canyonfables

i am practising my grammar. i don't really understand why it has fallen so noticeably far behind my vocabulary. social media told me that wouldn't happen. but anyway, my human teacher isn't worried so i won't worry, i'll just drill baby drill: Eu tinha, eu tive, eu tenho, se eu tivesse, se eu tenha... *sigh* Tô trabalhando nisso.

it's a funny thing with learning brazilian portuguese, but every step of the way, from the first day of duolingo to today, there have been messages transmitted on social media about high status learners and low status learners. and i've interpreted this advice pedagogically: be a good student, not a bad student. the number of youtube videos i've seen with an angry looking teacher on the thumbnail and "Stop Making This Mistake" as the caption... i watched all of them, because i wanted the teachers to like me, and to stop being angry-face.

i remember taking to heart a number of instagram reels from brazilian teachers mocking or complaining about their students. students don't talk enough during class. students don't study. students don't commit. i was so determined that i would be a good student who always spoke a lot, who always studied a lot, who always did all my homework. it all seems so silly, wanting to impress these influencers whom i never met, whom i'll never meet.

i remember one influencer saying that if you don't work harder on your conversation, you'll be able to read and write in portuguese but you won't be able to say anything. they said it like a threat. but i heard that and i thought: being able to read and write in brazilian portuguese sounds fucking amazing! imagine reading lispector, machado de assis, coelho in the original! fuck off that sounds incredible! imagine being able to write a whole essay in portuguese! that would be sensational!

i guess there was a pervasive message that i wasn't picking up on, about the status claims of social media based education as compared to institutional or curricular. those influencers were saying something about the indispensability of influencers, not about their specific techniques. and i'm not without sympathy because i've kept up with my social media curriculum with learning brazilian portuguese for sure, and also, i used to sell textbooks, and i know how much the textbook economy was not about education but about profit.

the wonder to me is that i haven't quit. "nunca vou desistir" i said to handsome yan, god, he was *so* fucking beautiful, that guy, but i felt so awful around him, some taffy daffy annoying opinionated stuck up white australian hausfrau failed artist loser learning brazilian portuguese without knowing why. "nunca vou desistir" i said to him, i will never quit.

and i never quit. seriously, two years every day. i finished the whole damn duolingo course. i travelled for months and still studied every day, in the train station in florence, in canary wharf, in york, in the airport in sydney, i studied every single day, without fail.

maybe i'm addicted to brazilian portuguese, because i can't relax until i've had my fix of it, and it's not like i'm that great at it! - like i said, b2 concepts, b1 toolkit, it's actually kinda problematic - but nunca vou desistir.

i subscribe to the interpretation of passive-aggression as aggression that is experienced as illegitimate, and so is expressed through oblique means. when it comes to the legitimacy of rage, it's clear that there are many of us who worry that if we flat-out say "i am angry" or "i am annoyed," we will have lost status within the workplace, the friendship, the family, or the partnership. and so we express it through behaviours, through the absence of behaviours, or through stinging words parcelled inside unfunny "jokes", and unhelpful "observations."

only joking. just saying.

passive-aggression is a topic that is offensive to everyone because we don't like to see ourselves as naturally venomous creatures. we remember when we were adorable. we see ourselves as neutral at worst.

i suffered terribly from the passive-aggression of others, and from the bizarre game of trying to prove that any aggression had taken place at all. it all felt like a game of ghost chess, on a spectral board of motives. as if i were a detective trying to prove that the person who had hurt me had on some level meant to hurt me. auden wrote "motives like stowaways are found too late." i never caught the motive behind others' behaviour at all. i found myself agreeing that my pain must be some kind of personal failing, some uncaused social aberration. i found myself apologising for being "hypersensitive."

it took a long time to accept my own feelings as legitimate, and to discard the ridiculous label of hypersensitivity, or at least, the association of sensitivity with weakness. the most powerful people in the world are often the most sensitive, the most easily upset. i'm sure you can think of examples.

and it also took me a long time to accept that i was also complicit in the passive-aggressive games of others, because i was determined to be passive-wounded, to reject my own hurt as illegitimate, and to express it obliquely through substance use, anxiety attacks, depression, avoidance, fawning, lying, or my favourite, completely shutting down. taking responsibility for the ways i insisted on a set of behaviours that both complemented and invited passive-aggression has been the work of a lifetime.

i was not just a victim. i was also one of the villains. i wanted people to know that they had hurt me, and i wanted that knowing to hurt them, but i didn't want to express it outright. i regret that. when i think of past scenarios, i cringe.

it was as if we had established a contract, that i would receive others' anger obliquely, and in return i would agree never to express pain. that was the deal. i fulfilled my side of the bargain in advance. i can't help but wonder how much passive-aggression i could have short circuited had i simply been willing to ask "Are you angry?"

but then, sometimes, i did ask "Are you angry?"

i remember asking. i remember the answer was always "No." I was only joking. It was just an observation.

and i always caved in eventually, accepting those non-apology-apologies: "if that's how it came across, then i'm sorry." non-apology accepted. ready for round two.

in the book "emotional vampires" j alfred bernstein pointed out that passive-aggressive personality types were often blind to their own hostile impulses. learning that was an absolute breakthrough for me. it encouraged me to look at the moral pretensions of others (as people who didn't suffer from moods) and my own moral pretensions (as a man whose feelings were always justified, and who never needed to fight). in every case, a lofty self-image set the stage for sadomasochistic mind games, especially in the workplace where a standard of "professional" conduct is often interpreted as being a moodless, emotionless outcome facilitator.

instead of a person. living a life.

i don't know that passive-aggressive behaviour can be named easily in others. nor can it be recognised easily in ourselves.

this is a matter, i think, of being in touch with your own instincts, and following the real and valuable information they provide. and that means being aware enough of your own thoughts and feelings to know where you're hurting.

a certain stillness is required. a certain patience. and a certain willingness to accept the fact that some specific people make you feel uncomfortable.

and it requires a certain ability to decipher hieroglyphic behaviours, unfortunately. this means it is very difficult to protect children from passive-aggressive bullying, because children simply cannot be expected to recognise patterns of dissimulation the way adults can recognise them. not in others, not in themselves. not being a parent myself, i am not sure how parents can detect and deal with the effects of passive aggression on their children. i can guess that children's voices must be encouraged rather than silenced, and that the details in children's stories must be regarded as expressive rather than incidental.

but so it is with ourselves. speaking up, and accepting the curious details of our narratives as expressive, is essential.

i have read hundreds of essays online about passive-aggressive parents bullying children - these have long been part of the ecology of the creative internet - but when it comes to older generations talking about how their passive-aggressive children have bullied them, this seems to have been more a matter of offline conversation. i am yet to make sense of that phenomenon. maybe the first person industrial complex really is a Gen X and Millennial thing, and that there is a wave of articles coming about how sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have an ungrateful child. maybe i'm just looking in the wrong place, and the facebook comments section has captured and monetised the pain of parenting in ways that online essays have not. but i suspect it has more to do with taboos placed around real parental emotions.