and Words
Rueda mi mente
No se detiene
Casi no te conozco y no te dejo de pensar
Rondas en mis palabras
Rueda mi mente a donde estas
Casi no te conozco y no te dejo de pensar
¿Dicen tus ojos algo?
Muero de curiosidad
¿Cómo mirarte siempre?
¿Cómo saber a donde vas?
¿Dicen tus ojos algo?
Lyric excerpts from Musixmatch.
I first studied English in Catholic school in Rio Piedras; I failed that class. Years later, we moved to Florida, and I needed to learn English. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I learned English through an intensive language program. Though my sisters continued to embrace speaking Spanish, I didn’t. I subsequently stopped speaking Spanish, and other than speaking Cantonese with my mom, I spoke English almost exclusively.
I can’t tell you precisely why I effectively expunged Spanish from my brain, but I did. It might’ve been because I had more to learn after failing my English class. It might’ve been because boys bullied me (and boys’ bullying is more physical than girls’), and I therefore tried to assimilate as quickly as possible. While I won’t tell you I feared for my life, I did occasionally fear for my safety.
Once I settled in high school, I picked up foreign languages again; I studied a year of French and three years of Latin. I continued to shun Spanish. I won’t tell you that I can reason through the mind of a teenager, me included. Though I performed horribly as a freshman in high school, I generally made good choices after that.
I became an exceptional student after that disastrous first year. A persistent anger towards those who bullied me fueled me for those remaining years. It drove me to demonstrate that I could excel in every way in which they minimized me. I not only deserved a seat at that table, but I could play and win their reindeer games. My motivation served to demonstrate my value, and perhaps even to humiliate them.
I will admit that I once found myself shuffling downstairs behind one such tormentor in an otherwise empty stairway. In that moment, I contemplated giving him one hard shove to watch him tumble down those steps. I never did. I won’t tell you that my self-control or altruism spared him serious injury; that fraction of a second when I contemplated whether a shove or a trip might be more effective may have been enough.
As I closed out my high school studies, I felt vindicated in most ways. I fooled myself into believing that I too belonged among them. No matter what, they must acknowledge that I’m a member of their class. They proved me wrong. When it came time to put together a senior skit, apparently we don’t all go together.
What surprised me about my younger self in my senior year? I had the self-awareness that anger and vindication fueled my compulsion to excel. Consequently, this led me to the next question: Could I continue to focus on my studies and perform well without the anger and vindication to fuel me? I honestly didn’t know.
The summer that followed was transformational, almost magical. After years of enduring high school as one of only a handful of Asian students, I finally found my kin. I started college at the University of Miami. Though I didn’t realize it at the time, I quietly crossed that threshold. Anger and vindication no longer fueled me; in some ways, I coasted, much like a car continues to move even after we stop pressing on the accelerator.
Eventually, all the pieces we tossed in the air magically landed in the right places. Through high school, I spent much of my life tied into a tight knot out of necessity for self-preservation, either physical injury or self-esteem. I needed to shout in my own brain that their assertions that “You suck, and you’ll never amount to anything” were wrong. Yes, this literally happened.
My ambition, once driven by anger and vindication, transformed. I slowly untangled that tight knot; I sucked out the poison from my heart. I pursued engineering at the University of Miami, though that wasn’t a complete surprise. That decision led to a life of intellectual curiosity. Engineering, in its very nature, is an applied science, not a natural one. Engineers focus on creativity; they ignore how the world happens to be but instead imagine how it could be. Engineers are, by their very nature, dreamers.
I fell in love during that summer of 1986; that dance lasted four years. Her name was Ana. She was beautiful, charming, and kind; she demonstrated genuine interest in me. She was of Honduran and Chinese descent; culturally, we were very similar. My enchantment with her, along with the move to Miami with its large Spanish-speaking community, led to a change of heart about this language I had shunned for years.
Today, as I listen to Brené Brown’s words, they assert that we all deserve love and belonging. It is a lesson that I learned when I first gazed into the eyes of a woman who deviated from the 1980s American standards of beauty. She echoed the sentiment by returning my gaze and smiling during our conversations.
Luckily, while my command of Spanish had not progressed from the fourth-grade level, it also hadn’t atrophied. I found that I could listen to most Spanish music and still understand it. I only needed to look up the occasional word in the dictionary, or more likely ask someone what this verse means. Listening to music in Spanish again led to a journey of self-discovery. I had forgotten its beautiful nuance and expression. It astonished me to find that the same delicate beauty existed in me, though dormant for years.
I discovered Sasha while browsing music at a little Spanish music store in Little Havana called Lily’s Records. I don’t remember what drove me to buy that CD before I knew anything about the artist, but I did. When I first listened to it, ‘Rueda Mi Mente’ stuck with me. The first two verses translate roughly to, “My mind races and it won’t stop.” The video portrays her as having a crush on her teacher. This song remains a permanent fixture on my playlist, and I smile every time it plays from my randomized list.
Though I sit down to write this post, I reflect on the (translated) words from the song:
I hardly know you, and I can’t stop thinking about you
Are your eyes saying something?
I’m dying of curiosity
Only now do I realize that it also describes my boyish love with Ana. I could reflect on it and conclude that either:
- Those boyish daydreams went nowhere, and they only served to crush my heart and distract me from my studies.
- Meeting her allowed me to appreciate who I am. That life is about the journey, not the destination.
I choose the latter. While life certainly includes the comfort of earning a paycheck and paying the bills, we tolerate the mundane for the small moments that make our minds spin and hearts race.
If anything, even knowing that we’d never be a couple, I’d welcome feeling the way I did for Ana those many years ago. Who wouldn’t?