Month 17.4. Returns.

An homage can end up sounding eerily similar to an obituary. Maybe it’s the overtone of nostalgia. Maybe it’s the distance the writer creates between himself and the object of his love. He confronts the pitiful truth that the most beautiful things are the ones just out of reach.

Cheesy’s time in Europe was quickly running out. Would she soon need her own obituary? Someone wise suggested that Cheesy would need to reinvent herself if she wanted to survive. But sometimes, when we think we’re reinventing ourselves, we’re just returning to something we were previously.

And so, as a new future opened up to Cheesy, the past was sucking her back in. She was reminded that life is circular, not linear. The following homage is therefore both an obituary and a birth song.

…

The best place in Montreal is high up on the balcony of Saint Joseph’s Oratory. Go there alone one evening in late autumn, when it’s cold enough to see your breath. Watch the city sparkle through the steam. Track the cars creeping north along Decarie Boulevard. The highway disappears into a mass of glowing orange lights, which in turn fade to blackness. Sometimes on the horizon you can see a plane land at Mirabel airport.

One time Cheesy went to the balcony during daylight. Far below her, at the foot of the oratory, she could see a pilgrim beginning her climb up. She was a large black woman. The woman stooped clumsily to her knees. She clasped her hands together and was still for a few seconds. Then she pulled herself up to the first step, her heavy bosom rocking back and forth. She paused again, pulled herself up to the next step. After fifteen minutes, the woman was about halfway up the steps. Cheesy turned away from the balcony and went home.

Cheesy remembered Halloweens in N.D.G. One year, she and her two friends dressed up as a three-headed dragon. They took a large green bed-sheet and cut three holes in it for their heads. They stumbled around the neighborhood together. It snowed a little that night, but the bed-sheet protected them.

During high school, Cheesy walked to school. It took half an hour, straight up Monkland Street. She’d first pass Benny Park. In January, when the sun was just rising, she could see hoarfrost on the trees. The sky glowed salmon pink behind the branches. The ice and salt crunched under Cheesy’s boots.

When Cheesy lived downtown on Saint-Marc Street, she would sometimes walk down to the train tracks. The tracks were overgrown with grass, and sometimes she would pass a dog-walker. Sometimes she went over to the canal and watched it flow black under the orange city lights.

On Saint-Laurent Street, Cheesy would come home from work around 3:30 a.m. The crowds would be pouring out of the bars and into the streets. The fast-food joints would all be packed. The traffic would be jammed to a halt. The air would pulse with the shrill cries of revelers against the rhythmic boom of club music. Drunks and bouncers would banter in French, English and Franglais. One time Cheesy struck up a conversation with a kid sitting on a doorstep eating a poutine. He described himself as homeless by choice. When he got bored with his snack, he tossed the container into the basket of a locked-up bike and walked away.

One time, they were replacing the sidewalk outside of Cheesy’s loft on Saint-Laurent. They hadn’t warned her. She opened her front door and stepped ankle-deep into wet cement.

One time Cheesy woke in the middle of the night to the blaring of an alarm. The loft was filled with smoke and a bunch of people were running out into the hallway (there were often random groups of people partying in the loft). Cheesy rushed out after them. She burst into the club in pajamas, only to find out it was a false alarm set off by the smoke-machines. A few people smiled at her.

One morning Cheesy locked herself out of her apartment while getting the newspaper from downstairs. She had to walk across the neighborhood in pajamas and slippers to her aunt and uncle’s house to get the spare keys. Somehow Montreal lends itself to outdoor pajamas.

Cheesy remembered sitting out in the garden of their house during the summertime. One summer she developed a passion for milkshakes and discovered that peanut butter and ground coffee beans go great with ice cream. Lying on the lawn chair, smelling the barbecue smoke, listening to the dogs’ collars jingle, feeling the sweat trickle down her back, the garden was an island on an island. She remembered looking at the sky through the apple tree leaves. It was so deep blue that you could almost reach up and touch it, like satin.

In their first house, Cheesy and her brother used to make umbrella forts on the porch when it rained. When it was sunny, they’d crawl along the fence to the neighbor’s house where their friends lived. Together they’d go to Trenholme Park and climb trees. Years later, the municipality set closing hours on the park to ward off teenage drinkers.

Montreal unfolds along Saint-Catherine Street. (Pumping life into a city, streets are nicknamed “arteries” for good reason.) Saint-Catherine’s starts off in the heart of big money and big houses, Westmount. The street flows east into the Dawson College ghetto, dotted with girls in miniskirts just discovering the world of cigarettes and pool halls. Then it runs through Concordia University’s territory. Cheap Chinese restaurants and low-rise buildings line the street. Finally Saint-Catherine emerges into commercial downtown, harboring the underground city and spawning sidestreets filled with bars and businesses. A few churches stand watch like chaperones over men in designer suits and women in stilettos. The street slopes eastward and disintegrates into a strip of sleazy sex shops and art studios. It opens up into the Place des Arts, the district of open-air shows, opera concerts, and theatre performances. Beyond is Saint-Denis Street, where artsy professionals and carousing students bond over sangria.

