Sometimes I wonder, how can one person
know that a decision made within a day and placed into action within sixteen
weeks will be an extreme test in forming and developing ones character? In a
moments excitement you say yes and then the adventure begins that has all the
turns and twists of a dramatic novel written for the screen but making perhaps
no sense until a long way down the track. Already in the previous twenty-one
years you have been through brimstone and fire. What will the future bring is
anyone’s guess when you embrace it so lightly, as if life is but a box of roses
chocolates to be savoured one after another.
This morning I was revising what I had
written so far in my reflecting how a soul develops while stepping along the
stony, shell crushed shore, of the scenery of their life story. It is not a
story of “I was born, I lived here and I went to school there”. It is the
sharing of my decision to take up permanent reside in a foreign land to open a
business without a clue of the language spoken there, not even an inkling of
how to run a business, no idea of how I would be received and without my
immediate family and friends for any form of back up. It is the sharing of my
being shown what we all have within us, the possibilities to be able to expand
into a person of integrity and perhaps along the way make our own small
impression upon humanities evolving. Maybe you might think it more a story of
being slightly crazy.
Ok so it is the telling of how I
cracked, from within the shell of my own nut casing to break out and grow.
Today I know I still am cracking away in some areas. Trying to live within a
society that perhaps never will be for me never totally “home”. For to feel absolutely in control of
your life you need not only to verbally express yourself but also you need to
be able to formulate thoughts and words in the written form as well. To do this
in a language that is not your mother tongue requires dedication and knuckling
down to pure logistical learning. Sometimes I literally feel I am swimming
against the tide. I forget even the basics of my own language let alone my
second. Let me give you a practical example here.
Last night I went to the movies and saw
a very strange film indeed that had my son cracking up at the absurd storyline
and at times poorly rate B style acting. Yet it has not left me alone since. “A
Winters Tale” was crazy, disjointed and being watched in the German dubbed
version perhaps not giving us the same interpretation of the story as in the
original. Yet for me it showed how time could be viewed from so many different
perspectives. Within time a life can have a purpose that no one understands or
really knows unless you look behind the outer layers or into the overall
picture that can spread over generations.
The characters involved can seem “cheesy” or plain ridiculous but to
whom? In the over all scheme of things perhaps that is just how it is meant to
be. The spoken against the written (as this movie came from a novel) form can
give a totally different perspective.
I thought what baggage do you carry
around with you waiting to be sorted through? Perhaps the load would lighten,
if you thought about what you really need in life before opening your arms to
all that is offered. Not every item gives or helps you along your way.
Something’s just hold you down like a lead weight requiring enormous effort to
shift later when you realize these attachments are strangulating your
breath. Such as my desire to
be able to write perfect German.
I have oodles of textbooks of the
grammatical German language on my shelves. Each one has been leafed through and
studied. I have been to adult educational schools for learning the “Certificate
of Proficiency in German” but broke off as work and family left my brain
strained to its limits against the datives and genitives of how and when. Yet I
still feel the frustration at not being able to compile a letter without
mistakes. I would like to generate a promotional blurb for our business but my
Darls reminds me that it sounds splendid in English but falls short of the
intention in German. It is a bit like the film yesterday. Something’s need to
be seen heard and read in their original form to gain the full jest.
A spring clean is the releasing of not
only unwanted items from your cupboards but also from the cubbyholes of your
mind. Perhaps that is what I need
to do now as spring approaches with my old, dusty wish to be able to grasp
writing German. I should throw open the shutters of my mind, let the wind roar
through and smell the fresh air of promise to creating something that is
uniquely me - “Eng-man”!
Eng-man is the language of Korus. It
sometimes is a mixture of English and German. It can be back to front or inside
out. It is a bit like “green eggs and ham” - beautiful to look at but hard to
swallow. A tongue twister of words that requires some background knowledge to
what is being said. Though once you take the time to work through the syllables
you can see the plot laid out. The overall written form can suddenly make
sense. Korus has had so many scenes that have played out in her life in two
languages at once that she needs her own expressional form to really portray
what is happening. Even then it can be bamboozling.
My Dad actually used to say “oh that’s
just Koru’s way” when I said something that everyone shock their heads at and
wondered just where I was at. Eng-man is my way of combating the frustrations
of life in a land where I cannot be heard in the written form because my story
has to be told verbally otherwise you have absolutely no way of knowing what is
going on today. It requires you know the mindset of the land I came from and
the one I now live in. Or maybe it actually only needs you to expand your
mindset to understanding the strange, the weird and slightly cracked version of
life here on earth, which is Koru’s Eng-man talk!
Your Koruswhispers
