relearning english

@nvpkp mentioned an excitement to relearn english after years abroad;; that feels v familiar to me

i was a book kid; reading, writing, buying to store on a shelf—didn’t matter, i just loved books

my active vocabulary was real active indeed, churning forth elegant elocution and no-fucks frumpery in the space of like a single run-on sentence about some expressionistic nihilism novel or other

i had a unique way of talking and a dry sense of humor—i know cuz folks brought it up quite a bit

;; then i moved to korea

turned out my schtick didn’t do the trick with non native anglors;;

it took most of my first year abroad to tone it down—figure out how to use simple vocabulary, say what i meant without double-meanings or ambiguous humor, and keep a lid on any impressionistic networks of meaning that were difficult to convey precisely

basically i started talking normal. too normal. like, tv normal.

every once in awhile, i pick up a book or scan an article and find a word that once would have been part of my active vocabulary, but now has been sitting in my passive vocab, gathering dust

i got a slap of frisson seeing the word ‘seditious’ used creatively the other day. a decade ago, it would have been a totally natural word for me to wield well and be creative with. seeing it now, the first reaction was damn i forgot about that word entirely

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the feeling is,

it’s like i was a brash and fitful but undeniably talented painter in my youth;; i had an eye for the precise misuse of color that would make a mural glow and leave a keen hook in the mind of the viewer

then i set all that aside for a few years to do paint by number

and now, coming back, my old pigments are crusty, i’m forgetting what i used some of them for, i’m clumsy i’m clumsy i’m clumsy and thrashing

but there’s still something there; not what used to be there, but some shimmer, some quiver of a color just a few inches outside of purple if i could only

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still the tingle of a half-numb instinct
reaching through the surface of language
to tussle the animal underneath