Cotton-Candy for Brains.

The itinerary for learning a new language resembles something out of a Psychology 100 textbook. Like the boring heirarchy of Maslowe's, you begin by addressing the necessities: ordering in restuarants (food,) ordering in bars (fluids,) haggling with landlords and hostel-owners (shelter,) and pick-up lines (love.) Over time, these concepts web fractally, the triangles obtusify, dissolve, fibbionacially fornicate. Slowly but steadily these world-wide-word-webs weave, with subordinate threads, chimeric networks, quipus of knotted semiotics and snafus, when you finally start to form sentences and simple thoughts. Our Psych 100 textbooks tell us that neuropathways extend in this same way when you learn your first language in soft-serve, infant, cotton-candy brains. You go through a kindergarten of flashcard flashbulbs, simple nouns, barnyard noises, shapes and colours, sprials and lines. The progress could probably be graphed into the golden section.

With relief, I've finally reached the stage of conditionals, of maybes, of evasive conversation. Excuses, at last. I've finally learned the word for supposedly, supuestamente, which allows me a lot more breathing room with anecdotes and second-hand facts. Allegedly is next, with other sarcastic doubts.

Ambiguity, a wonderful wool pullover, will hopefully be followed by subtlety and some pretty, fanciful embroidery.