Month 13.2. Words count.

This is the first of two blog entries about the English language. This entry concerns a lexical characteristic of English. The second entry – which I'm particularly excited about – concerns a phonetic characteristic of English.

One of my trusty blog-followers was pleased to tell me an interesting assertion he read about English: it has by far the most words of any language (with something like 600 000 words, compared to German in second place with 250 000. Someone can correct me if I'm wrong on the exact numbers). I'm equally pleased to give a more detailed response at this time.

The first reason to cast doubt on the assertion is methodological. It's possible that the author of the assertion derived his facts by counting the entries in various dictionaries. One problem immediately arises that many languages simply don't have dictionaries. Another problem is that standard English dictionaries are the result of centuries of compilation, whereas the dictionaries of other languages may be relatively new. Therefore, much more research has been done on "finding" words in English than in other languages, and consequently many more words have been found. It also follows that many archaic words are listed alongside modern variants in English dictionaries. More recent language dictionaries stick to words currently in use.

(Aside: Yes, people actually had to do research finding words in order to compile the first English dictionary. A great read about the creation of the English dictionary is "The Professor and the Madman.")

But suppose our friendly asserter got his data online. There are plenty of sites that track "new words" in English. Add these up and bingo! Tons of words to add to the English dictionary. Like "Belieber" and "screenager." The question any shrewd reader should now ask is, "Well so how does something become a 'new word'?" The answer is totally arbitrary: if it has been used at least x number of times by separate writers. That's it. (I can't remember what the number is, 25 or 82 or 103. The point is that it's arbitrary, and actually pretty low).

I can think of three problems with this arbitrary criterion for online word-counting. Each problem may lead to the inclusion of more words in the English lexicon than there ought to be. First, many coinages vanish as soon as their referents do. (At least I hope that Justin Bieber will vanish soon.) So it's not clear whether a word that was used x times last year, but x – 1 times this year, should still be counted as a word. Second, many coinages are technical jargon. So if cyclomethicone, the second ingredient in my facial cream, is not a legitimate word in English, than neither should "xenozoonosis" be just because x many people used it on the internet. Third, many of these coinages result from incorrect usage of a "real" English word. So just because a bunch of people have mistakenly used "irregardless" to mean "regardless," does "irregardless" become a legitimate word? Whether we count words online or in dictionaries, there is no uncontroversial methodology for summing up the English lexicon.

This brings me to the second reason for doubting that English has more words than any other language: there is no clear way to define the word "word." The problem is morphological. Morphology is the branch of linguistics that studies how meaning is built up from units of speech. A morpheme is a chunk of speech that bears meaning. Take the word "count." It consists of a single morpheme meaning "add up." Now we can add the morpheme –able which says, "It is possible to execute the action denoted by verb I attach to." We get "countable." Now we can add the morpheme un- which negates the adjective it precedes. We get "uncountable." And so on.

English isn't particularly agglutinative. That means that one word usually corresponds to one morpheme (e.g. all the words in "He is happy to be here" are monomorphemic). But some languages can create huge words just by attaching lots of morphemes together. Famous is the German Donaudampfschifffärtsgesellschaftskapitän which breaks down to the noun "Captain-of-the-society-for-the-passage-of-cargo-ships-on-the-Danube." And that's just a noun. In other languages, whole sentences are piled into a single word. So we can make really long words by adding a lot of morphemes together.

It turns out that infinitely many sentences can be constructed in any sufficiently rich language (I actually had to prove this in my intermediate logic class – there are orders of infinity, and the number of possible sentences corresponds to one of the orders of infinity). For our purposes, all human languages are "sufficiently rich." So there are infinitely many possible sentences in each language. Here's the key deduction: if there are languages in which words can be sentences, and all languages have infinitely many possible sentences, then there are languages with infinitely many possible words. So there, English.

I know what you're going to say. If we wrote English in such a way as to make words out of sentences, then English would have infinitely many words too. E.g. Asentencewouldlooklikethis – just one word. Now write every sentence as just one word, and suddenly we have a bazillion more words in English. It's not so easy. There are reasons why "word" and "sentence" are separate notions. Linguists have identified many criteria that distinguish them.

