Digamos que...

A very wise person told me today that while they were a pretty proficient writer before coming to Costa Rica, the more they practice and mejorar their spanish, the more the scale tips away from even the most basic english comprehension. I'm very glad they told me that, my misery as comparatively under-qualified as it is, loves company.

It began gradually at first, the shift in the balance of powers then with alarming frequency until now i literally feel the most basic english words slip out of my hands as i grasp for enough of what remains to fill the space until sentences end. My spelling is increasingly become a danger to myself and others as well. Boggle games devolve into discussions not of whether words exist (olde english totally counts) but how hone is spelled. or whet. or tie. At the same time, my spanish is not only improving but becoming noticably Tica. I no longer even hesitate before busting out Ud, and I have become indirect to a fault, throwing "digamos que" into conversation as if I were Charles Dickens being paid by the word.

Obviously, there is only one possible thing to do in this situation. Read Steven Fry. Therefore I leave you with this lucious tidbit from The Liar:

"Everything he saw became a symbol of his own existence, from a rabbit caught in headlights to raindrops racing down a window pane. Perhaps it was a sign that he was going to become a poet or a philosopher: the kind of person who, when he stood on the sea-shore, didnt see waves breaking on a beach, but saw the surge of human will or the rythms of copulation, who didnt hear the sound of the tide but heard the eroding roar of time and the last moaning sigh of humanity fizzing into nothingness.

But perhaps it was a sign, he also thought, that he was turning into a pretentious wanker."