i shuttle back and forth between personas like moving between languages. it isn't flawless, but it's better than i expected, the strange fluidity of dual needs. that metaphor seems just right: throwing on my orange vest and changing into comfy shoes to translate my grown-up office clothes into hip coffee-shop clothes feels somehow a lot like saying "i'm buscando-ing it ya now, ok?"


also, because everyone in the office speaks spanish, here we move back and forth between the two with a surprising regularity. i've been practicing at the cafe, too, trying to fend off the 40-year-old cook who asks me - every day - how old i am, and if i like mexicans. he speaks too fast for me usually, and then laughs and asks if i understand. i've fallen out of my habit of admitting defeat, and so i shrug and smile and he knows i'm lying. but some things still stick in my head: it takes me a few seconds still to remember the english word for ferreteria, particularly, and when the bomberos came wailing by the other day, i couldn't find the word "firemen" either.


what's hard is that it takes me a while to get warmed up, for my brain to switch gears and remember that the words are different. but i'm not having any extended conversations in spanish these days, just little snippets as i take dishes back to the kitchen or say goodmorning to miguel. i miss the fullimmersion, the pressure of necessity that forces the vocabulary to be present or you to be silent. i'm not good at being silent, so i learned quickly. but now that i can speak in english again, it's all going away.