“The Language of Unicorns”
It’s always worth reading the international press for some perspective on the world: the other day, for example, Spain’s prestigious daily El Mundo reported that Belén Esteban, Spanish TV star and princess of her (own) town, hired a “community manager,” who writes her tweets with deliberate misspellings to “mimic the diva’s style.” Here’s what we’re dealing with: a written medium in which writing poorly is considered “stylish,” like an off-the-rack skirt, a pair of Camper boots, a jihadi’s beard.
But it doesn’t stop there. That same day I happened upon a tweet by Kiko Rivera—the son of singer Isabel Pantoja, by profession—calling out, in Spanish, those who correct such mistakes: “Those imbeciles fixate on accent marks instead of on what things actually mean.” I’ll just point out, so we can end this abuse, that Esteban has roughly 800,000 followers, and Rivera, close to a million. Nothing really: just a few numbers after so many letters.
What we have here is a sampling of the little catastrophes that a language like Spanish, which is practiced by five-hundred million “volunteers” and considered a single body by the Royal Spanish Academy, can bear. And even if it couldn’t, no one would care; it would require too much effort. This must be linguistic normality: that a speaker with hundreds of thousands of followers may brazenly ignore the basic rules of their language, and that their mammoth of a language won’t even blink. Just the opposite in our case, where taking pride in ruining Catalan could kill our tongue.
There’s something curious about Catalan—it must be the only language in the world, whether in terms of speaking or writing, where excellence and, by extension, the aspiration to excellence, is ridiculed. In this sense, our own Belén Esteban or Kiko Rivera would find a most receptive audience. Catalan speakers would consider it extemporaneous, humble, and of-the-streets, rising to defend it against the attacks of the naysayers, ballbusters, and bookworms who bothered to lift a finger: “Oh, and what’s it to you, you Taliban piece of shit? What does an accent even do? What about a pronom feble? Or a comma? Kiko and Belén aren’t philologists, are they? They’re ordinary people!”
This is the weakness of Catalan: that even its speakers consider it second-rate. Our tolerance for being corrected is minimal—we’re thankful people even speak it!—and we defend our “style” to death because, as Master Kiko would say, what matters is what it says, not how it’s said. And I’m also at fault: my saint of an editor can attest to this.
This is the country where a restaurant menu not littered with errors is a Darwinian rarity. Here we will gladly hang a sign that reads “30% de desconte,” as opposed to descompte—in the end, it’s understood—but it’d always appear inconceivable to write “30% de desqüento” rather than descuento, or “30% of,” before running to our cousin from Albacete or our daughter in London—or to the dictionary!—to avoid the ridiculous. In a climate of immediacy, proofreaders and linguistic advisers (whatever the situation may be) seem to have become a luxury, and luxuries are unwelcome in times of distress. The consequence is that, in common usage, we are denied practical contact with excellence and, therefore, the opportunity to verify that the Catalan language they taught us in school is real, not an invention, and not the language of unicorns. On the other hand, in treating it poorly, we leave significance behind.
“Springs”
In the city of more than a million and a half inhabitants, spring is a domesticated, pruned, penned-in season. A green area is an asphalt rectangle, a covered box. A green spot is a repository of toxic wastes and odorous oils. A green light is the rev of a motor, an accelerating step, the running in unison run. The trees reach out to breathe through concrete cracks in the sidewalks.
In the city of more than a million and a half, etcetera, municipal spring has doors, hours, a website. The passers-through wear sunglasses, stroll swept paths, take in the green from a bench between two trash bins. Children with all their vaccines in order go on outings holding hands: this is a pine leaf, this is a bush, do not walk on the lawn, stay close to the group. An excursion, an essay.
In the city of more than a million, etcetera, in a gridded neighborhood, on a four-lane street, on a commercial sidewalk, another tree box: at the base of a linden, a mini-spring emerges. Petals awaken, rose and lilac, floating on green clouds. A handwritten sign reads: Thank you for letting me live here, and you think, thank you for what? This street is not mine. Now you see it: a few squatting flowers ask permission to be.
In the city of etcetera, on an Easter Monday, overvalued lots await their moment. On Google Earth, between grey and grey, patches of sunlight. The building does not arrive and, while it does not arrive, the earth is alive and resurrected: a pinch of white, a pinch of yellow, scrappy bushes, strokes of luck. At the base of the dead cranes, a small gust of wind: wild plants and rigid stalks tickling the steel.
In the city, between the cobblestones, an abandoned pilon is mowed down beneath footsteps. One hundred thousand soles of shoes and nobody sees it. Rain falls, sand sweeps in, and a seed grasps onto it, and one day the sun commences. A hole, an outbreak, sheltered by a tiny, rusty fence. A miracle? No: an English garden. A tiny garden, circular and secret. A moment, a thought: may that tiny fence protect it for a long time.
“Civilization”
At seven in the morning, the city is really two: one for those raising their blinds, and the other for those lowering them. The birds don’t sing the same way for those just coming home, their eyes lowered, as they do for those leaving and looking ahead. You can tell for the first time ever. Dawn on the streets is like a scene out of Typescript of the Second Origin, in which you’re the only one left on Earth: everything is yours, there’s everything to do, and time for everything. So, then, you take your time on the way to the sea, which must of course also be different from the other sea, the one left behind. El mar and la mar, in gender-neutral language, with their boats, barcos, and boats, barques, their fish, peixos, and fish, peixes, their monsters masculine and feminine alike. The sand, at seven in the morning, has not yet been spoiled by vulgarities. You sit on the seawall, then, awaiting.
On either side of the sun’s reflection the water is cold like the arctic, the kind of sea from which pasty retirees emerge and whisper to the camera with one finger in the air: all these years, every single day, come rain or shine! And it sends shivers down your spine. If the sea is still harsh on your skin, there must be a reason. Everybody knows from the pictures, from the postcards: on a beach, three’s a crowd. So, you sit on the seawall: one more figure on the sand would ruin the photo. Animals don’t count.
Two dogs delight in the waves, breaking low like a breath. They meet, let you see them nipping, their upright tails wagging like metronomes. One owner chats with the other, three meters between them, as they make technical and veterinary assessments. Happy dogs are like happy children, the innocence of the world, blah, blah, blah. You automatically think about explosions, khaki uniforms, black waters, rivers of dust. Men and women like you, ragged, screaming their dogs’ names amongst the rubble. And almost at the same time you return to the sea, el mar, la mar. To the two dogs that now frolic under the arc of a tennis ball that, ah!, doesn’t touch the water. The owners egg them on with shouts and laughter, and you realize you’re laughing, too. Happy dogs, like peaceful mornings and April seas, are the measure of civilization.