One of the main criteria for distinguishing words from sentences is their prosody. Individual words have particular stress patterns. Each language has a different way of assigning stress to words. For example in French, stress falls on the last syllable of a word. Within any particular language, the rules governing the intonation of whole sentences are different from the rules governing the intonation of a single word. For example, the same sentence can be a question or a statement in English ("You're coming home" vs. "You're coming home?"). But that doesn't mean that every word within a question has the same rising pitch as the overall question. So, words and sentences have different prosodies. If, in a language, a particular sentence has all the same prosody patterns as a word, we can say that the sentence is actually a single word.

There are additional criteria for distinguishing sentences from words. Sentences can be broken up into morphemes that can stand on their own (e.g. The word "go" of the sentence "Go home!" could stand alone). Words cannot be broken up into morphemes (meaningful parts) that stand alone. That's why un- isn't a word, even if it bears some kind of meaning. So, words and sentences contain different types of morphemes. If, in a language, a sentence cannot be broken up into smaller parts that can stand on their own, then that sentence is a word.

What I've hoped to demonstrate is that the definition of a "word" is a complex issue. Whether something is a word depends not just on its usage, but on a variety of linguistic "tests" (such as prosody and ability to be broken up into free-standing morphemes). Given these linguistic tests, there are plenty of "words" that cannot simply be looked up in the dictionary. There are languages that form new words every time a sentence is spoken. The grand conclusion is that we should be skeptical when anyone tries to "count" the number of words in a language, which misleadingly suggests that some languages are richer than others.

(An addendum might help to clarify the intuition that English does have a huge vocabulary. The reason is that English is a Germanic language, but received many loans from French after the Norman invasion in 1066. The result is that for most words with Germanic origins, there is a word having the same meaning but with Latin origins. E.g. dumb (G) – stupid (L), wonderful (G) – excellent (L), hunger (G) – famine (L), speech (G) – language (L).)

Month 13. Revisions.

We were sitting in the smoke-room of a hotel in Serbia when an Estonian guy sitting across from me launched into an elaborate tirade about the despicability of Americans. Well, at least he thought he was being elaborate. He had two points, both clearly deduced by a lengthy and ingenious reasoning process surely not replicated by anyone else in Europe: Americans are stupid and they consume too much.

I sat there listening to him go on and on. Just when my brain was about to self-destruct, I asked the guy, "Have you ever been to the States?" Silence. "Well, uh, I had this friend who went…." "And have you ever met an American?" "Well, you know, I watch movies…."

After my visit to North America this summer, I admit I was also cynical. It seemed to me that everyone was absurdly spoiled. I couldn't imagine anyone ever being satisfied when there was always something bigger, better, newer, prettier to be had. I saw things going to waste everywhere, things being thrown out that would be a luxury over here (e.g. broccoli).

But after living six months in an apartment where half the electricity is out most of the time and all the electricity is out some of the time, my opinion has changed. We by no means suffer in Split. We're happy and we live pretty well; in summer we live excellently. But when you live in a long-term lack of something, it's human nature to get as much of that something as you can once it becomes available. There's no morality involved – it's a question of human nature. That's what people get wrong when judging NAm. (I'm blending the States and Canada together in this, although Europeans are curiously insistent that Canadians are different.) (Another aside: My words imply that human nature is "above" moral judgment. Intellectually, I do kind of think so. Practically, instinctively, there are plenty of things I see people do out of "human nature" that I judge to be morally wrong. It's a huge issue that I'll leave to the philosophers.) And so the people who judge NAm are the ones who forget to consider how they themselves would act, given the same circumstances as a North American.

In the States, wifi internet is available on buses and trains (!). Fancy phones (I don't even know what's what anymore, iPads or whatever) are cheap. Gizmos and gadgets are there and easy to acquire. You can keep in touch people and take care of business instantly from anywhere. For God's sake you can look up a word online while you're riding the metro to work. That's amazing. Would you refuse that, given the chance? What good would it serve you to refuse?

In NAm, you can get strawberries in the middle of winter. If someone offered you fresh blueberries in March after you've spent months eating wrinkly apples, would you really say no? Who cares where that mango came from - it's delicious, nutritious, and available. Why not?

