad, y se comportan como se espera de un trabajador manual,  osea, tosco, burdo, sucio y en un estrato social de la cual están resignados a pertenecer. Aunque nadie les ha dicho que también pueden estar al mismo nivel de los que están en los estratos sociales de los ”estudiosos”.

Aquí­ las calificaciones que deben de obtener por programa les hace variar intensamente. Mientras que a los vocacionalistas les importa un bledo si pasan con la calificación mí­nima para poder avanzar siempre y cuando puedan subir el escalón a los estudiosos obtener susodichos resultados serí­a una catástrofe que acabarí­a con sueños y el lamento que por acá se escucha mucho, el futuro no existe.

 

As I twirl around for the brief and short inspiration I seek

I turn to the window to see the second snow of the year.

Twirling snowflakes belated as they are

form a landscape of known signs of a winter

we thought lost Alas!

’tis here as always

Drinking coffee and listening to Spanish news from Spain

this morn has me nervous for depart am about

thoughts of chemicals running amok in my body linger from last night

explanations offered leave only more question marks

since its still unknown what causes the imbalance

it seems as though I already know the answer

this routine of mine

the comfortable comformism

of nothing ack! as Swedes are wont to say

nothing is new under the sun

the ailment that afflicts and bejoys me.

Justo a diez dí­as que se nos acabe el 2015. Qué rápido se nos fue. Aunque todo tiene su cauce.

Algunos dirí­an y estarán contentos de que al fin se acabe el 2015 en el mar del tiempo del hombre.

A ser francos, a todos nos tocan años que ni les vemos salida ni entrada.

Yo, ni sé a dónde se fue el 2015 y hasta pareciese que si apenas ayer fuese enero. Mucho es rutina ya, para bien y para mal. Y así­, ni vale la pena deparar lo que viene ni lo que fue o fuimos.

Marcar los años no conviene a estas alturas.

Y para qué.

El fin está más cerca en términos matemáticos. Uno está más allá que acá siempre y cuando acá es la vida misma, aquella que uno deja atrás, esa que nace y se nutre de los sueños y se rememora en un fue/era no la de los 50’s.

No es casualidad que la mayorí­a de los seres se la pasa en un mundo idóneo al pasar cierta edad. Es chistoso ver esto por estos dí­as; jóvenes de 15 que se preocupan por menores al ver que en vez de jugar al aire libre se la pasan con sus ipads o sus dispositivos móviles.

Quizá sea un grito en el espacio.

Eso es cuestión de gracia. La nostalgia o congoja prematura antes de los 30 es tierna, ya después es maula.

Lo digo porque hay cierta xente que no sabe envejecer. No sabe dar pasos adecuados ni mantener un ritmo de vida que sea digno. Estar a la altura pues, de qué no sé. Y hemenos de nuevo en el alpha y no el omega. Y yo en medio de ello. Y es que no sé yo si dar pa’llá o pa’cá. Y por ende, no conviene al pasar cierta edad, consumir 12 uvas o marcar tradiciones ya. Lo cual no significa decir lo contrario. Y es que hay que vivir el momento.

Algunos dirí­an que amargas son las cosas que nos pasan (dixit JAJ) aunque uno está para juzgar, eso, de lo dejamos a seres superiores fuera de este mundo. Y no pido que naiden me llore.

Me apresto a las consequencias. Y así­

 

Con armas en mano
barcos y cañones
embarcaron hací­a tierras desconocidas
exploradores y explotadores

Colonizaron tierras
esos
explo –
hiceron de las suyas
eso
jijosdelasuya

y ahora
esos
jijos
se aprovechan
de nuevo

Europa es racista
Europa
es
inmisericordiosa

pareciese así­
al juzgar
de cómo
se preparan
para rechazar
xente

Oh,
qué ironí­as
si el pasado
hablase

Mas aceptemos
Europa
por lo menos
hace algo al respecto
Algunos entran
Algunos salen