Untranslateable words
We’ve been having fun in my workshops this week with a box of Untranslateable Words that my friend bought for me my birthday. Here are a couple of pieces that I wrote in response to the words I was given. Enjoy!
Iktsuarpok (Inuit)
A feeling of edgy anticipation that makes one keep on looking out of the window to see if an expected visitor is coming up the path.
She checked again.
He wasn’t online. His last seen said 19.37 and it was 20.48 now. She’d sent him a message at six and still not had a reply. What was he doing? It wasn’t like him. She tried to imagine his routine. They’d been chatting for a week now and she was starting to get a feel for the way he lived. It was late for him to be making dinner. Mind you, he had said that he liked to cook. He’d even WhatsApped her the recipe for his Pasta Supreme on Tuesday. They’d already shared so much: recipes, playlists, anecdotes of dating disasters. She’d have a cup of tea while she waited. She put the phone down and filled the kettle. What was it Granny used to say? A watched pot never boils.
20.54. She checked again. Still no sign.
He might be at the gym. She could tell from his profile pictures that he worked out. That one of him doing Tough Mudder……She couldn’t wait to meet him. She’d already thought of where to go on their first date. She’d picked out her outfit, and his. He’d be wearing his red checked shirt, the one from the photo in the restaurant with his mates. It would be just right for that new cocktail bar that people were talking about. They’d share stories over drinks, exchange flirtatious glances, maybe even sip from the same straw. And afterwards they’d kiss by the fountain, the mist from the spray adding a romantic haze to the scene.
The steam from the kettle was clouding her glasses. She wiped them clean and poured the water onto her herbal tea bag.
She checked again. Nothing.
She sat down with her tea and stared at the glass screen of her phone, willing the word ‘online’ to appear next to his name. Still nothing. Where was he? She was starting to feel anxious now. What if he didn’t show up at all? Was he ghosting her? Surely not. He’d seemed so keen. She shut her eyes. Breathe, Melissa, breathe. In, 2, 3, 4, out 2,3,4.
9pm. She checked once more.
He was there! She felt herself light up like the green dot on Facebook Messenger. They were back on track, on the path to love. She could see him typing through the window of her screen. Dan was online.
Litost (Czech)
The humiliated despair we feel when someone accidentally reminds us, through their accomplishment, of everything that has gone wrong in our lives. They casually allude to a luxurious house they are renting for the holidays. They mention the glamorous friends they have had for dinner. We feel searing self-pity at the scale of our inadequacies.
‘It’s not what you know, it’s who you know,’ her father used to say and Angela had always lived by his advice. She’d agreed to go to the girls’ private school and had made the grades for Oxford. Once there, she’d sought out the students from the established public schools, the ones with the double-barrelled names and titles. Her father was hoping for a good marriage for her. She was hoping for a job in publishing or a book deal. But here she was at thirty-five: single, childless, living back in up North with a soulless job at the Department for Work and Pensions.
Somehow, over the years, she’d fallen behind her peers, the peers and even her schoolmates had gone on to greater things. Amelia Braithwaite who’d been Deputy to her Head Girl had recently got a position in the cabinet. Meanwhile, Camilla Jeffries, last month, had acquired a different kind of cabinet – antique, walnut and filled with cocktails. Angela had seen it. Not at the party that Camilla had hosted last weekend, the one all the other alumni had gone to, including her childhood sweetheart, Jeremy. No, Angela hadn’t been invited. Even though she was still allegedly ‘friends’ with Camilla, Angela had only seen the cabinet and the cocktails, the other girls and Jeremy, on Facebook.
It was how she kept up with all the news. She could see everything they did. Every book launch and celebrity party, every marriage, holiday and new baby. She saw it all and it filled her with this feeling that she couldn’t put a name to. It wasn’t just jealousy, though she was jealous. It was more than that. It was like each Facebook post made her aware of her own shortcomings, of how little she’d achieved.
Mary, the counsellor nodded as Angela explained how she felt: the envy, the emptiness, the humiliation, the despair.
‘You’re wrong, you know,’ said Mary.
Angela waited for it. The platitudes and reassurance that she was doing ok all things considered, that Facebook wasn’t a real representation of people’s lives, that she shouldn’t concern herself with such superficial things.
‘There is a word for it, said Mary. ‘Litost.’
Beverley Ward