The Lexicographer's Rules

Told me his dream today. “It’s all in the dream, you know? You know how in dreams you just know things? Well, I was dreaming I had super powers. Lots of them. All kinds, like flying and stuff, and then I could hear somebody in trouble on the bridge. So I flew out there to rescue this person so fast that when I went to catch them as they fell from the bridge it was more like I clotheslined them. Head popped right off. I think it was the green tea I drank, but I don’t know. “But there was a second part. I still had super powers and I was somewhere else. I could see through everything but I couldn’t control it, like, focus it. So I’d look completely through everything, right through the planet. Couple of times I brought the focus in some but still all I could see was the center of the Earth, all red and glowing. “So then I jump up and start flying again (in my dream), and I can go into space as long as I want and not breathe. So I go out towards Jupiter and Saturn to check them out and I go way too fast. I get lost. I went way past the solar system and then I didn’t recognize anything. I got all these powers but I don’t know how to use them and I’m no smarter. How many people could recognize the solar system at a distance? So I panic, in the dream, and start hyperventilating, and then I couldn’t breathe. “When I woke up the cat was sleeping on my face.”

Your trip to Bucaramanga not only reminds me of my life living in Colombia (training local English teachers on the Caribbean coast—yes, crystal blue water and white sands, and the best music in the world :), but of a recent experience I’ve had. I usually buy my morning coffee before work at the cafe closest to my office. But one morning I was early and the cafe wasn’t open, so I went to one of those coffee kiosks. The girl said, what kind? I said, “Colombian, of course!”

She then exclaimed,“Oh really? I’m from Colombia.”
“Well, I lived in Colombia for two years…,” I said. The conversation shifted into Spanish, but the Spanish was not always, shall we say compatible. I said I wanted a “cafe negro.” She corrected me: “No, you want ‘tinto’.” On the Caribbean coast “tinto” is like espresso: a little cup of almost always sweetened coffee that guys on the street sell from thermoses on they carry on their backs. (It also can mean red wine.)

“Que vaina, ahorra me mandas hablar Bucaramangero,” I complained. “If you want my coffee you do,” she replied with a smile. So I said, “Okay, no me fastida eso. Gracias.”

As I left, she said, “Gracias.” Then I got to correct HER: “A la orden!” (On the coast, “a la orden means both “You’re welcome” and “Can I help you?”

Anyway, I think I’m in love. With L.A….and with her.

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