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Marisa has a trait that I find in part very amusing but in part extremely worrying. It is simple, but indicates a *blight* in my eyes fundamentally. We were just talking, as we released dry and practically dry clothing from their castigation hanging from a flimsy drying apparatus, about the english word *pugnacious*. Admittedly, it is not a word I use very often. The word describes a certain *feature* of creatures that I do not desire to be around often.
A parallel word exists in Spanish, and therefore I expect they both come from a Latin or Lakife root. *Pugnaz*. The parallel seemed obvious to me but Marisa insisted that the term does not exist in Spanish. *Probablamente es usado de Panchitos.* She does not consider Spanish spoken in the Americas to be *real* Spanish, you see. I fetched her grand and more or less (according to her) unabridged (*more or less unabridged* is a phrase I should utilize more or less more often) dictionary and quickly discovered that *pugnaz* does indeed exist.
I used to enjoy a song during my desperate high school years entitled *In My Ways*. In fact, I am downloading the album at this moment because I have not heard it in years. Marisa is stuck in her ways. Her accumulation of knowledge up to a certain point is now immovable. She claims to be a erudite Spanish speaker. I believe her, for the most part, but any evidence that goes against her ostensibly total command of the language is immediately rejected.
This inner mechanism of hers behaves like a reflex. Like a vomit reflex, to an extent. Her sphere of knowledge has no intention of growing, let alone evolving. I come to understand her fear of travelling outside of her *known world* (Spain, Italy and parts of France) as an extension of this mechanism.
It's all a bit disconcerting, eh?
@flavigula@sonomu.club
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