Living in Montreal is like living in the head of a schizophrenic. A change of street, a change of lighting, a change of season is enough to renew your entire perspective. You think you’ve gotten to know Montreal. It laughs and throws a new personality in your face. Sure, many cities are multifaceted. But Montreal is denser. It’s swanky and sleazy, cultured and carefree, showy and secretive. Its strict Catholic past gave birth to a hedonistic rebel. It is utterly egotistical, but will give you anything you ask. True Montrealers are romantics – they believe in passion, be it the seductive or intellectual kind. What’s funny is that no one seems to love Montreal more than those who leave it. The most beautiful things are the ones just out of reach.

Month 17.3. Bright shiny things.

What is the meaning of life? Does God exist? Even all the way over here, I can here you groan at the start of another convoluted and essentially useless blog entry. But wait. For once, I’m going to agree with you: it doesn’t matter.

Okay, okay, I haven’t given up that much ground yet. I still believe that the meaning of life matters. But I don’t believe it matters whether God exists.

Now, I’m like many of you in that I value truth above most things. Ugly, loud, incomprehensible, or fruitless – we hunt down the truth in every form. We sniff it out and gobble it up faster than you can say “Lie.” But God is a dead end. Believers and non-believers can bicker about it for millennia (and they have). There just isn’t a universally accepted truth about God’s existence. We truth-eaters generally don’t like intellectual dead ends. But I’d like to suggest that God can be a very cozy dead end to get stuck in. So cozy, in fact, that it doesn’t really matter whether he exists.

Dan Dennett is a pretty cool philosopher. He’s got a big white beard and looks like Santa Clause. One of the things he’s discussed is religion as an adaptive evolutionary mechanism. He suggests that religion has been as essential to human life as our fingers. It doesn’t mean that if you’re an atheist you’re going to fall over dead. It does mean that evolution has given the upper hand to religious people. (Nowadays the countries with the highest rates of atheism have the lowest birth rates. It’ll be interesting to see how those countries hold out.)

So why is religion such an enduring and central part of civilization? An atheist’s response is that it provides people with a sense of connection to the world, a sense of purpose, and a sense of community. But why are any of those things important from an evolutionary point of view? Community, okay. We survive better in groups given the many physical limitations that come with being human. But connection and purpose? How can that benefit survival?

There’s a bunch of philosophers who’ve discussed how various psychological tendencies have evolutionary benefits. But I think that to really appreciate the necessity of religion, you have to be religious. Muslims and Christians make similar claims that the faithful must submit to God. From an atheist’s point of view, this is an absurd thing to do. Submit to what? The sky? A book? How can that possibly be helpful? But the psychology of it is amazing. There is something deeply satisfying about throwing your entire energy into one concept. I think it’s why people so desperately search for love, or obsess over their careers, or adore their children. We love to find something we think is perfect, better than us, worthy of all our dedication.

So, God is essential because believing in him makes us feel good. And humans who feel good survive, for many reasons. People who feel good are usually healthy. People who feel good aren’t homicidal or suicidal. People who feel good tend to help others out. People who feel good want to have sex. People who feel good are energetic, so they can last longer hunting boars or picking berries or whatever. So if you want to survive, feel good!

Going back a step, it’s worthwhile to wonder why it makes us feel good to dedicate ourselves to things we think are better than us. It’s also worthwhile to wonder why careers and lovers alone don’t make the cut. What is it about metaphysical things that makes us feel good? I have no idea. Which saddens me, because those are the most interesting questions. But it doesn’t matter. Believing in God makes us happy, industrious, fertile, healthy, and helpful. If your career does that, then great. If your lover does that, even better. Whatever floats your boat. (As in, Noah’s boat, get it?)

Dennett finds plenty of problems in the details. The way religion is taught, the way faith is preached, and the way customs are spread have led many people to question how good religion really is for the human race. But there are always problems in the details. No matter how much you love your job, some days suck. No matter how much you love your lover, sometimes he/she … uh, isn’t cool. (I’m tactful eh? Get it?) Likewise, no matter how good it feels to be spiritual, it can come with downsides. Like the crusades. But okay. The point is that maybe we should stop stigmatizing believers, workaholics, and romantics. In the end they all have the same ideals in mind – something bright, shiny, and better than us, guiding our behavior. For better or worse, having such ideals make us human. And hey, evolution seems to know what it’s doing, so we might as well embrace our humanity and try to survive a few millennia more.