In NAm, you can sample cuisine from all over the world at a modest price. I sound like an advertisement, I know. And yeah, the cuisine is not always "authentic." But the fact is that NAm has ties to everywhere. Walking down a single street, you can hear people speaking Vietnamese, Portuguese, and Creole. Go to an Irish pub and a real, live Irish person will serve you. There are shops that sell Korean goods, there are bookstores that carry literature from all around the world. This sounds ridiculous, but in a way the world is in North America. You can learn about any place and meet anyone from anywhere right at home. (Don't get me wrong – I still think there's nothing compared to living it first-hand.) And so if an Argentinean tried to strike up a friendship with you in NAm, would you politely decline because it's not Argentina?

The point: NAm really is the land of opportunities. To not take advantage of the opportunities is actually more wasteful than to "consume" them. This blog is not an incitement to go out and spend thousands of dollars on useless trinkets. It is an encouragement for people in NAm to realize how truly lucky they are, and to make the best use they can of all the wonderful things available to them.

_____________

Your homework for this lesson is to go about your daily routine as always, but to look around you for all the small items and choices that you wouldn't have if you weren't in NAm. Those are the things that count. Do you have special whitening toothpaste? Eggs, toast, or cereal for breakfast? Did your shower stay hot to the end? Do you wear round-toe or pointy-toe shoes? Can you schedule a doctor's appointment? Do you drink water from your tap? With ice? Do you have a cell phone? Do you buy organic? Bonus points go to the student who finds the smallest thing to be grateful for.

Month 12: Layers

Layer 1.

The best things in life are layered.

What comes to your mind when I say the word "layered"? Indeed, it's a very layered word. Here are the things I think of:

The Opera cake that I once helped Sarah make in Calgary.

Onions.

People. You can learn so much more from layered people. There's something unnerving about people who lay all their cards out right away. At first you feel special. Then you realize you're more like a microphone, an object that people whisper their deepest feelings to, then walk away from. I feel better around people that I know are hiding something from me. It commands respect and patience.

Bed sheets and clothes. I used to have dark blue bed sheets, and going to bed was like diving underwater. Deep layers are dark and safe.

Erosion. See picture.

Pretty cool eh? (But maybe not quite the greatest thing in the world, um…)

Art. Any masterpiece was once nothing but a few blobs of colour. The colour you choose for the background of a painting can make or break it even before it's made. And certain media are impossible to master if you don't learn to layer, e.g. watercolours.

Flavours. You wine connoisseurs know what I'm talking about. And enough has been said about the importance of aftertastes – "the scent lingers on the palate," "he left a bad taste in my mouth," etc.

Layer 2.

Expecting me to say something a little deeper?

I'm finding that the experiences gained from living abroad come in waves.

At first there is that giddy nervousness that comes with facing the unknown. Then there is empowerment and a sense of ownership. Nobody can tell you where to go or what to do. You know better than everyone else because you've been there and done that.

Then there is the sheepish humility that surfaces when you realize you don't know anything about anything. You're just another foreigner trying to feel special in someone else's space. Once you've absorbed that wave, you feel motivated to adapt. You want to fit in, so you try to learn the language and the lifestyle in order to re-integrate yourself into society. Empowerment comes from belonging.

You ride that wave for a little while. You're doing good. Then all of a sudden you realize you're miles from the shore. People back home are either straining to see where you've washed up, or have given up on following your course altogether. Serves you right – you forgot to look back when you drifted off, and you have no idea how you got to where you are. You want to grip onto something familiar, but you're lost at sea and ain't nobody coming to find you.

At this point any big impetus is useless. It's also useless to give up. You have to take it slowly, pick a direction you think is at least roughly right, and aim for it. Maybe this is the hardest time – you need more confidence and optimism than ever, and yet you have every reason to believe that even if you make it back, everyone will have packed up and left. On the bright side, no matter which way you go there's something new to learn. You also begin to appreciate home in a way you never have before.

Layer 3.

