Dreaming in Another Language, Part Two
A train trip to somewhere, in a dream about possibilities.
I’ve been studying Italian on and off for decades. A few years ago, a friend and I decided we should get serious and find a tutor. Our first teacher was in Rome and we loved her. After some months, she told us that she had been hired for a civil service job. In Italy, this means that you cannot take outside work, a policy designed to prevent corruption. Given the endless numbers of government scandals in Italy in just the last decade, let alone under the administration of Silvio Berlusconi, this policy seems laughably futile. Fortunately, our tutor knew someone who could take over. Our next teacher, Cris, is even better, because she assigns homework and, like the teacher’s pet, ass-kissing student I was back in grade school, I do it all.
I told Chris I wanted to learn the subjunctive.
Very good, she said, and so important. The subjunctive—used correctly in English rarely, if ever—is, Cris said, the Italian ethos. Maybe, if only, perhaps; hedging bets, an opinion with qualifications or a full escape plan, or a way to be deferential to one’s boss. This is why nothing ever gets done in Italy, Cris said, with a sigh of exasperation.
But Americans are so pushy and rude, I replied, in my mangled Italian. We should be more polite but since hardly anyone here learns the subjunctive properly, we’ve forgotten how to be civil in the public sphere. Could the subjunctive be a cure for our current strife?
Cris sent me worksheets and I got busy. Soon enough I saw that many common verbs in the subjunctive are irregular. I had already set up an old school filing box with 3” x 5” cards to learn vocabulary. Now I worried that there would no longer be storage room in my brain for a new conjugation, let alone an entire ethos.
A year later, I am starting to get a feel for the tense and usually remember when it’s time for the subjunctive, even if I often forget the correct endings. I am looking forward to putting my study into practice. A good friend of mine suggested the idea of a language immersion trip, where she and I could spend a month forcing ourselves to speak Italian every day. I’ll admit that I am eager for Italians to see that it is possible to defy expectations, to not be the “ugly American” who wants to order burgers and fries and snap selfie photos every two seconds. We too can deflect, and qualify, and be courteous!
And so, how thrilled was I a few weeks ago when I woke up, realizing that I had just been dreaming in Italian, a first. The plotline was classic: a journey to some vague destination, following something of the itinerary my friend and I have planned for our forced immersion. For those of you who are Jung fans, this one is filled with archetypes.
I am aboard a train that hugs the coast, something like the old local trains I took many times in Liguria. Back then the interiors were polished wooden benches, but the cars that housed them seemed to be on the point of self-destruction, clanking along the curves, jangling my skeleton. The view of the coastline was spectacular, and after many years riding the ancient New York subways, some bouncing around was part of the ticket price. I didn’t mind; I was in love—with the place and the language and a man. The last part of the triad did not work out. Too many impediments, and too much confusion, but the sorrow of that loss did not ruin the place or the language.
In this dream, however, sleek modern technology has arrived. Our daughter was recently in Japan, and from the other side of the world, she shared stories from a land of modern efficiency where the trains are always on time.
Unlike the old trains in Liguria and the current Amtrak lines I ride to and from the city, the futuristic machine in my dream runs on a narrow clean white track that rises and falls as needed as it moves in and out of tunnels along the route. I am sometimes alone, and at other moments I am joined by friends from long ago. This journey involves some circular time traveling, something like the notion of time explored in Ted Chiang’s “Story of Your Life” that inspired the film Arrival. The story and film are all about expanding our understanding of time and language in the service of better communication. The aliens who appear on earth have created a language of pictograms in which time is fluid and nonlinear. Past, present, and future are not separate but intertwined.
While on this journey, I am in sporadic motion: sometimes I am on the train, sometimes I am back on the platform, watching the train, sometimes I am standing on the tracks. No wonder that at a certain point, I realize I have no idea where I am or which direction I am heading. I need help.
And so finally, I get off the train and I approach another woman, a stranger, to ask her if I am going in the right direction (how would she know?). And she tells me that she thinks (and here she would use the subjunctive!) that the train takes twenty minutes to get to Firenze. However, one thing I do know is that I don’t want to go to Firenze. Too many tourists this time of year! And so, just before waking, I decide that I must be going in the wrong direction after all.
Which brings me to where I am, at the very beginning of what I hope will be a fruitful writing project. The story involves, among other things, at attempt to create an encyclopedia of symbols as a foundation for a new kind of language that might create better global communication. It occurs to me that my dream feels very much like a writing research journey: you get on a train hoping it will lead you to the right place, then realize you need to backtrack, and always, always, there comes a point when you need to ask for help, often from strangers. One thing I’ve learned by now is that if you ask for help at the outset, there are fewer train trips to nowhere.
Thank you for reading and as with all posts here, I’d love to hear from you! More to follow each Friday at noon. I hope you’ll subscribe and share with other readers. You can find out more about my memoirs Perfection and Eva and Eve here and can purchase them here. I work privately with writers on creative non-fiction projects. If you are interested, you can contact me through my website: juliemetz.com. A first consultation is free of charge.