Hello, my dear friends and public.
Ever since elementary school, I’ve been revisiting locations and wondering how much of the old Jonathan was left over. During summertime this took the form of the oldest camp meeting in the country. Before the end of university, I’d shift my yearly highlight to the digital arts convention, SIGGRAPH. And as of 2012, furry conventions have served as my Ship of Theseus. While I consider these multicolored designated party and business zones to be my “work cubicle”, the same conventions always feel different year-to-year.
The communal area outside The Estrel, the official venue, is a popular night-time for meeting friends and sharing drinks and hookah around the fire.
I was feeling fatigued and nauseous early last Tuesday morning, experiencing nightmares of frustration due to my lack of German skills. I woke up to find it wasn’t a dream—I was still disappointed in what little German I knew. Right there in bed, I immediately started playing a German podcasts to work on my listening comprehension. We were less than an hour from starting our 27+ hour travel to Berlin for Eurofurence, my favourite convention but also the most difficult and expensive one to attend. EF uses the de facto language of English, but instead of this convenience I’m focused on my big picture and how far I am from being my ideal self. My hair is past my shoulders now because I promised I wouldn’t cut it until I can speak German fluently.
Our dealer table was far too small to display all of our products, but sales were consistently solid day-to-day. As an aside, I like hair as an illustration of time passed, the way it accumulates on a molecular level, eventually to something observable to the naked eye.
To learn how I’ve grown and how much this convention matters to me, I should tell you about my first Eurofurence, back in 2016.
It was my first ever time in Europe. I had initially planned it in 2015 to go outside my comfort zone as both an entrepreneur and husband. By the time it arrived, I was no longer a husband—my ex-wife and I had scheduled our divorce just three days after I’d return to The States.
That morning of August 2016, when the plane left the tarmac, I cried over my deep longing for others; I’d built my world around being more connected to humanity, but here I was with no other conversational language but English. I felt my multicultural marriage squeezed me from coal into a little diamond, the way it was painfully obvious how much room I had to grow to be more culturally and communicatively fluent. But in the context of learning new languages, I knew I would have to start thinking and feeling almost from scratch. And while most of the attendees of EF would already know English, that’s hardly the same as expressing feelings in a native tongue.
Traveling across the globe easterly makes for intense jet lag. As great as the EF staff are, getting set up in the Dealer's Den was a logistical nightmare for those who didn't make it into the official hotel. Our AirBnb was a 23 minute walk away and up 6 flights of stairs. And so, this is one of several photos of Sasha sleeping in public.
When one of my exes felt more capable and intelligent in German than in English, it hurt both of us to see how he couldn’t thoroughly share his feelings with me. When another of my exes had family speaking Igbo and Twi, I could tell it was a whole other dimension of joy and vibrance I could feel but not quite understand. When a few friends and I went on vacation to Puerto Rico in 2010, I heard children laughing and singing by the Castle El Moro as they flew kites, and I questioned if my English lacked the emotional quality of their Spanish. And after thinking my future would be spent moving to Switzerland, I knew learning High German would be difficult, but then learning Swiss German on top of that would be a whole other level of complexity rivaling the country’s unforgiving social parameters for empathetic people like myself.
(Ciryss, Foxy, Zyonji, back to front.) These fine folks are regulars in the stream and were among the many wonderful people I met in person.
Back to furries, at EF 2016 I had no guarantee anyone would show up to my talks, engage with my artwork, or even look forward to talking to me. I was greatly surprised to find many people wanted to meet me. (The French were my favourite, because they were the most emotional.) And the EF art show and dealers den seemed more invested in me than the average US demographic. And speaking of US, a well-traveled American friend taught me that interacting with the fandom at large could be almost completely covered by English, Japanese, and Russian. Since furry seemed to be a fast track to illustrating and exploring human behavior, I knew cultural exploration would also be expedited through the uniting factor of furry. My feelings of longing at the start of that flight had been realized—planets were aligning and I felt like I was at the center of it. The vastness of it is a weight on me, so I’ll summarize here:
EF 2016 was feeling compatible at a base-level with the priorities of the Western Europeans I met, and boldly exiting my marriage into something self-sustaining, eventually taking shape of a new relationship where I had to trust myself more than ever before.
