Trouble in Sin City

Switch gears. Every day is a new day. And believe me, with my brain in its present state, that's more than just a cliche. My cognitive deficits, God bless 'em, conspire with every sunrise to dust the chalk off yesterday's slate.

How much have I said herein of Roy and Abdul, our exchange students? I am finally learning to pronounce Roy's real name. It goes something like this--Yoi-skay. The actual spelling is nothing like that, but phonetically I'm beginning to get a handle on it.

Sadly, the students are not speaking to each other these days. This is because of something that happened in Las Vegas. The details are sketchy, and neither is saying much about it.

Did I mention that Roy and Abdul had gone together to Vegas? Yes, it was their vacation between terms at the University. The whole thing cost a couple bucket-loads of money--nice work if you can get it. My wife, along with a few other young women, volunteered their services in the capacity of a guide (with some small consideration, of course), but Roy and Abdul would have none of it. They made it quite clear, albeit in broken English, that they could handle the trip on their own.

In hindsight, I consider it to be one of life's great miracles that they returned to Portland at all, for I had not, in all honestly, been able to imagine how they would succeed even in finding their own hotel room.

They went, they saw, they conquered--and then came home on separate planes, their friendship no longer intact.

We asked whether they had had a good time. Yes they answered. Yes, yes, very good.

Then that night I heard them arguing in Roy's room. The argument had something to do with money.

Roy, I promise you the money was given by me. You should remember better.

No, Aba-duul, I am not forget.

Roy I promise, you should remember.

Just a moment, Aba-duul, just a moment.

No, no, I promise. It is certain.

So it went. It is difficult to make much of such duels of bad grammar, but it was clear that something had happened and things were not well between them.

The next day I talked to Roy.

Roy, what's going on with you and Abdul?

Mmmmm . . . He did not want to talk about it.

I pressed him.

Is it money?

No no no, not money, no. Aba-duul, he is late every time. Many times we have miss the bus. I told him, Aba-duul hurry. I told him many times.

I guess he is kinda slow, I said.

I told him many times. But he goes his own piss.

Now I knew this could not be right, so I asked Roy to repeat the phrase.

His piss, Roy said, carefully accentuating the word. He goes his own piss?

I asked him to spell the word.

P-a-c-e. Piss.

Well, that cleared it up perfectly.

In any case, Roy and Abdul have not spoken since that night in Roy's room. The pass each other in hallway or kitchen, turning their shoulders, loudly silent, like two offended lovers. They no longer walk to the bus together. And they make no further plans for exotic travel.

Roy gravitates toward me, and Abdul toward my wife.

And let me tell you, I got the best deal there, because Roy's English is far superior to Abdul's.

The Lost Weekend

Abdul and Roy have decided that they want to go somewhere out of town for the Memorial Day weekend. After holding a conference in Abdul's room upstairs, they came to us with three ideas for a place to go:

1. Seattle.
2. Lincoln City (the beach).
3. Canada.

Roy, having the better command of English, took the role of spokesperson.

"We want go Seattle," he said. "How far?"

"Well, just about 3 hours from Portland. By car."

"Car?"

"Yes."

"How long by bus?"

"Three days."

"Ahhhhhh!"

At this point Abdul interjects, "I want Canada."

"It's nice to hear someone does," I say.

"Canada?"

"Yes."

"How far?" Roy says.

"Farther than it's worth. Much father, in fact."

"Farther than Seattle?"

"Much farther."

"We will go to Seattle," Roy says, sounding pretty definite.

"How will you get there?"

"How?"

"Yes. I mean, you could take the bus, but it is much shorter by car. You could rent a car."

"Rent?"

"Yeah rent, you know, menyewa."

For some reason I continually slip into the Indonesian language when trying to explain things to Roy and Abdul, even though they are, respectively, Japanese and Saudi Arabian.

"Okay, we will rent. How much the price?"

"Well we can look online."

"Ahhhhh . . . I don't have license."

"Okay. That's a problem then. We're back to the bus. But, where will you guys stay in Seattle?"

"Stay?"

"Yes, once you get there. What will you do, where will you stay."

"Ahhhhh . . ."

"How about you just take a bus around Portland? There's a lot you haven't seen yet right here at home."

