New Tongue: New Quest for Language

On April 19, 2023April 19, 2023 By Aginetta MulimaIn lifeLeave a comment

I felt shy using my limited Spanish. Families bustled, moving in and out of my conversational reach. It was Balloon Fiesta weekend, and I worked as an awkward teenager. First job in tow, I busied myself with customers. Justice, a store for tweens, appeared like a stepping stone. I watched the dance moms, sporty soccer girls, and punk-rock kids take their selections from the rack.

“Why don’t you speak Spanish?” said the mom next to me.

The woman looked at me with disbelief. Surely, I would speak Spanish in a state that borders so close to Texas and Mexico.

“Oh, I am trying…but I am not very good at it,” I said.

Bashful, I awaited any chance to slip in a word or two. For her sake. For mine. For the fact that New Mexico with its Latinx and Indigenous roots, holds culture in high esteem.

One must try to accommodate those who come to a store that generates more than one million dollars a year. I watched Hana relax into her comfortable, learned Spanish. Her upbeat voice competed with the clank of sensor tags at the register. “¿Cuál es tu numero teléfono?” She rolls her r’s and no one would have doubted that this blonde-haired teenage girl was a language guru.

I envied her.

“How come you don’t speak Spanish?”

The rest of the woman’s family rallies round. With their sun-kissed cheeks, they recount their visit from Mexico to see the hot air balloons. They are shocked that I haven’t gone to the air field to see them up close.

At best, I have watched the balloons on my drive to and from work. I let the hum of my clunker car push me onward (nowhere near the field). Away from the place where people get up before the sun, hot chocolate in hand, and stir with tired joy.

The balloons mimic colorful lanterns, as they soar over adobe style houses. New Mexico is a place with a story stirring everywhere. The milagros. The Our Lady of Guadalupe images dotting restaurants and offices. The papery luminarias, warm and aglow, decorating the city in the winter. I am in the city, but I haven’t witnessed its full story up close.

But in the tweens store, every color felt like a blur. Bright neon backpacks and hot pink sequined hand gloves. Fuzzy monster diaries and cowgirl bootcut jeans. I reoriented when the mom called to me. She thumbed through the clothes rack searching for her (hija) daughter’s t-shirt size.

The rest of the family moves in and out of conversation.

“So you really don’t speak Spanish?”

And then, they dive into the search for a well-built wardrobe. Wouldn’t mija want this camisa with these pantalones? Would she want more basic t-shirts in every color? Quieres un zapatos bonitos?

I tried to think more in Spanish as we pieced together this new wardrobe. It will be folded neat and tidy in a suitcase first. At nine-years-old, this niña needs to be well dressed. A fashionista in her own right.

The Coronado Center swells with out-of-staters. I imagined our store had made as much money as Christmas or Back-to-School season. The flexible trust between cashiers and customers grew. There will always be one more item the customer may want before they return home. Queue the speech about future coupons from said cashier and salesperson.

I wonder what it must feel like to be a local. I’ve lived in more than four states, and I am always in transition. New and not new. When presented with standard questions, I feel unqualified as a resident of each state. Often, the questions are ones I cannot answer. I wonder who taught Hana, my then coworker, to speak Spanish fluently. Did she grow up here in New Mexico? Did her family push for bilingualism?

Was she like the boy in my former financial literacy course? He felt proud that his aunt made him do a Spanish immersion run in Panama. I envied their ease in another language. How do you blend? How do you integrate?

I secretly dreamed that I will become like Hana. Words floating off my tongue like a million pájaros.

I remembered my former eighth-grade Spanish teacher.

Mr. Mosayebi played the reggaeton radio station, as our class completed our workbook exercises. His tall frame, jet Black hair akin to Enrique Iglesias, and insistent words about effort came to mind.

The radio blared dips and thrills of Daddy Yankee lyrics. Our class, complete with non-native Spanish speakers and native-Spanish speakers, made for an interesting combo. We all needed to do our best.

Our middle school, a part of the Charlotte Mecklenburg system, contained a majority of Black and Latinx students. The lush greenery flanked our school buildings. The culture of calling anyone Brown “your cousin” was acceptable. A few students were learning to write in Spanish, and others like myself were trying to work on the verbal side.

If only, reggaeton could have helped me out more in my adult life. I had hoped that Ivy Queen and Wisin y Yandel would eventually stick to my brain. But my mother and I had tried.

