D. and I have decided that I will stay with him when I go to Buenos Aires in February. I think this is a good idea. Or it could be a Very Bad Idea. Or possibly both. Or neither. Can you tell that I'm conflicted? L. said, "um, last time he was here, didn't you kick him out?" Well, yes, because I just needed to stop sobbing and I couldn't stand to have him on a bus for 10 hours stewing over the visit, so I bought him a plane ticket instead and drove him to the airport. But anyway. I said, "we've been e-mailing only in Spanish, and I think this may be the key to this relationship."
How incredibly silly that sounds. So, trying to communicate only in a language that D. and I both suck at is somehow going to help us sort out our relationship? Only I think it actually might. Here's why.
I'm an aural learner. I love words, but more than words, I love the way different phrases sound. When I read English, I hear it in my head. When I read music, I can hear the piece as I look through it. When I write, I'm often reorganizing sentences so that they sound graceful, so that they don't all have the same rhythm, so that the rhythmic structure builds to a conclusion. So that there is a cadence, and finally a resolution. I judge people by the way they talk--not consciously, and now that I realize that I do it, I'm much more aware of it and can catch myself and try to turn that part of me off. D. talks in choppy sentences, maybe from learning English when he was 8, with a Long Island accent on top of it. My musical ear can't help but make sweeping judgments based on his sentence structure. Ooooh, I hate it that I do that!
So Spanish is very helpful. It means that I can't concentrate on rhythm of phrases because I don't have Spanish in my ear yet. I don't know all of the words I need to use. I don't know much of anything--and that means that I have to read D.'s words and try very hard to hear his sentiment through them, and that is a good exercise. Too often in the past D. and I have used the same words, and then much later realized that they meant different things to both of us. Given the number of misunderstandings we've had, it's a miracle that we're still speaking to each other.
D. is very visual. When I'm dressed up he loves it, and sometimes I do dress up. But just as often, I forget that I'm wearing dirty ripped jeans and an old shirt when I decide to run to the supermarket for something, or I walk into a milonga wearing cycling gear, or dye my hair blue, or something. This used to totally bug me--shouldn't my boyfriend think I'm just as sexy in my bike gear and in my milonga attire? Ah, but shouldn't I think D. is just as smart and funny and wonderful when he's speaking in beautiful sentences? Because he really is the same even when he's choking on his words. And I'm really the same when I'm out back digging a ditch for one of my crazy permaculture projects. I love D.'s sense of visual aesthetics, though it sometimes drives me nuts. And I know that he loves my aural sensibility as it applies to music (I've only recently related it to the spoken word). We both share a love of beautiful motion. The trick is to enjoy those things without feeling like they're value judgments on the other person, I think.
At the moment, communication is perfect: in Spanish, which negates my usual language snottiness, and via e-mail, which means that I could be typing to him while looking like an absolute train wreck (at the moment I happen to be wearing a really sexy party outfit with a pair of over-the knee purple wool socks...which I think is not too bad, considering).
The big question is, what happens in person?
(Due to my blogging rule, I had to express this all to D. first...in Spanish. I won't torture you with it).