"Maybe Canada," Abdul says.

So goes, so far, the planning phase of the journey. The point of destination is leaning more and more toward a day at the mall . . . but nothing is yet written in stone.

Sit! Eat! Go Away!

I find that my grasp of Bahasa Indonesia, after two years of study, is quite satisfactory now, as long as I limit my practice of the language to conversation with the dogs, or with myself, which may, in any case, amount to the same thing.

The demands in this manner are minimal. Sit! Eat! Go away!

Know what I mean?

My level of exertise is also quite impressive if I happen to be talking to Mamdouh--who does not speak Indonesian, nor very much of English either, for that matter. In other words, Indonesian may almost just as well be English.

Duduk! Makan! Pergi sana! It's the same.

Speaking with my 8 year old son is a little more demanding. Although he does not speak Indonesian, he has heard it being spoken for the last 8 years, by his mother, grandfather and grandmother in particular, and so he instinctively knows the difference between the actual language and simple jibberish.

Nothing like having an 8 year old correct you regarding a language he does not speak.

Therefore, I stick with what I know: Duduk! Makan! Pergi sana! Sit, eat, go away.

It works on him just as well as on the dogs, and that, my friends, is communication!

Language Barrier

A bit more on mean spirited women. In particular, a 5 foot high Indonesian of the aforementioned type. In short (no pun intended), my wife.

It seems that quite aside from the reckless act of entering into marriage of any sort (for by the third time around I should surely have known better), I had also failed to fully appreciate a multitude of peculiar barriers specific to the choice of this particular mate.

First off, she is very much younger than I (24 years younger, to be exact). Young people do not think in the same way as older people. I am not quite sure, frankly, whether they really think, properly speaking, at all.

Secondly, there is the culture barrier, Asian to American. Just look at the troubles we have had in the past. Troubles with Japan, troubles with Vietnam, troubles with Korea. And lets not forget China. Given this troublesome sort of history, what else should I have expected?

Most significant of all barriers, however, is the language barrier. My wife speaks and understands spoken English well enough; yet, when she becomes angry, the basic constructs, the building blocks if you will, of shared intent and comprehension begin to fall onto and over one another, scattering at our feet as if spilled from a child’s toy box. We end up in a mess of garbled delivery and fumbled reception.

One mistake, one failure in clarity, leads to another, and very quickly so. Pretty soon the sky is falling. It’s a given. Everyone knows it. Chicken Little said it was so.

For two days we argued; or rather, we got the actual arguing done with early on, and then simmered in mutual silence, replaying our own versions of what had actually been said—which were both, of course, quite different from what the oft wanted yet never available voice recording would have revealed.

It so happened then that in the middle of the night, I on the sofa, she in our bed, I awoke to a sudden grasp of the essential miscommunication that lay behind the entire kerfuffle. Like a fly in the soup, a bug in the program, it had compromised our discussion at its very core. Poor grammar can be deadly, believe me. Sarcasm, especially, needs an exactitude that may be beyond the person who is speaking English as a second language.

Now I’m not saying, still, that she’s not a mean spirited woman. Because she is. The truth is, we are all pretty mean spirited at heart, all natural men and women, born to the bondage of all the things that are the least honorable in life. It takes an effort to break out. It takes a will, a sacrifice, and sometimes a dream.

I suppose that in conclusion I should mention multiple sclerosis. It is, after all, what this journal is supposed to be largely devoted to. And so I will say that arguing, that fighting, that marital troubles are not good for the person who has multiple sclerosis. Or at least in my own case. I find very quickly that my familiar baseline symptoms begin to grow significantly worse. The pain that is always present in my legs intensifies and spreads, locks itself into my knees, invades by upper thighs and groin; shoulders and neck, already tense, begin to toy with the idea of total paralysis; and my confusion becomes itself confused.

I find quickly enough that I have slipped again toward thinking I’m a normal person—that I can argue and be hateful and insulting and hurtful just as if I were perfectly healthy and able.

It’s not worth the price. It’s not worth risking the consequences. All things must be put in order again, and the whole picture allowed to fill the screen. Nothing, after all, is all that damned important. Nothing but love, and peace, that is.