Metamorphosis

Aint it cool to learn a new language? I learned 3 languages (English, Chinese, Malay) as a child in South East Asia, so I didn't appreciate the significance of speaking a language... until I began to learn Portuguese as an adult.

Yeah sure, languages allow you to communicate with words, but it's much deeper than that. If you allow a new language to become part of you, you are also allowing yourself to be affected, to change.

Contained within a language, is how a people perceives and interacts with the World, and responds to the state of being human on this planet. Study the words and structure, and you have but begun. The juice is between the words, in the pauses, in that elusive word-less reality. But you need the words to get you there.

Immersed within an unknown language-culture-reality, layers of what you thought were part of your-self, but were merely layers of your life, are peeled away, leaving you in a vulnerable but opportune condition. A chance to re-invent oneself presents itself, but more accurately you would use the word re-create, in that you do not have direct control over the outcome. Therein lies the beauty and risk.