That’s what my English teacher said us at Lyceum, many years ago, (expecially when we had to go to the bathroom, and we asked for) in the futile attempt to force us to learn a foreign language that everyone said “You’ll need it!”. But they didn’t explain what for.

I had studied french, before. So, she (the English teacher) detested me and I cordially loved her not particularly in return.

Fortunally I felt in love, then. With an Hollywood actor, obvously, and I knew the need to learn English: to understand what he said in an intervew, for example. That’s a very good reason to learn English.

Then I traveled, and I knew an other good reason to learn English: ten years ago I experienced the slavery of being dependent on others to communicate anything, and that strange feeling of exclusion, as if I were in a bubble, while others talk and understand each other… a not unusual feeling, to be honest, to me… I’m an alien, you know, therefore feeling excluded is not so strange nor new for people like me.

But this does not mean that it is a pleasant sensation.

And life is strange sometimes: it finds strange ways to answer your questions, or to satisfy your needs. My ex boyfriend (He, the ten-years’-He with which I broke up with, one year ago) was an English teacher, with a PH. D. in Poetry Translation, and more in general an expert of tha language and translation dynamics. If actually I know something about and have a better pronunciation than before, I owe it to Him.

But, let us Caesar what is to Caesar, three things I can do well, no more: writing, communicating, learning. So what I’m able to do now I owe it to myself too. To my strenght, to my willfulness, to my curiosity and, why not, to my luck.

I day by day learned to love and appreciate this Language; I began to watch movies and TV series in original version, to read translations with original text opposite; last year I proved to myself I was able to interview an american musician in English (Rodrigo Amarante). Now I want even to communicate my thoughts, my philosophy, my method to Work on myself, my novel’s passages to foreign visitors and friends. And as in the best alien traditions, I believe that the best communication can only be guided by the heart, or rather by the truth. Enjoy this new alien adventure!