Years ago, we rented language CD’s from our local library. We cycled through our vocabulary words. Vowels stretching as long as my North Carolina summers. It held promise then. I had hoped one day we would string all these words together to form sentences. Change was coming. Sí, se puede. Who knew that we would move to Albuquerque, New Mexico, and right in the middle of my eighth grade year…

I found myself with new kids. My initial acquaintances, two Latinx girls, spoke mostly in Spanish. But I didn’t mind trailing behind them at lunch. I could snatch a word or two from the conversation. I could nod along, as we circled the outside patio area near the gymnasium and front office. They were talking about boys.

It is an assumption that a majority of New Mexicans speak Spanish fluently. The blend of Chicano and Latinx dialects punctuate the state. The insistent inclusivity will not disappear. Years into the future, Duolingo replaced my classroom experiences.

I eyed the Mexican mother who waited for me to pull an item from the top display. Reaching for the long metal hook, I tapped the tank tops with palm trees on them.

“Do you want gris o rojo?” I asked. Later, I would remember the verb querer (to want). ¿Quieres gris o rojo camisas?

With the family’s encouragement, I used a bit more Spanish. I found space for my monolingual American ignorance. As a then-teenager, it was important to think on your feet.

Here are the colors, numbers, and verbs. Here are the ways I wanted to affirm the belief that America should teach languages in schools (allowing the students to leave each grade proficient in conversational skills).

Inside that bright store, I felt dizzy with possibilities. Now, I am almost thirty years old and with increased anxiety about language. Perhaps, my envy will encourage my growth.

The Heart Rooms, The Chapels, and The Inner Toil

On April 6, 2023April 6, 2023 By Aginetta MulimaIn commentary, lifeLeave a comment

This essay reflects my undergraduate experiences near 2016-2017.

I am a woman sitting in the chapel, steeped in an uneventful meditation practice. Brown carpet spans the room. There used to be pews here. I learn this from the alumni, now in their seventies. They visit the old women’s college situated in the Lehigh Valley where the trees are numerous.

Decades before, the alumni held Christian choral services. I can only imagine the kinship they feel with the current Christian Fellowship club. Now only the acoustic piano (finely tuned) remains.

Today, I am attempting to sit still. Allow one thought to enter and float by. A Buddhist nun instructed my religious studies class to take our time with meditation. I envied her way of surrender as she spoke. Her black robes, short-cropped white hair, and worn hands unobtrusive.

Perhaps, I am deeply American in the need to solve “everything.” Will I find my balm here? Will I let the looming uncertainty about my life go? I sit, impatient, with my knees folded. I imagine the spiritual desperation to flit to the next thing.

My professor is a short man, with a grandfatherly air about him. He tends to wear sweaters over button-down shirts. His bushy eyebrows sit comfortably. Behind his brown rectangular glasses, he holds a reflective, wise gaze. While he appears as a tranquil man, he has a fiery disposition concerning all things political.

As a Chaplain, he recommends that we do not consider any sort of conversion until after we complete his course. His sound reasoning juxtaposes the Christian Bible Study Group and the Islamic Studies course. No one clasps your hand and runs off with you in a literal sense. It’s a choice to accept newfound faith (sometimes). However, people are devoted to offer you what they have and what they think will comfort you. I want comfort and ease and certainty and…

I am trying to quiet myself. Become less restless. A group of students waft in and out of the connecting art building. The rise and fall of conversation drifts inside the chapel. The lilt of sunlight does cheer people’s spirits today.

As a new Muslim[1], I sometimes prayed here – in the chapel. The dazzling-stained glass windows remind me of the statuesque church of my childhood. I think about virtues and obedience. I do not feel as though I am steadfast or able to relinquish my full soul unlike Mary/Maryam/Miryam/Holy Mother/Our Lady of Guadalupe.

The sun stops short, and it fills the room part-way. Crystallized reds, greens, whites, and yellows cast patterns onto the carpet. It’s nondenominational space but the stain glass remains.

My meditation practices are infrequent this undergraduate term. I downloaded the Calm app, and then deleted it. I once listened to the Meditative Story and the Hay House Meditation podcast. The soothing narrator voice worked for a while, but then I wanted to hear voice that had a different dialect[2].

