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.
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