"Alone I stare into the frost's white face"

Alone I stare into the frost’s white face.
It’s going nowhere, and I—from nowhere.
Everything ironed flat, pleated without a wrinkle:
Miraculous, the breathing plain.

Meanwhile the sun squints at this starched poverty—
The squint itself consoled, at ease . . .
The ten-fold forest almost the same . . .
And snow crunches in the eyes, innocent, like clean bread.

-Osip Mandelstam, 1937

It seems sort of inevitable that I write something about language here. One night in the beginning of winter in Saskatoon a group of us were sitting around on the floor of someone's cruddy apartment and the conversation came around to languages, which ones we liked best. "English," I said. "Because I can swim in it." And it was true then, and it's still true now. Of course I can swim in English--I'm native to it, as surely as a fish is native to water. And I've been thinking about that with renewed clarity, here in Norway where all around people speak languages that are as opaque to me as walls.

I am taking Norwegian. I am not especially good at it, but of course learning a new language takes time. I'm pretty canny about figuring out the meanings of written words, but my ability to understand the spoken language is sub-minimal, and my pronunciation is nothing short of atrocious. I've always had trouble keeping the correct pronunciations of words--even English ones--in my head, but Norwegian relies heavily on sounds I'm not even sure how to make. And so I fumble along, repeat words aloud to myself over and over again, wonder if this is why I had to go to speech in elementary school (the answer to that last one is: probably not, but it would be a convenient excuse).

The whole process of learning how to speak again has been like that joke David Foster Wallace told at the beginning of his famous commencement address: "There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says, 'Morning, boys. How's the water?' And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes, 'What the hell is water?'" I use English to interpret the world, to describe it, and sometimes I forget that other languages aren't just a translation of mine. The most fascinating thing about learning a new language is when the words fail to translate, especially when it feels like they should--the word 'fjord', which English has adopted from Norwegian, has not actually retained its meaning in the transfer. Translated, the Norwegian word 'fjord' actually means 'inlet,' because the English definition of 'fjord' is narrower. So words don't translate, sentences aren't shaped the same, and sure, Norwegian is closer to English than English is to Chinese or Arabic, but it's also different enough to remind me: English exists. It may seem to be a clear lens through which to interpret the world, but it's still a lens.

And a lens is a tool. Part of the reason the American school system isn't particularly invested in teaching foreign language skills is, I suspect, that English is so prevalent--and, because English is so prevalent, people who speak rarer languages learn it. I've never had any trouble finding someone who speaks English here. Everyone does.

I do, however, occasionally have trouble communicating, because for most people the language they speak as a second language is going to be necessarily different from the language that's their first--as my terrible German and perfunctory Norwegian demonstrate. I'm functionally a monoglot among polyglots, and it makes me realize that while I don't need another language, I want one. I have friends who are consummate polyglots, collecting languages like I used to collect buttons. I never really got the appeal. But I think I see it now: it's in the cracks that manifest themselves in the process of translation, and in the way a new language can serve as a foil to your native tongue. And it's also about communication because, oh, sure, people speak English. In Norway, especially, they speak English well. But it's not the language they're native to. And it seems unfair, somehow, that I ask everyone to come swim in my language without ever venturing into the waters of theirs (frigid though they may be). So: snakker du norsk? My answer remains 'Nie, jeg snakker engelsk', but I'll keep working on that. 

In the Same Space

Houses, coffeehouses, neighborhood: setting
that I see and where I walk; year after year.

I crafted you in joy and in sorrows:
out of so much that happened, out of so many things.

And you’ve been wholly made into feeling; for me.

-Constantine P. Cavafy, 2005

The Fog Town School of Thought

They should have taught us birds and trees
in school, they should have taught us beauty
and weaving bees and had a class
on listening and standing alone—
the children should have studied light
reflected from a spider web,
we should have learned the branches of streams
spread out like fingers or the veins
of a leaf—we should have learned the sky
is the tallest steeple, we should have known
a hill is a voice inside the sky—
O, we should have had our school
on top and stayed until the night
for the fog to bloom in the hollows and rise
like cotton spinning off a wheel—
we should have learned a dream—a child’s
and even still a man’s—is made
from fog and love, my word, you’d think
with the book in front of us we should
have learned how Fog Town got its name.