EF 2017 was about solidifying my move to Europe with my partners, revisiting an international place for the first time, and pursuing financial stability in this new future.
EF 2018 was about keeping momentum and preserving my ties to Europe after deciding on an American home base, bridging those worlds by introducing my current boyfriend and utilizing my rough but helpful grasp of German.
The panels I gave at EF. I was worried about doing well on both, but our audience members provided a great sense of engagement! Response to Bridging the Divide in particular was quite emotional.
Yes, as it turns out, my German was enough to be useful! Some people stopped by our Dealer’s Den table and made purchases without using any English at all (though I used the word "money" instead of "cash" for the first day or so). I'm always tickled when people can't guess by accent where I was even from (American English accents normally don't belong to German speakers, here.) And quite a few people complimented me on my German accent when I actually had things to say! At the end of the convention, one of the most linguistically capable friends I have said he thought I was doing really well in my German studies, especially for someone self-taught. I tried, but I doubt I verbalized what that meant to me.
Though he was one of my biggest reasons for my studies, I’m no longer dating my German boyfriend. He doesn’t think I love him anymore, but I told him I’m still studying German because I love him so much, because I love others so much. Even though I made plenty of mistakes, the thought of making even a bit more progress than last year’s Eurofurence is enough to make me teary-eyed. Sasha was proud of me too—I think he even said he was impressed! Those kinds of compliments I still have a hard time internalizing. In the meantime, one day I may even talk to my ex in fluent German and know him to new depths.
(Left to right: Your humble author, Ty the jaded shibe, a nap'ed Sasha, Norr the Hungerer), A 'Berlin-walk to make' and a final supper ended our stay on a high note.
How many parts of myself have I never accessed before, I wondered, knowing only one language? I only know the English Jonathan now. Somewhere inside Deutschathan, Frenchathan, Persiathan, Akanathan, Japathan, Españathan, and others are dormant and waiting to be born. They won’t think or feel exactly the same way that I do in English, this expansive and eclectic mode of communicating that I was born into. When you study a language, you also adopt whole swaths of cultural legacy, accessing entire worlds you never before knew. When I struggle to learn Arabic script as someone used to romanization, it’s sometimes frustrating and sometimes pleasurable, but it’s always with the hope that my efforts aren’t squandered. It’s looking on the adventure map of my life and walking in a completely different direction. I have an emotional investment in Iran, for example, and I imagine not too many non-Iranian Americans will bother studying the language, but for an artist and an empath, with a conversational grasp on Persian, just maybe I will have opportunities to leave not only America and Europe but parts of Central Asia better off than when I was born.
Shawn (left) and Sasha at the Dead Dog party, appropriately held in the cleaned-out Dealer's Den space on the last day of the convention. Along with keeping a drink in my hand, Shawn taught me that, budget notwithstanding, it's poor form in Germany to order a beer and then split it w/a friend.
I apologize for the delay in this post, and for how long-winded it is. I wish I spent more time talking about the people who took me up on my invitation to experience EF for the first time, more or less as my mentees. I wish I talked more about the people at our panels who told us that what we’re doing really mattered, or how much it meant to me when my exes’ friends hugged us and loved us and made me feel like I belonged as much as I ever had before.
I wish writing loaded journal entries didn’t make it easy for me to relapse into extreme negativity. I wish I was a stronger Jonathan. But I’ll be gentle with myself and my progress. If I didn’t, I’d be a hypocrite in the face of every person whom I tried to encourage.
And finally, thank you for reading. My Patreon supporters made Eurofurence an option for me, from the start. Without them I’m confident I’d be a less developed Jonathan. But whether it was $2/mo, $250/mo, or just supporting by telling your friends, thank you for spending your energy and time with me. I’m honoured by your generosity and hope my best is enough to encourage your best. I'll see you in the livestream on Sunday morning, my time!
-J