Religion and Meditation are hard fronts. Truthfully, I am in the rehearsal stage. Whenever an unsettling emotion rises, I am plummeting down the same tunnel. Sometimes I combat negative thought patterns by using the story reframing tools (my therapist recommended in the past).

Therefore, in my moments of reflection I had a tough time being indifferent to the women of ancient times. I thought about what I had been instructed to believe in various Sunday Schools and sermons. There will be a time to revisit Eve, Lot’s wife, and Esther. A meditative conversation can take place even though my faith paths have shifted.

However, my mind is wandering…

There are a million and one excuses to not sit with myself.

“Every meditation doesn’t have to offer anything – it is a practice,” the Buddhist nun assured our class. She had only visited the class once, but her words still lingered on. I wish I knew how to offer silence to myself. And in the corners of my silence – I could tell God what I thought.

Giving. Receiving. I learned quickly that rooming on a women’s college campus came with responsibility. Students came with their parent’s traditions (or openly despised them).

Now that I think about it – the walking meditation during my Buddhist class was ideal. From heel to toe, we – all twelve or so students walked in a wide circle without speaking. In silence, you hear the rhythmic procession of feet, breath, and the whir of the ceiling fan.

How often had my friends walked trampling the underbrush with our sneakers? We had the hills and the forests of upper Appalachia – a sanctuary continuously withheld from Indigenous groups. A stream of water, an unsoiled fountain itself can become a place of joy. I am tied to the imagination brought forth by colonial settlers, and the awareness of what nature means to enslaved people who toil without reprieve.

Let’s wade. Let’s take off our shoes. Let’s silently pray and make dua’a inwardly when we feel this free. Our freedom that came from loss.

One friend has died since my undergraduate days. Her body – as fragments of the universe – are contained in a simple urn. She would have never agreed to that, but she died during the pandemic. Her family made that call. I knew too much about her upbringing. I flinched continuously with anger and grief about the lack of respect given to queer folks even in death. I thought about her bold tattooed stars lining her arm. I thought her stance on her body being given back to the earth, since she too had trekked through the land as a weary traveler her whole life.

…and so, our friend group mourned with an unexplainable distance.

I’ve given my sorrow when I reflect on my many friends who have been desecrated by a mortal man too aware of violence. I wince at the carelessness on which people label carceral feminism[3]. I want to avenge her. I want to listen to survivors and/or victims. I want to name my own pain. But I am clamped down in an airtight box, and simply told no “We must create a society that can heal and atone.”

The past nature walks bring me to that stream – a place where my friend still exists in continuum. I hate letting go. I hate the sordid business of defining one’s own religious path (when all feels shaky). How do I just accept what is?

My friend lived as an atheist. And I learned so much from her way of life. Her lighthearted joys. Her rooted sense that she would not condemn others in the name of religion.

Maya Angelou once wrote that she could not condemn her Jewish nor her non-believing friends. There would not be a spool of ribbon with their name on it being casted into hell. I too do not want condemnation in my heart. Whenever, it is a weary time, I think about just walking.

I am not a Buddhist, and I am barely proficient in a second language. Yet, the glee and starry contentedness of the monks at the Tibetan Buddhist Monastery in New Jersey opens a door. One monk sits in a chair and watches his pupil – who addresses our visiting Buddhist Studies class.

My classmates and I are admiring the large yellow and red tapestries hung about the room. There are pastel-colored cushions on the floor. I am sitting here, my knees pointed toward the ground, and my behind firmly planted. Time feels absent. But the bare tree branches hug this monastery like the house of a ribcage.

I cannot stay here. I am a traveler. A visitor. Let this thought go.

“I don’t know why they took the pews out,” one alum laments at a later banquet. Then, the cafeteria swathed in white table runners held the best silverware.

“They’re trying to be inclusive,” one alum says.

I, eye the single Black woman in their class photo. What was it like then? How do you worship when you are the only one?

There are not a lot of Black Muslims at college. So, I rely on the Southeast Asians and Arabs to teach me about Islam. I am also learning the language of silence – a makeshift muteness – because I am trying to understand myself. The chapels of my life are folding in, and I am still looking for the right one to be still.

[1] The ‘how I got there’ exists in different essays.

[2] Many meditation and yoga apps feature narrators with a similar and clear voice. However, one day I will address how it matters to a voice that does “sound non-White” if the practitioner is not White. But I’m not visiting that here.

