Bien Salada

using my dumb couple of weeks to teach you some Spanish

Come on now, everyone grab a stone!

Y’all, it has been A WEEK. Actually, it’s been a couple of weeks, and I’m exhausted.

It will end eventually. But man, I’m getting sick and tired of feeling like I’m standing on the ocean shore and getting knocked down by a new wave every time I manage to stand back up and gulp some air.

I won’t bore you with the details of all my very pedestrian issues — doubt about our ability to stay long-term in this house that we love, antagonism at work that seems to have popped up out of nowhere, grouchiness from those close to me that amplifies my own, and now being on the second day of feeling pretty sick — you know what? Maybe I did want to bore you with details.

So while I recognize that none of the above are tragedies, I still can’t help feeling kind of sorry for myself, like I’m in the bowl of a molcajete that people have unexpectedly shown up to grind me down to a salsa in (no need to add salt; I brought my own tears!).

Anyway, it’s not all in vain! Because it made me think of a great new word (well, variations of a phrase, I guess) to teach you in Spanish.

Mexico, and I suspect other Latin American countries, though I can’t speak as authoritatively on them, is a pretty superstitious place. Babies are adorned with red bracelets for protection and luck. People of all ages wear evil eye protection emblems. And everyone tries real hard not to knock over the salt.

Ain’t no evil eye gonna cast bad luck on this tree!

Humans are superstitious creatures in general — we can’t help but believe in magic, as the pain of there being no order or meaning to both our good and bad fortune is too much to bear for most of us.

One thing you can do, at least, is to not spill any salt; and if you do, to throw some over your shoulder to…reverse the effect?

In Mexico, people say echarle la sal (a alguien) (literally, “to throw salt at someone”), whicm means to take away someone’s good luck. Likewise, it’s common to hear (from me, after these past couple of weeks), Estoy bien salado/a. “I’m really salty,” its literal translation in English, of course means something different; the true translation is, “I’m really unlucky (right now).” (I added the “right now” because of the verb estar, which is a more temporary form of the verb “to be” than ser.)

While I know logically that no feeling, good or bad, lasts forever, at this very moment I feel incredibly sure that that’s simply not true. I’m stuck here. This is where I live now, and I might as well settle down and pick out some nice throw pillows and maybe some frilly curtains for my new forever home, The Pits.

Soon, my friends, I will no longer be salada. I have faith. But maybe I should think of investing in a little something to ward off el mal de ojo.