Reminding myself to be a warrior today.
Today’s words of wisdom come from an unlikely source: my favorite anti-hero, Werner Herzog, who reminds us that life is violent and painful and that the times we’re living in are particularly banal and bleak. It’s very freeing, actually.
Unfortunately I cannot take credit for the inspired creation above. It comes from this Tumblr of Werner Herzog motivational posters. Best Internet discovery in years.
More brilliant madness by and about Werner Herzog, if you ever need a giggle:
One of my favorite pieces of writing, ever.
Continuing an interview after being shot by an air rifle.
Laugh out loud musings on adventure.
In honor of the trip whose spark came from Stars, so, too, comes today’s motivational quote.
Stars always seem to get me, probably because they get the human condition in general. This particular verse has meaning for me far beyond the sphere of romance. It’s about leaning into and celebrating your vulnerability and flaws rather than hiding them or hiding from them. It’s hard for my overly-critical self to believe in a world in which weakness can become strength, but I love the idea of such a world.
And I got a little bit of evidence of its existence in Paris two weeks ago, when I nervously asked a waiter what amounted to: “Can we to has some the water, please?” He grinned like a Cheshire cat, nodded assent, and left. I was mortified at having messed up the most basic sentence in every way possible, but I couldn’t help feeling that the waiter had not really minded. I asked my friend, “Do you think that look was his way of mocking me, or an indication that he found my horrible French cute? She, too, thought he had been charmed rather than put off by my gibberish.
So there you have it – sometimes the things that make us feel the most inept can actually be our source of power.
The lie I tell myself when I’m feeling particularly discouraged, like this guy:
(Don Music is my spirit Muppet.)
I’ve again neglected to post my many recent clippings from the World Wide Web in a timely fashion. But now I have a veritable cornucopia to share. Enjoy!
What the world will speak in 2015
8 ways to save on travel in 2015
David Lebovitz’ delightful end-of-year musings on life in Paris
Looks like I will feel right at home in Paris (thanks to Ann Marie for this one!)
Where to find multicultural Paris
Never thought I would be jealous of someone’s coma
This is exactly what I was talking about last week
[Photo: Elvin]
2014 was the year in which I re-committed, after a decade of neglect, to travel the world and learn another language (or two). Pretty cool, then, that 2014 was also the year in which people from 76 countries visited the blog I started to keep me motivated towards that goal. (Mappie map above. World domination will soon be mine!) I am far, far from visiting 76 countries with my own two feet but it’s nice to know that if I can’t go to them, they’ll come to me.
Thank you to everyone who has spent time here this year! I can’t tell you how much you help keep me accountable to my dreams. (See: public declarations.) But beyond that, it’s so nice to not be writing in a vacuum, and to (virtually) meet more and more people who are like-minded in their goals.
Yesterday WordPress sent me an email to tell me, although it was already abundantly clear, that my most popular blog post this year was the one about Jordan Helton’s language learning journey in China. I had watched in delighted confusion as that post got shared via Facebook 80-something times in one week even though I only had about 2 readers at that point. I later learned that Jordan’s mom was the source of my mini-viral moment. I love that. Even though I’ve never met her, I can perfectly picture her face beaming with pride as she forwards the link to everyone she knows (and they in turn pass it on like a little Oklahoman digital chain letter). A nice image with which to close out 2014.
I have no idea what 2015 holds, but I’m excited. Happy new year!
Words of wisdom spotted this morning on a sign outside my local corner store.
Very timely for me (no pun intended). Very timely indeed.
Over the weekend I saw Youssou N’Dour perform in Brooklyn. I don’t say this lightly: it was transportive. The music is so overwhelmingly life-affirming, and I’m chomping at the bit to go to Senegal. So I spent the entire show alternately blissing out in the moment and imagining myself living in Dakar in the near future, making a weekend routine of going out to dance to West African music.
The band kept announcing him as the “minister of the people” but I would more aptly call N’Dour the minister of tourism because within minutes of his arrival onstage I was ready to pack up and go.* Lo and behold, I just looked up his discography and he is indeed Senegal’s minister of tourism and culture as of 2012! That is both hilarious and entirely appropriate.
Sometimes I think I’m going to wimp out on my language sabbatical but then a night like Saturday’s reminds me of how much fun I will have and eradicates the fear. In fact, I spent a good part of the show wallowing in fantasy-land “logistics” planning: I’d move to Senegal next November and spend the winter months learning French eight hours a day, then visit every country in West Africa after becoming proficient, next head south to Zimbabwe and South Africa just because, then cut back up to Rwanda, then turn east into Tanzania and Kenya, and finally somehow end up in the south of France in time for summer. Oh, and there’d also magically be time and money for Mozambique and Madagascar. And then I’d move to South America for Spanish immersion.
It’s good to dream… And eventually, when the time is ripe, I will become a bit more realistic about my dreams and turn them into reality. (With God as my witness.)
* pending Ebola neutralization
I leave you with a clip from the show, taken by someone with a much better seat than mine!
I don’t know why I’m so discouraged. I have been going to French conversation Meetups every Monday, and this past Monday I even Skyped with Philippe from home and then immediately hopped on a train to talk French some more and then caught myself talking to myself in French on the way home.
But I originally committed to a half hour a day of French and a half hour of Spanish, and I have now all but abandoned Spanish and reduced French to conversation alone. I’m afraid all the progress I made through the hundreds of hours of work I put in at the outset are going to disappear.
So, I need a new plan. I am thinking about signing up for a Spanish class, maybe through Fluent City. I also think my company may have renewed its Rosetta Stone license in which case I can try to do a Spanish course that way. I’ll try to watch one episode of Destinos every weekend because I do wonder whatever happened to Raquel and whatshisface (sure sign it’s been too long). Oh yeah, Arturo! I wonder what happened with Raquel & Arturo’s overwrought romance.
And maybe I will start reading French books as a way to jog my memory about verb forms and vocab I keep forgetting. I need to bug Thomas for one of his novels. Thomas, if you’re reading… bring on the books!
I guess I was overambitious and need to lower my expectations for myself. There have been other things I’ve become interested in doing that I wouldn’t have time for if I kept up the hour-a-day routine. It’s not because I’m lazy, it’s because I lead such a jam-packed, engaging life. Yeah, that’s what I’ll tell myself…
(Photo: Kristina Alexanderson)
There are only seven states whose most common language other than English is not Spanish. But when you take español out of the mix, things get a lot more interesting. And surprising, at least for me – I would have thought Chinese would show up more often, and German and French less.
See the Slate article this map comes from for more maps, of the most commonly spoken Native American, Scandinavian, Indo-Aryan and African languages state by state. America is truly a polyglot paradise, so much richer for all the languages we speak. (And by ‘we’ I refer to us collectively, since we all know that I’m the sad sack who only really speaks English.)
talk foreign to me 