Further considerations on approaching the matters at hand…
Todos iguales me parecen a mi. A mi me parecen todos iguales. Me parecen, a mi, todos iguales. All the same they seem to me. To me they seem all the same. They are the same, to me, they seem.
They seem a lot like me. And so it would seem.
I’m just looking for a couple different ways to say the same thing. This is some of my purpose, for now. I’m trying it out and I’m doing it on you, not the mention these poor peninsular souls, as they’re turning midnight grapes to fermentation and ochre woods to tabled conversation. I’m using the worlds and alphabets I’ve got. I can’t afford to wait any longer, because it turns out I’ve been waiting for a perfect translation. I got ripped apart waiting. They never tell you that living in more that one language may clog up your vocabulary and make your grammars run dry.
A point that begs repeating: Euskalherria, “the land of the Basque speakers,” is the name the Basque speakers use for this land.
What exactly do you become in that moment you speak it’s name?
Seems to suggest transmutation. Euskalchemy.
What I’ve done gone and figured out, for myself at least, is this: where the Basque speakers come from and where they’re going is ordinary enough to relate to but mysterious enough to want to connect dots. What they’re made of and what they’re making manifest in analogies and crossroads with my own winding route, the very creations at which I grip and grasp. I can’t help but insert myself in the narrative with every word choice, but I make all attempts to keep both primary sources and thesauri within arms’ reach. These contradictions and oxymorons and juxtapositions and paradoxes, topped with all the hyperbole you’ll ever need, forever and ever. All things absolute and most best are most decidedly Basque; must I point out how similar sound the echoes of the US of A?
Admittedly, I’m likely to celebrate some distortions, but all these planes, axes and vectors of experienced truth are worth revealing, especially during those frequent moments when I feel uncomfortably out of the loop. That itching dread of not being in on the joke is the ghost I create and destroy to keep the muse playing hard to get. Despite an absolutely minuscule understanding of Euskera and being only a few hundred pages in to one helluva complicated history, I know I’m well-enough informed. I am well-enough informed that there’s much more to learn.
There’s always the danger that I’m projecting my interior flames and intuitive embers of evidence and synthesis on to this lot, but the Basques were never ones to self-censor The Narrative. Nor are they any more deviant from the rest of humanity in matters of revising of the official account. Between the lines I’ve read and I have good enough reason to believe that is where the Basques live.
The plan is this, transparency. The plan calls for coherency. The plan calls for a great psychic resistance on my end that culminates in layman’s terms for you. So. As I’m apt to do, I’ve grown to identify myself with all this Euskadi. I admit this and, with luck, many more a shadowy thing… I hope to speak much more frankly, a skill learned from the bars and cafes, where I’m apt to hear with surprising frequency, scandalous admissions exiting between a sets of stained purple lips. Yes, I adulate the underdog, not knowing what else to do with these gritted teeth of social privilege. And because it’s more satisfying, c’mon, to bask in the reflected glory of the old David and Goliath archetype. Yes, as much as I hope to keep my Basque stories from painting themselves into some corner of self-pity, they may. Like with my best friends from rehab, I invite you, dear reader, to call me on my shit.
Am I overcompensating for self-aggrandizing protagonism here? Likely. The norteamericana motif is showing through the veil. Another euskal-parallel. Sorry to be blunt, sorry to be unapologetic. I’m still in training and I’m still half here and half there.
Between the two places that are sub-contracting me out, archetypes and genomes and elements are the same, the alchemy expressing all these symbols notwithstanding. My eagle is not quite your eagle but the red of our both our flags is thicker than water. Standing with (but not necessarily standing for) what we are not sounds like serious fun and games to me.
Here I propose a purpose that takes some courage for me to proclaim: imagining words and grammars as door frames, may we shuffle through them, take ownership of the perspectives and limitations our languages impart upon us, and only shut the door if we encounter dismay is the sole destination. As easy as it is to turn the key and barricade oneself in simple conclusions and the fanfare of polemic extremism, one can just as easily bar the entrance with wishy-washed detachment and fail to knock at an honest appraisal. That is, turn the knob of one’s own self and enter and exit the cultural context with just enough wonder and just enough doubt.
Here’s me keeping the door cracked.
Basque-ing in Reflected Glory 