Piecing together my Habitus

It is strange how my experience here in Spain changes over time. Initially the challenge of language trumped every other cultural challenge and kept my mind so occupied and entertained that I was completely blind to the cultural inconsistencies between myself and Spanish people that I would come to realize later.

I may be grossly overestimating myself here, but I think that at this point, I probably understand 95% of spoken Spanish. The problem is that within that 5% that is lost to me, it seems like 60% of Spanish humor and potential cultural connectedness is contained.

This can make it difficult to not be a total vacant, absent bitch at a party with Spanish people.

So, I go to a party, like Friday night. I do the normal thing I do when I´m in the company of all Spanish people. I sit in a chair smoking, being the quiet weird wife of my Spanish husband. And I think about how far that is from who I am, from what anyone who has ever known me well knows. I´m the furthest thing from quiet. I´ll talk to you until your ears feel like I´ve chewed them up and passed them through my digestive track. And I´ll listen to you if you have an ounce of humor in you.

That´s the normal me.

But here, among them I watch the people around me with bored indifference and feel such a disconnect with them on the deepest human level, that it pains me to try to make conversation. I see them laughing. I understand what they are saying. I smile to be polite, but in every moment I know how out of place I am and how brutally laborious it is to have a genuine connection with them. I know how goddamn difficult it is to say anything of interest to them and how difficult it is to find anything they have to say a diversion from the prototype that I have in my mind of them.

And I come across as a bitch. And I know it. And I can´t do anything to stop it. And I probably am one.

But then I go home to the states. I sit in a room full of Americans and I am completely and utterly entertained by how my language flows out of their mouths and they say things like "ass monkey", or "give me a pound, dog" and I tear up with laughter at expressions, poise and behavior that I had forgotten about. It just feels so effortless. And everyone amuses me greatly.

And I realize that those measly two weeks of happy, effortless understanding and cultural connection isn´t enough for me. So I try to find the pieces of my habitus here somewhere. Here in Spain. Here online.

But the pieces are lost.

I have my fellow expats who understand me better than anyone here or there possibly could. But I hate sometimes that their habitus are as altered as mine and I long to be in the company of people that are just American, the unaltered ones. Without this addiction called Spain in them.

And this is probably what I´m doing in the blogosphere. Looking for those pieces of my habitus and looking for the people whose dispositions I envy and miss.



Going home again this week. Back and forth never ceases to fuck with my head. Grandpa´s 100th birthday and reunion of cousins and brothers and sisters and all the people that can say things like "it´s hotter than crotch" and make me stare at them with glee and amusement at their effortlessness without all the nonsense and confusion in their brain that I have.

-Bluestreak

American Cultural Soup by MotherPie from Flickr

Ministry of Home Absorption by excauboi from Flickr