For someone who writes in a second language, paper is a minefield and every day is the next level in a survivor horror game. If you are still alive, you are doing something right. Every day you doubt and self loathe and battle the cockroaches of letters on the screen, and you lose more than you win.
Luckily I have good teachers. I walk around all day looking for that expression that describes how one day you meet someone who turns an abstract notion into a concrete, visual thing, and just when I give up after frantic searches online and in the best dictionaries I have, a character from Desperate Housewives finally manages to ‘put a face on it’ and smiles that perfect suburban smile. I sulk and brood over whether ‘tear it up’ has a negative or a positive connotation, the dictionaries tell me nothing, then I stumble across metacritic, because the only movements I can make at three in the morning are bumps and stumbles, so I bump into the review of Britney’s new album, if you don’t mind me calling it that, then into her new single, excuse my French, ‘How I Roll’, and as I cringe and writhe in my embarrassed skin, Britney teaches me that ‘tear it up’ can indeed be used in the most positive of meanings.
You ask questions. You get answers. But you hear only if you keep your ears open.
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