Losing it

It's been almost five months now since we arrived in Sydney and my Spanish shows it. Mainly it's the accent. The muscles in my mouth are now accustomed to drawled-out mono and duosyllables as opposed to the staccato diminutives and trilled rs of un cigarillo y un roncito. When we call Colombia on Skype (hugs, big hugs for this technology) Lesly says I sound like a kid. And I'm definitely having trouble with vocabulary recall -- feel like a drunk groping around for the right verb at times.

We're still speaking Spanish at home but it's not enough to stretch me, and I'm reading as much literature in Spanish as possible, but of course it's not the same. Makes you realise that it's quite hard work to learn and maintain another language and I take my hat off to any polyglots out there. (Polyglots, a horrible-sounding word -- surely invented by someone who only spoke one language. Multilingual?)

Anyway, here's another exercise that might help, and something I've wanted to do for a while -- my stab at translating Cortázar's "Instrucciones para llorar". Julio, please forgive me.

Instructions for crying

Leaving to one side the motives, let us attend to the correct way of crying, understanding by this something that is neither scandalous, nor insults the smile with its parallel and clumsy likeness. An average and ordinary cry consists of a general contraction of the face and a spasmodic sound accompanied by tears and mucus, the latter at the end. In fact, the crying stops in the moment when you blow your nose forcibly.

To begin, direct the imagination towards yourself, or if this proves impossible for having contracted the habit of believing in an exterior world, think of a duck covered in ants, or in those gulfs of the Magallanes straights, in which no one enters, ever.

Once it begins, the face is covered with decorum using both hands with the palms facing inwards. Children will cry with the sleeve of their shirt against the face, and by preference in a corner of the room. Average duration of cry, three minutes.