Radio Chthulucene 87.9 FM

I’ve been mulling over what to base my project on for the past couple of days.

What is code-switching? I know what it is, because I do it every day. I switch between how I talk to white elders and white teens, brown elders and brown teens, black elders and black teens. I switch between how I talk to people depending on whether or not I’m in a work uniform, a business outfit, or my everyday clothes.

I know what code-switching is, but I wasn’t sure on which topic I would like to do my project on until about an hour or two ago when I learned that my childhood dog had died — he drowned in my family’s pool.

My dog — Taco — was bilingual; he grew up in a household where English and Spanish reigned and he understood both languages pretty well. He was a smart dog. Was.

I think I feel my emotions too strongly — sometimes to the point where my skin feels like it will split at any moment — and that’s because I feel them in both languages; I love in English and Spanish. I love my mother in Spanish and my brother in English — usually I do not find myself loving someone in both languages.

But Taco was different! I loved him in both languages and his gleaning, adoring eyes always knew my doting words were for him, no matter the tongue.

I have much to say about my dog’s death, and so I think that for this project, I’ll be writing him a poem.

As for the location, I think I would want it to be at the Revelle fountain, which has a patch of green grass where I often see dogs playing around. It may be a bit macabre for my location to be water-related, considering my dog drowned, but I think I want to address that aspect in my poem.