Night Run, Spanish is Stone

 

   Spanish is stone, miles of it, somewhere north of Córdoba so silent it spoke. It is the light of morning different than afternoon, the sun at dawn almost a bleached white moon.

   Spanish is the nakedness of a man who knew how to hold my body before I knew. Would you change your life for a language? For a country? For the wind? Would you leave mother, father, brothers?

   Spanish holds me when I sleep. Whispers verde, que te quiero verde, green of Lorca and beginnings of the word for truth. Spanish enters with salt, light and prediction of children.

   I wake into resonance. Are you in love with your language? Do you protect it? Must what you love require protection?

   My parents abandoned their first language. It still looks for them at night. I am its bridge. It wants to cross me. This is the meaning of bilingual. Responsibility of return. 

   That green exists is enough.

   All night I heard the wind through trees saying each season enlarges with the next. Amor, amor,  amor, amor, amor answer oaks leaves both Spanish word for love and morar, to reside.

   Domherren is Swedish for European robin and God's judgement. Love opens a language, gives it life beyond the place of immediate utterance.

   A voice travels an unfamiliar landscape of solitude.

   I want you to follow me. Extend the borders of what is human. Depart without fear, this is growing, the foreign sound your soul.

 

                                          After Antoine de St. Expuéry.

 



Maratón de Buenos Aires: Long Distance Running and Language

 

      I ran with confidence. I ran with language. I ran with more than 7000 runners! I repeated Hail Mary full of grace, the Lord is with Thee, Blessed art Thou among women and Blessed is the fruit of Thy womb. I willed grace. Five children had blessed my womb. My limbs were resilient. I wore around my neck wooden rosary beads from Salta that my youngest son Gabriel brought back from his class trip last year, a dark Adidas running watch and a pulse and heart rate monitor strapped around my chest beneath my running top. A blue light from the watch accompanied me during the complete race. Blue meant easy effort. Builds your aerobic base and improves recovery.The beads dug into my skin and left two marks. I ran in the moment. I did not wish to be anywhere else, but crossing Buenos Aires through a slight drizzle and luffs of wind. I passed the ship yards of Rio de la Plata. I constantly measured the state of my body with the distance left to run. Every 2K. marathon assistants offered bottled water, orange slices, dried, soft prunes, paper cups of orange Gatorade. It was my first full marathon. My chip officially clocked in at 5:54:14 for the 42K, 1:13.46 for the first 10K. I bored a hole in my sky blue sneakers! 

 

   I kept a diary in Italian of my thoughts right after the race:

 

7 ottobre 2012. Ho finito la maratona! Che felicitá! Le mie figlie mi hanno dato molto coraggio. Molte persone non hanno finito la corza. 42 chilometri! Sono molti chilometri! Non mi sono ferita. Ho corso con un uomo di Sud Africa, un uomo di Colmbia e una donna di Uruguay. Il uomo di Sud Africa solo camminava velocemente perche`lui  aveva ferito il suo midollo spinale. Correvammo insieme con una pioggerella al stesso passo. La cittá era bella. Ho visto il rio de la Plata, le navi, il lago di Palermo e molta vegetazione.

In casa -Tucumán. Sento una gratitudine per avere potuto completare la corsa. Sento che sono una atleta e che svolgo una attivitá pura e honorevola. La preparazione durante mesi mi ha aiutato a non ferirme.  

 

Tree House

  

   Lifted. Lifted off from the mundane, off from complaining, sadness, the sense of despair. Lifted closer to heaven. I listen to the wind. I smell Lorca’s azahares and think how he loved Andalusia where Arab, Jew and Christian lived in tolerance in Al -Andalus in the eighth century. I watch the sky. I know the ending of the day. Men are still working. One hammers. Cars race home in the distance on Avenida Mate de Luna which means to be killed, of the moon, two different moments juxtaposed in a name. The beautiful avenue lined with trees leads to the San Javier mountains. I must show by example to the children how everything is possible. I know because I do not give up despite years of obstacles. Lifted into abundance.

Sumay Pacha

   I am a long distance runner, mother of five children, a bilingual poet, living in northwestern Argentina. Sumay Pacha means land of beauty in Runasimi, the language of the Quechua in the province of Jujuy at the northern tip of Argentina bordering Bolivia. I went for nine days in July during the children's winter school break. It is the adobe home my cousin shared with me as a gift of solitude to write.

   I am interested in languages and the visions of the world they embody. I have created this blog to speak with others interested in the forms of language - the language of movement expressed in the purity of running, children's language of seeing the world and experiencing things for the first time, and languages as the Word. I speak English, Spanish, French and Italian. Long ago I studied Ancient Greek in New York City. I read Dante. I study philosophy, pick up our home and greet two cocker spaniels who jump on me every morning with joy.