"And He took bread, and gave thanks and broke it and gave it unto them, saying, “This is My body which is given for you. This do in remembrance of Me.”

KJ21- Luke 22:19

December 17 2012 - Mexico City

Of late, after my two week trip to Buenos Aires four weeks ago, I have to admit that some of my dreaming happens in Spanish. When I am speaking in English to someone on the phone I can discern the accent of an Anglo-Argentine. I am sure that in a few weeks the accent will be gone.

My Mexico City mentor and friend Raúl Guerrero Montemayor, who died three years ago, spoke at least 9 languages and he topped that by being able to speak German with an Italian accent, English with a Tagalog accent, and on and on. Before anybody had coined the expression globalization, Raúl called himself  “híbrido.” He had lived in so many countries, received an education in Switzerland that he said he did not belong to one country or one culture. But he was a most culturally un-deprived hybrid man.

We often spoke of words and of words in different languages that had such a special use that there was no translation. Raúl had worked for years as an instant translator and one of those words was the English (American) handout. You pass them out in class. There is no equivalent word in Spanish. On the other hand a ship’s log in Spanish is the elegant bitácora. I tell people I have been writing a bitácora since January 2006. When they look at me quizzically I have to use that other word (a word I do not like) blog.

In English you have memories, you memorize and you remember. There is that lovely word remembrance. The verb record is used to write down, copy or tape something so that it can be remembered. 

In Spanish the memory situation is different because of variety. To memorize is to memorizar. To remember something is to recordar or acordar. To record a conversation in Spanish the verb grabar (etch) is used. To me what is strange is that both memorizar (to memorize in Spanish) and recordar come from Latin. But in the way the original meaning took a forked path.

In Spanish, and particularly in literary and or Argentine (!) Spanish, there is a wonderful verb and noun that sounds like music to one’s ears.

A person who remembers (good things, always) is a memorioso. To remember good things is to rememorar. Jorge Luís Borges famously wrote a short story about a man who had a prodigious memory, Funes el Memorioso.  I wrote about it here.

All the above is but an antesala, a lovely Spanish word that is the chamber outside a living room. It is a nice place that leads to a better one. Although, dramatically in Spanish we have the three words antesala del infierno which is about a terrible place that leads one to a worse one, hell.

William Wyler's 1951 film noir Detective Story with Kirk Douglas and Eleanor Parker had as its title in Spanish "La Antesala del Infierno"! 

Today, on the Victoria Day holiday my complete Vancouver and Lillooet family broke fast (so much nicer than breakfasted) in our Kitsilano home. I flipped my extra thin pancakes for a table of 7. That is, my Rosemary, our Lillooet daughter Ale, our daughter Hilary and her husband Bruce, their two daughters Lauren and Rebecca and Lauren’s friend Alina.

Rosemary made sure we had plenty of fresh fruit for Rebecca and our initial drink was mangoes blended with orange juice.

But there was something special on the table. When my friend Curtis Daily visited a couple of months ago he brought a package of good coffee beans. So I bought a burr coffee bean grinder. We used Rosemary’s coffeemaker. But this was not practical as Rosemary drinks a terrible de-caf. A few days ago I went to the Hudson’s Bay Company and purchased a French press. It is a big one that enabled me to prepare coffee for Bruce, Rebecca, Ale and yours truly. I brought out my fancy Swiss whipped cream maker and told Rebecca that back in 1960 before there was a Starbucks I would go to a coffee shop on Florencia and Paseo de la Reforma, in Mexico City to drink a café vienés. This concoction was simply strong coffee served with whipped cream on top.

May 23 2016 - Kitsilano BC

I made sure I pressed the machine on the table as Raúl would have been horrified had I not done so. I wrote about that here.