Lost and Found in Translation, By Whitney Farmer – Un Pop Culture

November 23, 2011 Whitney Farmer 6 Comments

Whitney runs a rock music venue on the beach in L.A.. She has an M.B.A, and is strategizing her stuffing recipe.

The church called and said that the last of the French gypsies were leaving in the morning. Could I come to a farewell dinner and help translate? When I arrived at the hotel, everyone began to talk at once too quickly for me to understand while they threw their arms around me. But their laughter and smiles and warm eyes told me that they were as glad to see me as I was to see them. Thank God, because I was self-conscious about my rusty French and wondered if I had put a permanent wedge in Franco-Californian-Gypsy relations in our last meeting.

We went to a restaurant at the end of the pier in Seal Beach. Two of the sons had begun to develop a love of surfing, and I tried to speak to them about my love of the ocean.  Seal Beach has been experiencing a population explosion of stingrays over the past year, and I tried to tell them about it.  But I didn’t know the word “stingray”.  At times like this, I try to describe the object like you might read of it in a dictionary.  This time, my efforts failed when I said “un poisson comme un angel avec un derriere de poison”. Translated, I had said “a fish like an angel with a poison butt”. My meaning was lost, until the boys’ dad exclaimed that he had a Corvette Stingray along with a good collection of American muscle cars. Gypsies know their cars, and because of that we were able to miraculously come to an understanding.

We broke bread one last time. The French and California kids hung out together without anyone making them.  They developed games that didn’t need words, and seemed to have developed a language between themselves. The adults spoke about what was the same and different between our lives. Gypsies never eat in front of a television or while driving a car. They always sit together as a family during meals. That night, there was a birthday at the table – Duncan, oldest son of the patriarch.  At 14, he would be leaving school and would soon be joining the family business. It was their way. As I sat before them with two college degrees that failed to protect me from having my American Dream dismantled and not even one Chevelle or Challenger or Stingray to improve my net worth, I couldn’t fault their custom despite being conflicted. I’m a fan of higher education, but I don’t own the land that I live on either.

During dinner, I was surprised to learn that gypsies celebrate Thanksgiving as well. When I asked them why, they responded, “Why not?”  Like European cultures even before the Plymouth colony celebration of 1621, a time of harvest is a great reason to come together and let the good times roll.  Like a good investment, sharing gratitude compounds value as it settles in and adds to the gratefulness in the hearts of the hearers. As the stories get better, the better it gets.

When I first came to L.A., Thanksgiving was the Orphan’s Holiday: Anyone could come to anyone’s house to celebrate, no ties required. No one felt the burdens of the past, only its carried-over benefits like the harvest of seed that had been planted long before. The Plymouth colonists celebrated not being dead after being shown by the Wampanoag nation how to fish like natives, and reaping a harvest from seeds that the tribe had given them. Because of the bounty, the colonists were able to partake in one of the most indulgent of human acts, more luxurious than gluttony: They welcomed guests to their table to share the harvest. True, the local tribe was responsible for the colonists’ survival, but ingratitude could have been the lesser angel that was followed. In other times in other parts of the New World, the worst of what people can do to each other was done. But at Plymouth in 1621, there was a perfect moment.

Imagine what it was like: Winter was coming, but it must not have seemed so dark anymore. Everything must have been gold-lit from cooking fires and the Fall sun falling until it made a red sky at night, the sailors’ delight. No one knew one another’s language, but laughter must have taken up the majority of the script. They must have pantomimed with humor the settlers’ failed first attempts to learn the skills that preserved their lives, and chuckled when either side tried to describe their comparables to my ‘stingray’. Any accidental offenses would be smoothed away with sharing tobacco and grog. Women would have held each others’ delicious brown or ivory infant bundles while giving each other knowing glances as their men bragged about their hunting successes. And the older children would have created games together that didn’t need words, all the while developing words between themselves.  Soon, both would be able to dream in each other’s native tongue…

For your perfect luxurious moment on the sunny side of Winter, surrounded by either your personal colonists or personal natives – depending on whether you are the saved or the saving this year – I say over you what the gypsies said over our cheeseburgers after saying ‘Merci!” to our personal Jesus:

Bon appétit!

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Quote of the Blog, from William Blake: “In seed time learn, in harvest teach, in winter enjoy.”