Month 17.2. Synthetic Happiness.

Back in September, Cheesy had had an argument with a guy about whether drunken happiness was as authentic as sober happiness. Cheesy’s argument had been that happiness is simply a chemical state in the brain, so it doesn’t matter whether happiness comes about via alcohol or otherwise. The guy had come up with a wicked rebuttal, but Cheesy couldn’t remember it anymore because she had been drinking at the time of the argument.

Which means the question still holds: if we synthesize happiness from such trickery as alcohol or self-deception, are we falling short of “real” happiness?

It turns out that many people have asked themselves the same question before Cheesy. Some have even taken the initiative to research an answer. For example, Dan Gilbert and Barry Schwartz make the case that people are happiest with what they’ve got when they know they can’t have anything else. The more alternatives and opportunities people have, the less happy they are with the status quo – even though you’d expect that having more choices would make people happiest. Researchers call this inverse relationship between happiness and freedom of choice “the paradox of choice” (see link above).

In theory, then, we could manufacture our own happiness just by telling ourselves, “I’ve got no other choice; this is how it’s gotta be.” Or, we could choose not to inform ourselves about alternatives to what we have. In fact, we synthesize happiness all the time when we conclude a bad episode with the words, “It was for the best.” By imagining that our choices were limited, we make ourselves happy with how things actually are. It’s called happiness synthesis.

Gilbert’s research has suggested that “synthesized” happiness is more potent than “natural” happiness. That is, we are happier in situations that we feel are inevitable than in situations that we’ve chosen from a set of alternatives. For example, you come back from a trip around the world with gifts for your friends. If you just give your friend Lou a gift, he’ll be thrilled with it. But if you present Lou an array to choose from, he’ll be less happy with the gift he’s chosen than the one he’d have if you had forced a gift upon him – even if he gets to choose his favorite in the array. The synthesized happiness he feels with the imposed gift (“Ha! I bet none of the other gifts were as great as this one”) is stronger than the natural happiness he feels when he chooses his gift (“Yay, I’ve gotten the best of the lot! But what if I’d chosen….”)

So, we can synthesize happiness when we perceive the status quo as inevitable, and synthesized happiness is actually more potent than the happiness that comes from having chosen amongst a set of alternatives. This is a pretty momentous discovery. It stands against some fundamental values in North America. All that freedom and opportunity we strive for might not make us as happy as we think. We can now turn to Cheesy’s original question: if synthesizing happiness is one of the most effective ways of boosting happiness, and if we can synthesize happiness through drugs and alcohol, then is inebriation actually a more effective way of achieving happiness than sobriety? Should we all be getting drunk, all the time?

First thing’s first: not every drunk is a happy drunk. Reactions like violence, paranoia, and illness can happen under the influence. Especially when you get addicted. The more you consume, the more you need to consume to achieve the same level of happiness you originally felt. Second thing’s second: happiness is actually not all there is to life. Valued activities like working hard, travelling, or sharing nice memories would be quashed by being constantly intoxicated. If you don’t care about anything but happiness, then cheers.

Third thing’s third: you can remember sober happiness, since it’s a conscious happiness. It follows that the effects of sober happiness can a last long time. When you’re drunk, you can be happy as a peach, but you’ll forget it all in a matter of hours. So, you have to get drunk again. And then you forget again. And the cycle repeats until, voilà! You’re an alcoholic. (We must not beg the question by assuming alcoholism is a bad thing, which is precisely the subject of this debate. But it’s a tough argument to make that addiction to anything, alcohol included, is good.) (Can addiction be a good thing?)

And a fourth thing – soberly happy people tend to spread their happiness everywhere they go. They want to share. A happy drunk can be happy alone or with a few buddies. If the buddies aren’t drunk, they’ll probably just be annoyed at their friend’s drunkenness. So while sober happiness is multiplicative, intoxicated happiness can actually be isolating. Then again, if everyone else is drunk too, who cares? But a fifth thing. With reason or not, the West does consider alcoholism and drug use a bad thing. So if you’re drunk all the time, you’ll probably be subject to shame and stigmatization. Shame is generally not conducive to happiness. So, given the actual values of our society, booze and drugs may not be the most effective paths to happiness.

Sixth of all, we must not forget the voice of the brooders and purists. They insist that drunken happiness just isn’t legit because it comes from somewhere instead of arising spontaneously as a personal reaction to events. I sympathize with them. However, their argument begs the question by assuming that manufactured happiness is less valuable than natural happiness. This is precisely the assumption that we are putting to question.

