issue 249

The other day I was talking with a friend who lives in Barcelona. We were practicing our foreign language skills on one another. I was in America speaking Italian and she was in Spain speaking Spanish. The similarities allowed us to communicate, despite speaking two entirely different languages. When you look beyond the phrasing and the varying vocabulary, all languages intend to do the same thing. It furthers the human experience and allows us to share it with one another. The bilingual exchange pulled us together from opposite sides of the world, uniting not one or two, but three cultures. We tenuously deciphered the core of the sentences, using context clues and similar verb structure. The thing that broke our communication were the small words like “then” or “now,” the words that pull a language together, but that I had always deemed unnecessary.

Moving to a new city is a similar process as speaking another language. You know to expect the big things. I must find a job. I must find a place to live. I will need a bed. I will need a couch. I must have food and pots and pans. But the little things are what pull the whole process together, and are what I have found to be the most difficult to grasp.

I have lived in Jacksonville almost my entire life. But still, I find it hard to navigate through some neighborhoods. It could have been my five-year absence that has clouded my memory or the constant development and growth that has turned this city into another place in many ways. Merely trying to find my way to Target has proven confusing. Or, when looking at possible places to live, I got lost almost every time. I thought I already knew the way and had even MapQuested directions, just to be safe. But roads are closed or under construction or have been rerouted. It made me understand that despite my familiarity with this place, I am truly starting over. It all looks different from a different point of view.

At times I even feel lost in my own house. In California, I lived in a two-bedroom apartment that I shared with three other people. I now live in a three-bedroom house in San Marco that is cheaper to rent than the apartment in Oakland. I knew when moving home I would need some big items to fill a much larger space, like a dining room table or a desk, but I hadn’t anticipated all the little things I would need. Having never lived on my own before, it never occurred to me that I would need cabinet liners, a functional screwdriver, mattress covers for extra beds, or a little jar to hold utensils.

Just the other day I went to a friend’s birthday party. When I arrived, I found tables lined with little dishes and decorative bowls, cake platters and serving trays. There were wall hangings and pinwheels (the party was for a five-year old) and even little jars of plant life to give the party a garden theme. Right now, the best I could do for a party is to stick a bag of Doritos on a makeshift coffee table. Not only do I not have all the little dishes, but I don’t even have a table to put them on and I definitely do not have little jars of grass for decoration. I have this new house, my very first place to really find myself in, but the lack of knickknacks is getting in the way.

It would also be nice to have a little slice of Jacksonville to call my own. A few places that I can be known for so that, when asked, I can advise people on where I go, instead of where someone has told me to go. I want a small way to connect with this town I have always called “home” that hasn’t existed for the past twenty-three years. I so identify with the notion that I am an explorer, but with Jacksonville as my hometown, it could be easy to fall back on my laurels. I need to discover Jacksonville on my own, find a few small parts that are all me. Otherwise it will be like moving backwards in time instead of jumping forward into my new life.

I know it will all come together. Just like a language, you start with the big things in a small way, and it grows into the small things in a big way. You can’t truly have a first hand conversation without the secondary words. Otherwise you’ll be lost in translation. If it had not been for that conversation with my friend, I may never have noticed the importance of the small words. As with any experience, the discovery is futile without the little things. Sooner or later, I will have found my own roads. I will stop calling for directions and I will hold my own as a native foreigner. I will know the knickknacks, and Jacksonville will then know me.