[3] Carceral feminism is a term used by activists who are invested in abolishing public and private prisons. The main themes include how real justice does not occur within these spaces, while also highlighting how many oppressed folks have been caged there. Notable speakers include adrienne maree brown and Angela Davis. I don’t like prisons, but I still do not know how to envision a world without them. I am reflecting deeply about victim advocates, such as my friend who works in the social work business to bring awareness to human and sex trafficking.

The Messy Story About Religious Belonging

On March 26, 2023 By Aginetta MulimaIn lifeLeave a comment

You’re supposed to have a neat story…so I thought about religion.

The presbyterian church felt different that day. The neatly cut grass across the street, the quiet sunshine enveloping all of the houses, and the slight cold on my walk to the front door. I had been here once with my piano teacher and her various students for a recital. Roughly, the recital brought only fifteen or so people. But on that chilly Sunday, I ventured alone to this same church tucked away in a moderate Southwest neighborhood.

I arrived lonely. A young adult, fresh out of high school, and slightly jaded at the prospects of getting older in the world. With me, I brought the keeping-up-with-the-joneses attire and plunked myself on a pew closer to the door. That service I drew attention to myself in the best way… The owner of a tan Buick sedan, your lights are still on!

I wonder if my spiritual lights are still on. A majority of my twenties I’ve visited Hindu and Buddhist temples for college class field trips. An opportunity where questions are welcomed, and shoes are removed upon entrance.

I’ve distanced myself from my Protestant upbringing and found myself in cahoots with blaming institutions. You see, I’m not exempt from swinging widely with my political frustrations. The fury that builds in me begins to feel red, hot, branding, and justified. I type my frustrations about Abortion, bodily autonomy, LGBTQ+ rights, and ethnic oppression. I lambast those who I see as my enemies, and yet I still haven’t done (enough on my part) to uplift the communities I love. My spiritual lights are flickering on and off. I feel foreign in churches, but I feel like I’m bobbing in an ocean when at the mosque.

Packing my suitcases and carry-on items, I took my frustration with me to the Midwest-East side. I’ve moved halfway across the United States to the tristate area feeling my way in the spiritual dark. My mother’s chorus, disembodied from my childhood rings a popular contemporary church song, that says “hold out your candle.” I tether to the nonreligious and the religious crowd. The festivals. The shared holidays. The broken pieces that people of faith sometimes have to sift through to find their way again.

As of November, I’ve returned to the Southwest. It is the place where my former biases about religion blossomed in and out of high school. I gawked at the cowl scoop neck shirts, and the three-quarter sleeved girls in my AP classes. Now, I sit with complicated feelings about the young woman I became. The woman, who wore a headscarf on and off, for several years. The woman, who sailed through department and thrift stores for longer skirts and more concealing shirts. How do you reconcile your bouts of contradictory snobbery? How do you rebuild a bridge with the wider monotheistic community?

For the past couple months, I’ve “accidentally” found a spiritual book in my hand while perusing the thrift store bookshelves. There is a book written by a non-Amish lady who immersed herself in Amish culture. In Plain and Simple, Sue Bender encapsulates the distinct colors she notices in Amish quilts. She describes her need for simplicity, and how much she wanted to wean herself from materialistic and capitalistic goals. She writes to Amish families with the intention of living with them for a spell. I found that timely. A confidant of mine had shared the importance of value-based living, and despite what material possessions I had — I could notice what made me feel whole.

On the train, I devoured Bender’s book. The Dutch Amish community felt closer now, instead of when I lived a few hours away from Amish country in prior years. Did I know how to let go? Did I know how to live simply (while also acknowledging that pleasure uplifts life)? What part of my spiritual and ordinary life even felt pleasurable? I gazed outside the window and saw the vast expanse of mountains. Sturdy. Weathered. Rooted. Beautiful.

Over a year ago, the art and healing journal I interned with had published works in relation to pleasure. I spent the semester reading about folks’ connection to nature mostly. I felt myself reinterpreting pleasure (aside from the physical assumption). What felt good?

I understand now more than ever that the honeymoon phase of converting to a religion starts to taper off. The baptismal waters have dried on my skin. The wudu waters have dried on my skin. But I am not feeling as “clean.”