Seventh and last, Gilbert and Schwartz’ research promotes happiness that is synthesized when we’re stuck with what we’ve got – not happiness that is synthesized when alcohol enters our bloodstream. A group of students who get drunk are not happy because they knew they had no other choice but to drink. They are happy because of the chemical effect of alcohol on their brain. I don’t know about any research indicating whether the way in which happiness is synthesized matters. Maybe that’s just the kind of research we need, to solve the matter for once and for all. The point is that the happiness synthesized from stubborn optimism is not clearly equivalent to the happiness synthesized from alcohol. So we can’t conclude that alcohol-synthesized happiness is valuable just because optimism-synthesized happiness is.

I know people who drink to celebrate life and people who drink to forget life. In the end, you have a choice – and that’s maybe what makes it hardest. If the world simply forbade alcohol, then we wouldn’t drink, and according to the research we’d all be pretty happy with our lack of choice. To me, a good rule of thumb is that if you can remember your happiness, then it doesn’t matter whether or how it was synthesized. Happiness that vanishes without a trace isn’t worth much.

Month 17.1. Empty words.

1.

Wait a second, have I really been here seventeen months? Holy smoking cow. Don’t really know how that happened.

2.

Cool words in English:

· Jowly. (Means something like “having a lot of cheek area.”)

· Anticipatory.

· Ecumenical. Ranks along with “ecclesiastic” and “Episcopalian.” I don’t really understand any of them, but they have to do with churches.

· Whiz. But only when you aspirate the “w.” (Means “to pee,” or is an adjective describing smart kids.)

· Australopithecus. (The name of an early type of human.)

· Parallelogram. Ranks with “parallelepiped.”

· Agrarian. Ranks along with “bucolic,” since they have similar semantic and oxymoronic qualities. (Both words evoke images of peaceful farming, which inspires reactions contrary to “grrrrrrr,” trying to rear your horse, puking, and colic illness.)

Uncool words in English:

· Dribble.

· Dollop.

· Dabble.

· Clad.

· Germane. (Means “relevant.”)

· Gregarious. (Means “having a tendency not to go solo.”) It’s just too close to so many other words. “Hi, I’m Greg, I’m gregarious.” “Hi Greg, I’m Gary. I’m also gregarious.” “You sure you’re not egregious?” “Uh, well I thought you were egregious.” “Well for sure I’m gregarious, but that doesn’t make me Gregorian.” “Are you being garrulous?” “No, Gary, that’s you.” “Oh, I thought I was garish.” “Dammit, Gary.”

· Prod.

· Prong. Ewwww. Worst word ever, second only to “dollop.”

3.

Cool words in Croatian:

· Prtljaga. (Luggage)

· Razlog. (reason)

· Vrh. (peak)

· Češće. (more often)

· Devedesetogodišnjakinja (girl in her twenties)

· Mogućnost (possibility)

· Otok (island). Ranks with “otoci” (islands) and “otocima” (in the islands).

· Najjednostavniji. This one really deserves a drum-roll. Its meaning is… “simplest.”

4.

Betcha don’t know anything about Zulu.

Zulu is spoken by nearly ten million people, mostly in South Africa. It’s the language of Johnny Clegg, Lucky Dube and Desmond Tutu. Zulu has one of the richest phonemic inventories of any language in the world. Of interest is one sound, written hl, that only exists in Welsh. It’s like saying “sh” with a lisp. Even more interesting are the clicks. There are three basic types: the letter x is the sound you make to make a horse come to you. The letter q is like a bottle popping, and c is like tsk-tsk.

I’ve read arguments that the diversity of sounds in southern African languages supports the hypothesis that they are the oldest languages on earth. There is an analogous argument in genetics - there is higher genetic diversity in regions that have been inhabited longest. So, if the arguments are correct, Africa is the land of both our genetic and linguistic origins.

Wanna know how to make a sentence in Zulu? I knew you did. First, we take a verbal root. Let’s take –qond- which means “to understand.” Second, we take a subject. Let’s take –u- which means “he” or “she.” We’re going to put the subject and the verb together, and there are different possible ways to do this.

We must choose the verb tense. The verb tense will give us the format for how the subject and the verb are put together. Let’s take the present, to mean “he understands.” The format is [subject]+ya+[verb]+a. “ya” and “a” don’t mean anything, they’re just part of the format. So we get uyaqonda which means “he understands.”

If we want to stick in an object, it comes after ya. The first person “I” or “me” is –ngi-. So, “he helps me” is uyangiqonda, which breaks down to u + ya + ngi + qond + a.

If we want to say a negative sentence, we use a different format: a+[subject]+[verb]+i. Here, “a” and “i” are meaningless, just part of the negated sentence format. So, “I don’t understand” is angiqondi, which breaks down to a + ngi + qond + i.

And that’s all you’ll ever need to know of Zulu!