Heladas Alturas

I've just started reading "El Reino del Dragon de Oro", by Isabel Allende. It's the first time I've read a book in another language, on my own time, where I didn't already know the story.

Reading in Spanish is a little odd. Reading in any language where your reading proficiency isn't above average is weird. For Gwen: It's like that essay we read in Trieschmanns class about writing. How terrible to write the way that poor woman did.

"When you write," she wrote, "You lay out a line of words. You wield it..."

She goes on to describe exploring the world by picking at it, inch by inch, with your line of words. Theres a feeling of darkness, as if anything outside of these specific words is somehow nonexistent, as if it comes into being at the exact moment you encounter it, and for no other purpose.

At any rate, reading in Spanish is like that. In English, I read a whole page almost at once. I read the lines individually, but my mind jumps. I see "smile" halfway down the page and I feel a sort of happiness, or bitterness, as it may seem, spread across the scene. I can skim down a page looking for a passage and get a basic idea of what's going on.

In Spanish it's different. I attack a line of words. I understand. I don't have to use a dictionary or a grammar tool. I guess at the words I don't know, most of them cognates. My mind quickly bridges gaps and recognizes new meanings for "Tarea" and "Helado". But it's still slower going than reading in English, by a long ways.

Dil Bahadur and his mentor-guy have been climbing the alps FOREVER, without a glimpse of another human being. I am beginning to tire of them and their plight. Each detail of how they use the fur of the yak and what they eat and how they find shelter are interesting and then wearying for the energy they take to decipher. It's subtle; word by word you don't notice it. But after pages...

So after climbing these mountains for what could surely be broken off into a separate novel, (I'm on page 10), I see a beautiful 'line of words'.

"Luego de escalar montanyas por varios dias, subiendo a heladas alturas, llegaron a Czenthan Dzong, el monestario fortificado de los antiguos lamas que inventaron la forma de lucha cuerpo a cuerpo llamado Tao-Shu."

Yes! A monastery! A fortified Monastery! That means safety, maybe warmth! It means new charectors! I'm done with Dil and the Lama mas Viejo. :D

And my heart is crushed, more so because my eyes have no chance to preview, because word by word the truth is painfully revealed. The monastery has been abandoned for generations, ever since a terrible earthquake.

This is no surprise to our old friends Dil and Lama. It's not meant to be a crushing blow to the spirit of the reader. But like "Que Hace el Pez?", everything has more meaning when it takes a little longer to understand. It's all more profound.

:'( Quiero un monestario fortificado de antiguos lamas a salvarme de las Heladas Alturas...