Month 10.3: The Approach of Halloween and Other Things Still in the Future

In the last while, I've received a few comments about my blog that have made me happy to be alive. Some have noted how much I've "grown" over the past year. Just to play the devil's advocate, I disagree. First, I think I've finally entered my immature teenage years, which I never really had as a teenager. I'm more selfish, more spontaneous, more disorganized, and lazier than I've ever been. So just be glad that I'm getting it out of my system all the way out here. Second, I've always thought this way. I mean, what I write in my blogs comes directly out of my head, and my head hasn't changed so much over the years. Maybe I've just become more open. Regardless, everything that is good in me comes from someone else. You're really special to me. If you're reading this blog, and I know you, you are more important than maybe you realize. So I just want to start this entry with a big, cheesy old thank you to the people who have been there for me and have inspired me. I'm yours, and while I'm not so good at knowing how to help people, I will do whatever you ask for if it will make you happier to be alive. (And if for some of you it's for me to come home – I'm working on it.)

Most of you know this, but I'm planning on starting a master's degree in translation in North America beginning September 2011. It amuses me how some of you are doubting my intentions with this program. I think some of you honestly cannot imagine how anyone could be interested in translation. I'm not just doing this to have something to do, it's not just for the lifestyle, it's not just to be able to say I've done a master's. But I won't pretend to have noble intentions either – those are indeed amongst the reasons why I'm applying.

The problem is that I'm still not convinced that the future is so important. Maybe this attitude comes from the Balkans, where the future truly is irrelevant to some people. It boils down to this: what is more important, the future or happiness? If a person is happy even if there's not much in store for him, then what's the problem? Should we condemn him for being happy? Or should we condemn the man who forgoes daily pleasures because he's too busy planning a perfect future?

I was pretty happy living spur-of-the-moment during my travels. Now that I have "plans" for the future… it's not that I'm unhappy. But now, there's a reason to be indifferent to the present. All the good stuff is in the future, so why bother with today? Why travel, when traveling isn't the point anymore? The point lies somewhere ahead, and anything you do now is fleeting.

Maybe it's only a problem for impatient people like myself. If there's a plan, then let's do it and get on to the next thing. I find it hard to focus on other things when I know there's a plan that needs fulfilling.

I would now like to draw your attention to Georgia. I met a Serbian girl who was obsessed with it. It's a very old country, and the language is perfectly insane. It has a pretty alphabet, too. Georgia borders the Black Sea to the west, Russia to the North, Turkey to the south, and Armenia and Azerbaijan to the east. There is a nice movie called "Mimina" about a Georgian man during Soviet times. There was a war between Russia and Georgia right up until 2008. There are two regions in Georgia which Russia recognizes as independent countries: South Ossetia and something else whose name looks like "Akhdhavilli" or something. Joseph Stalin was ethnically Georgian. Georgia is mountainous, the highest peak being over 5000 meters. Anyone want to come to Russia and Georgia with me next summer?

Month 10, Part 2. Cheesy faces autumn.

One day you sit back and realize it's gone out of your system. Whatever was once spicy has become bland. Nostalgia begins to appear disgusting rather than romantic. And you'll say to yourself, "Forget about the past." And for once, it will be a genuine urge. There's something depressing but relieving about moving on with life. It's like breaking an addiction. You want to want it again, but you just can't anymore. It's a deflated passion. The world loses its sparkle and falls back into grayscale.

Cheesy knew this was happening to her. She suspected that it was directly related to her having settled down. Urges and passions were giving way to old habits. It was calming but boring. The worst was that she found no desire to un-bore herself. It was nice to get up before everyone else in the house, to walk to the market, to cook a big lunch, to draw a bit, to write a bit, to read a bit, to walk to work in the evenings, to wander home, to go for a run, to have a glass of wine and slip into bed. Maybe she needed a bit of brain-death after months of constant turbulence.

But hand in hand with the return of routine, existential thoughts crept back into her mind. Once everything is habit, then everything is meaningless. That was what shocked her about the headscarves in Turkey – women put them on and took them off unthinkingly. Their conviction had turned into habit. Cheesy could no longer fool herself into thinking that routines were harmless. Routines veiled the truth. The truth was twofold: (a) there was some original purpose to the actions (like pleasure!), which has become lost through routine, and (b) the universe is actually chaotic, and to give into a routine is to be in denial of the true nature of existence. Cheesy thought both versions of the truth were related. Sometimes, after the purpose of an action is lost through routine, then routine becomes the purpose of that action. Thus we live unconsciously, for the sake of routine. And here was the danger: the entire world could open up to us if we simply let go of the routine. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well do whatever we want. We cannot if we are constrained by habit.

But why that sinking feeling, with all this freedom that Sartre and Camus offer? There is something demotivating about existentialism. If the universe is chaotic, we might as well stay home. To follow a habit is to deceive oneself, to break a habit is to face meaninglessness. The worst curse is really awareness of the conflict. What to do? Camus tries really, really hard to answer this in The Myth of Sisyphus. Basically he says to have a lot of sex and be an artist. Cheesy suspected that if Camus had pursued his reasoning just a bit further, the whole thing would have amounted to one grand justification of hedonism. Not such a bad deal. But in between the swigs of booze and cries of passion, the existentialist would still have to face the truth that everything is just for show, and when he dies there will be absolutely nothing to remember him by. And that kind of awareness sucks.