-Maurice Manning, 2013

The Fish-Wife

I’ll take a bath when it snows,
when I can look out the window up high
and see the sky all pale
and blank like a fish’s eye.
And I know the boats won’t go out tonight,
the fishermen drinking whiskey, locked
in a bar-dream, the music rocking them deeper.

It doesn’t snow enough here,
though some would say otherwise,
fearing accidents. But the paper boy, skidding
uphill on his bike in light snow, knows better,
making S-tracks when his wheels slide sideways.

We really needed this snow, the old men will say,
putting to bed the surface roots of trees,
putting to bed the too-travelled streets.

When everything is covered
the earth has a light of its own;
the snow falls down from the moon
as everyone knows, and brings that light
back to us. I needed this light.

All day I kept by the window, watching the sky,
a prisoner in my clothes, the wind felt dry
and mean. Starlings stalked the yard with evil eyes
—I hated them, and hated, too, my neighbor’s house
where sparks from the chimney fell back in a stinking
cloud—black ashes bringing no blessing.

When the roads are covered,
when the water is black and snow falls
into the waves, the birds’ hunger swirls
the air, dark lovely shapes. All hungers
are equal now. I'll give them bread and seeds.

I have no money; the whiskey is gone,
and I must bathe in water. Fishermen, please
do not go out in your flimsy boats tonight
to chase after the cod and mackerel,
to hook the giant eels. Go safe,
go free. Let your feet leave trails
through streets and yards, wandering
home, your crooked voyages to bed.

-Cynthia Huntington, 1986

From the windows of my office here you can see down the slope of the island to the docks where cranes unload boats, and on a clear day you can look across the water to mountains whose peaks are so white they sometimes become invisible against the clouds.

It's a pretty good view. And if you look down at the low slopes of the mountains of the mainland you can see where this city has carved out a place for itself, and also where it hasn't: where the hills are steep and inhospitable, their contours sketches out by thin trees before fading into coats of snow. A week ago I went on a trip with the university outing club, and we took the bus to the edge of the town and then skied up into those mountains, to a place where everything was smooth and white. Civilization fades away (and then returns, in the guise of snowmobile tracks and power lines).

And here I am, on a hill in this island city, looking out the window. It's almost four o'clock, and everything's dark blue and gold (I buy milk supplemented with vitamin D now).

There's always a point when I arrive in a new place--new country, new state, new city, new town--and I wonder what I'm doing there, if I should have stayed where I was before. There are benefits to staying, benefits to going, disadvantages to both, and I'm not sure I have the time or inclination to tease them apart right now. Besides, when it comes to Tromsø, the decision's been made. I'm steadily becoming more comfortable here. It's been nearly a month, which comes as something of a shock, but when I consider it it does seem like it's been some time since I boarded that plane in Boston.

If moving around has taught me one thing, it has to do with the character of places. I lived in Saskatoon for nearly a year and a half, and over that time I came to know it, became comfortable with it. And that's a valuable thing--that's one of the reasons I wonder about the wisdom of leaving. But I tugged up my roots and came here anyway, because even though I knew Saskatoon and was comfortable there, I was also dissatisfied with it in ways large and small, and it was a place I had always intended to leave.

My time in Tromsø has an expiry date as well, which is another reason I wonder about why I came here. But being here is such a pleasure, it's hard to spend much time dwelling on that, especially when I could probably spend my time dwelling in this city.

There are some people it is just a pleasure to have met, and known, even if we don't see each other so often any more. I have those people in my life, but I also have cities and towns that fill the same niche. Each one has taught me something, too, about how landscape interacts with culture, and how we, as humans, make places for ourselves in the world. Tromsø, which sits at 69° north (as do I, at the moment), seems like it should be inhospitable. But I walk the streets, past people on kicksleds and skis, bundled toddlers being pulled on sleds and houses with warmly lit windows, and it hardly feels it. But also--it feels like nowhere else I've ever lived, and I'm grateful for that, grateful for another new place that is becoming, in some small way, mine.