and Words
Me pides más
Después te vas
Indecisión, contradicción
Tus temores anclados en mi amor
No arriesgas nunca el corazón
Siempre adelante la razón
Robas mis fantasías con tu voz
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
On a typical afternoon, I sit on a wooden table in our library. The Ritcher Library, the main library at the University of Miami, sits centrally on campus. Mere minutes separate this library and our cluster of classrooms and the student union. Most of us meet in The Zoo, the large meeting room just off the main entrance. Two walls of this room are lined with windows to the exterior of the building. Hence any student could glance into The Zoo and see if our friends had yet to arrive. In the dark days of the late 80’s and early 90’s, e-mail and mobile phones were rare, so we relied on verbal coordination.
The second floor was reserved mostly for periodicals. My friend Max, short for Marisela, worked at the periodical counter. I met her in engineering school. She is bright, soft-spoken, and funny. She’s Mexican, and we often speak in Spanish. A short distance from the periodicals sat a small computer lab, reserved mostly for word processing. I’ll occasionally reboot the computer and run my programming tools instead (Turbo Pascal), finding an alternate place to accomplish my work.
Today I sat on a table on the third floor. Tables outlined the perimeter of the floor, each overlooking the buildings outside. However, The Zoo resembled the trading floor at the exchange in its chaos, and we’d often opt to study elsewhere. The alternate location of choice became one of these tables on the third floor. Naturally, opting to meet here meant that we needed to potentially walk the perimeter of the library in order to find each other. Anything above the third floor was considered to be quiet space, where I rarely ventured.
The moment we park our cars, we become nomads on campus. We all carry what we believe we need for the rest of the day or learn to do without. For me that includes music, in the form of a collection of CD’s, a disc player, and headphones. I rest my backpack on this table. I sat with two friends, Nelson and Gilbert, both electrical (engineering students). Nelson is from Malaysia and speaks Cantonese; Gilbert is from Cuban descent and speaks Spanish.
I studied computer engineering, which is subtly different from electrical. Since we’re all now upperclassmen, I no longer share classes with either Nelson or Gilbert. However, I enjoy sitting with them; they’re good people. As I sit with them, I converse with Nelson in Cantonese and with Gilbert in Spanish. I think it all started when two of us spoke in one language, and the third joined us. It didn’t really make sense to abruptly change language.
Yes, naturally we all spoke English, but I yearned to hear and practice my other languages. Located in Miami, I had a wealth of other friends who spoke Spanish, even within engineering.
It was around this time when I first discovered the music group Flans. Their music was often emotional, sometimes silly, but consistently meaningful to me. This particular song “Veinte Millas”, speaks of young romance, of imperfect love torn with indecision. The verse “Veinte millas hasta el mar… que quiere huir” translates to “Twenty miles to the sea that longs to escape”. For many years, that’s precisely how I heard it, as a reference to young imperfect romance, and I lived my share of stories to tell in that front. However, the years have shed a new light on these words, and they have renewed meaning, even if around water.
From early childhood memories, I lived near the water. In Puerto Rico, we lived near the beaches of San Juan and spent many afternoons embraced by its warm winds. In Florida, the beaches of Fort Lauderdale sat a short drive from our home. Even now, I live short distance from a number of lakes but avoid the commute over the lake in order to avoid the traffic. However, while they were always accessible at whim, they remained tucked away at my convenience, minutes from my home.
For years, this song chronicled and foretold my literal relationship with the water. The sea was romance that I longed for, but to which I would never commit. The water was that innate part of me which I sometimes acknowledged and occasionally denied.
Abruptly one day, I saw it. It hit me like a sledgehammer. The story in this endeared song spoke not of imperfect romantic love, nor did it necessarily speak of my middling fondness of the water. It more accurately described my conflicted relationship with language and culture. For much of my life, I struggled with my identity. My roots may peek out, like a turtle from its shell, when it was convenient.
Upon leaving Puerto Rico, I stopped speaking Spanish to assimilate with life in my Fort Lauderdale middle school. In order to avoid the bullies, I flew under the radar to avoid detection. I could not avoid attention from being the only Chinese boy in school but speaking Spanish was something I may easily avoid. Early on, culture and language became a figurative minefield I navigated daily. By the time I arrived in high school, I was on autopilot even when it wasn’t necessary.
Upon graduating high school, I found my kin. I remember it with great fondness, and it encouraged me to reach out to my Spanish roots as well. Fast forward to that table on the third floor of the school library, where I spoke to two friends in two languages. Strangely, a Chinese man speaking Spanish in Miami didn’t attract attention. In some ways, this was the most honest version of who I was.
Upon starting work as a computer geek, I moved to Washington. I won’t tell you that I regressed to covering my identity. There was no cultural minefield to navigate, and thus no need to avoid it. In other words, I faced no strife from my Chinese or Spanish roots. No one mocked my name; I didn’t long to escape the way those voices sung so sweetly on that verse in “Veinte Millas”.
However, I was figuratively thrown into the deep end of the geek pool. Being new to the area, my friends were my teammates; none spoke Spanish or Cantonese. However, I spent too many hours honing my craft, staying at work late learning from mentors. My geekhood supplanted my other cultures. Truthfully, I barely even noticed.
Today, I reflect back on who I am and realize that I’m not separable. I am that geek that debugged assembly code without source code or symbols. However, I am also that boy from Puerto Rico who watched telenovelas. Lastly, I am that young professional that regularly spoke to his mother on the phone in Cantonese. I am that tangled mess of idiosyncrasies.
I’m conflicted. Losing touch with those elements of myself saddens me and fills me with guilt. However, I reflect upon how I got here and am not convinced that I would do it differently. For now, they may remain tucked away in the way that they have been. Though in the precious moments when they do emerge from the shell, they now fill me with comfort and gratitude. I may change that.