Cheesy thought it was possible to be driven completely mad deciding between the masquerade of routine and pointless frivolity in life – especially so if one is aware that this decision must be made. Because if one is aware of the need to decide, one is already aware that routine is just a masquerade of self-comfort in a chaotic universe. So the first choice is automatically eliminated (unless you can really re-deceive yourself after having become aware of the truth). So one is forced to admit the pointlessness of life. And yeah, it's fun to be frivolous, knowing that nothing matters. But somehow frivolousness never quite makes up for pointlessness. So one tries to lose oneself in routine again, tries to find a purpose. Eventually one turns back to frivolousness, disgruntled by no longer being able to deceive oneself by routine. And so the teeter-tottering begins. And (Cheesy knew Camus would roll over in his grave for this) Cheesy thought that suicides were often the result of people getting tired of teeter-tottering. There is no "decision" being made in suicide. It's just tiredness, of having to decide something all the time, of always having to deal with one's own thoughts, of never really being able to just live. Bah what did she know. Is it ever more than a thought that drives a person to suicide?

But wasn't there a testament to the danger of routine simply in the fact that Cheesy had begun to think about all these things again?

Month 10. Dip into Austria.

Austria somehow gets more beautiful every time I see it. Maybe I'm just getting uglier.

Sometimes it happens that a thought comes out of nowhere, grabs you like a leech and won't let go. I was sitting on the train, minding my own business, then… bam! A thought, saying, "Think me! Think me!" The thought was simple: Austrians are sweet. They are sweet in a way that Croatians and Italians and Americans never will be.

When this thought came into my head, I didn't really know what it meant, or whether I even believed it. So I had a chat with the thought to try to figure it out. It comes down to details (as always). Austrians pat people on the back. They wink at you. They sing. When you pass them by, they smile at you. The smile is sometimes mischievous but always sweet. And you know what? It feels good to be smiled at for no particular reason. It makes you feel sweet yourself.

People have often told me that I'm tiny, gentle, cute. I've always thought it was a patronizing thing to say, as if I were a pet. Sweetness is meekness. But now I realize that if I've made anyone feel good just by smiling sweetly at them, then I've done pretty well. And just because someone is sweet doesn't mean you can get anything you want from them. Austrians are just as hardy as Croatians. They don't let themselves be trampled upon.

After I dealt with this thought, another one came into my head. We're seldom what we think we are. Once we realize we're something, we often cease to be that thing. So true self-awareness is impossible. For example, drama queens are never really that dramatic. Their lives are seldom tragedies. Smart people are often only aware of all the things they don't know. Generous people often only give things away because they feel they're too selfish. Once a generous person realizes that he's generous, his guilt is relieved and so he stops giving things away.

I have never thought of myself as sweet or tiny in any way. But now that I've witnessed the sweetness of my relatives and friends in Austria, I'm wondering if maybe everyone has been right all along, that I'm just a sweet little girl who enjoys a sweet pat on the head by someone smiling sweetly at her. So if I finally accept this identity, will I turn into a bitch?

I realize that most of these blogs deal with heavy psychological business, like self-awareness, personality, and, well, me. Sorry about that. I can imagine it gets boring for the more practical among you. But anyway it's my blog, I can write what I want and you can't trample on me (especially since I'm in Croatia and you're over there). And the truth is that I'm only capable of writing about certain things. It bores me to write about architecture or wildlife. People are just more interesting. Of course there's always sex, drugs, and food, but those are also boring to talk about unless you're participating.

I could talk about linguistics if you like. Austrians in the southwest replace "s" by "sh" in the coda position of syllables (the final position in a syllable). For example, "Kastanien" (chestnuts) becomes "Kashtanien." Slovenian somehow sounds exactly like Austrian. "Exit" is "izhod" in Slovenian but "izlaz" in Croatian. Albanian sounds a lot like Italian due to a large amount of word borrowing. Many Croatian words come from Turkish, such as sat "hour" and kutija "box." I noticed that neither German nor Croatian has a locative clitic similar to the Italian ci or the French y. Actually German doesn't have any clitics, which is a shame because clitics are pretty cool. And even though Croatian doesn't have determiners ("the," "a"), definiteness is marked on adjectives modifying masculine nouns. For example, "star pas" means "an old dog" whereas "stari pas" means "the old dog." Austrians elide pre-consonantal liquids, resulting in compensatory lengthening (check out my link above if you're curious). For example, "alt" (old) becomes "oit" and "Karte" (ticket) becomes "koate." But I will never be able to tell you why German is just so much goddamn harder than any other language I've worked on.

And just to round it all off, I'll finish this entry talking about landscapes. The most beautiful place on earth is in the Dolomites. I don't care if I haven't seen everything. I don't care if generalizations are forbidden amongst anyone with an intellectual conscience. There is nothing more beautiful than the Dolomites. That's all.