I entangled myself in Mary Karr’s poetry chapbook titled Sinners Welcome. Since conversion, I told myself I wouldn’t use the “Christian” definition of sin. Even though, I find myself fighting my own self reading my own Quranic texts about the very topic. However, the two monotheistic traditions differ if one has been born with sin or one through their own actions (cognizant) mostly engages with it. I try to take heart and believe inherently that there are bigger fish to fry. What am I doing well? What are the therapeutic ways to reframe religion outside of sin?

Yet, I’ve been raised as a protestant and there’s a voice in my head cooing me and urging me to watch myself. Don’t backbite. Don’t overindulge. Do pray. Do follow the commandments. Do praise.

It has been a long time since I’ve bowed and spoken with the deity I name as God. I tangle with the gnostic gospels, I claw at mystic Catholicism, I run alongside Sufi mystic teachings, and yet I am my hybrid self.

Sometimes, I remember that I am the bearer of my suffering (to a point). If only, I could just believe and not find myself spiraling out of control with modern concerns. I want to acknowledge my part in thwarting homophobia, transphobia, indifference, and oppression. I want to be able to keep my rituals and still be counted among those who gave a shit about the here and now.

A part of me wonders what I would have been like without the conversion. Would I have lasted in my former tradition? Would I have wanted more? I steep in my own memories of forgotten Ash Wednesdays, Lent Seasons, and Easters.

In Five Below, my nonreligious friend and I buy Easter baskets just because. The previous December, I pretend to not acknowledge Christmas as much, and pretend my loneliness will melt away like the snow from the Sandia Montanos. I pretend that I don’t miss my Muslim girlfriends from college where we all navigated the incompleteness of our adolescence.

In my hand, I find that I’ve unknowingly picked up a book about Mormonism. The first chapter details a woman’s innermost ritual of changing into her rented temple clothes, and then fast-forwarding to her marriage after college. I wonder where my disdain boomed from for my former high school classmates. Why I took them as odd (and more or less still struggle with parts of their tradition)? I wonder what would’ve happened if I had asked questions and stationed myself as a person looking for similarities.

I want a neat story, but that doesn’t exist.

Serenity is a Dealbreaker

On August 16, 2022 By Aginetta MulimaIn life, UncategorizedLeave a comment

An excerpt from my Creative Nonfiction thesis. Through email, I told my former MFA director how scared I am to revisit my drafts. Here’s a sample to hold myself accountable. This piece was written roughly a year ago?

Hayao Miyazaki has given a lot of fans a gift beyond words. A Japanese animator and screenwriter, who created the timeless art of Studio Ghibli, means a lot to me. He captures the profound power of stillness and admiration for the natural world. I could belabor the point by citing the environmental social justice issues present in Nausicaa Valley of the Wind and Princess Mononoke. A strong feminine character who belongs to the natural world: They will defend it. They live in connection with it.

I want to draw our attention dear readers to the beautiful grassy scenes in Kiki’s Delivery Service. The carefully animated lush grass calms me. Each blade accounted for. Each rustling tendril opens a door within me. A lot of Studio Ghibli fans comment on how serene Miyazaki illustrates the landscapes.

In that scene, Kiki and her friend lay on a grassy hill that overlooks a seaside town. Time feels weightless, as if the viewers themselves are as soft as the clouds dotting the blue sky. This is the image in my mind I conjure up when sandwiched in bumper-to-bumper traffic. This, I offer to myself when the distress of bills and miscellaneous expenses feels inescapable.

I matched with a guy on a dating site who also admires the Studio Ghibli film franchise. I am in luck, pals.

“Being out in nature is serious,” Assam types in the chat box. “It’s not for fun.”

I imagine his hiking adventures, kayaking lulls, and field guide uses are deeply serious. I revisit his profile hovering over the waterfall pictures. Another photo includes him posing, his tan-greenish hiking boots in the foreground. Assam has a deep admiration and respect for nature. He relays to me the various flavors of peppers and reminds how a particular vegetable is a fruit.

“Assam, you have to watch Kiki’s,” I type for the second time in three weeks.

“After work, I’ll try,” he replies with a smiley face emoji.

How else do you share that level of grassy-hill-calm? This is my gift in a maybe relationship, I want you to feel that level of expansive contentment in your chest. I want Assam to feel that airy weightlessness that I feel when Kiki and her friend lay atop that hill. A blue sky, curling white clouds, and the seaside town brimming with excitement below. I imagine we are transported away from quarantine, and we are embodied in that calm.

“I saw Kiki’s – you were right about…” Assam types.