Down here it's warm and cozy, like I promised. It might seem that reality is pretty far from here. That's ok. Here is the place where you tell stupid jokes and boogie to really loud music in your room (hey tikitakirikiraka macarena, hey lakalikarikiraka macarena. Hey rakarikalakataka macarena, heyyyyyyyyy macarena!). Here is the place you stick your tongue out to falling snow and goose your friends. You probably pick your nose when you think no one's looking. Here is where you laugh so hard that you snort, and then laugh harder because you're snorting. Things are simple. Everyone loves everyone. You know where this is. Yes, you do. And it's not that hard to get there.

Month 11.2. Thoughts on the Balkans.

Part A.

One interesting thing about living in the Balkans is finding out what the Balkans actually are.

I remember hearing a long time ago about an outbreak in a region called "Kosovo" that wanted to separate from some other region. I didn't know what that other region was. I had to look at a map to locate Kosovo. Once I saw where it was, the news still meant nothing to me. I remember wondering, somewhat guiltily, why I should be concerned. I didn't know anyone there. I didn't know the region's culture, geography, language, religion, or history. It only seemed important because it was everywhere on the news. It was also in Europe, and I had family there. And finally, there was a song I really liked that mentioned Sarajevo – and that was somewhere near Kosovo, and had to do with some kind of separatist movement too. The song was by my favorite band at the time, the Cranberries, so I figured something important must be happening over there. (That really was my reasoning. I felt emotional about the war in so far as there was a pretty song about it. My Istanbul roommate later made it clear that I have absolutely no understanding for wars or sympathy for the people involved, probably due to my peaceful upbringing in a peaceful country.)

Now, ten or fifteen years later, I live "over there." I've learned a few things since first finding Kosovo on a map. Kosovo separated from Serbia, which still doesn't recognize Kosovo's independence. Kosovars are mostly Albanian-speaking Muslims. In some towns, Serbian and Turkish are also spoken. Kosovo is landlocked and hilly. The people are relatively poor, but have been more consistently helpful, personable and hospitable than in any other country I visited. Sarajevo is the capital of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It was one of the central areas of fighting when Yugoslavia broke apart. Bosnia is divided between Muslims in the north and Catholics in the south. All speak the official language of Bosnian, which is basically another dialect of the ex-Yugoslavian language of Serbo-Croatian (and the meaning of "Serbo-Croatian" is a whole other story).

So where is "over here"? Many travelers have asked me about what the term "Balkans" actually means. Is it a geographical term? Political? Cultural? From what I've researched, there is no consensus. Greeks, Croatians and Turks have told me that "Balkan" is officially a geographical term, sometimes defining the regions south of the Danube and sometimes defining other borders. But then one Greek guy went on to say, "I have no job, I drink espressos all day, and I don't worry about the future. So, you see, I'm Balkan." For him, the term "Balkan" has a de facto cultural meaning regardless of its official geographical meaning. And the Turks who agreed upon the geographical definition did not see themselves as Balkan even though they fit their own criteria.

The lines are equally blurry along the northern borders. Slovenia lies north of the Danube. Its geography is similar to Austria's. It's an EU member. But Slovenia is an ex-Yugoslav country. The language is closely related to Serbian and Macedonian. The cultures are similar. The term "Balkan" is often contrasted with "European," and Slovenia is torn between the two. As is Croatia. You can see Austro-Hungarian influence in the north and Italian influence in the south. Everyone is talking about when Croatia will join the EU. And yet, the daily life resembles the "traditionally" Balkan countries of Serbia and Macedonia. Unemployment is high, students stay students as long as possible, family is important, coffee is important, meat and alcohol are popular, most people smoke, men are manly and women are feminine. (I noticed around Split today the same half-built block concrete houses as I saw in Albania, Macedonia, and Kosovo. So even the architecture ties Croatia to the east.)

So now that I've lived here almost five months, I can't really tell you where the "here" is that I now feel close to. Yes, I feel linked to Croatia. But I also feel linked to Slovenia. And I don't feel linked to, say, Dubrovnik or Rijeka. Within Croatia it's really just Split I feel, because here everyone sees themselves as different from other Croatians. And everyone everywhere in Croatia seems to feel different from everyone everywhere else in Croatia. So when I try to think of where my home is now, I can't tell you if it's Split, Croatia, the Balkans, Europe, or just my own little room in our apartment on top of Marjan Hill. Things are blurry. Borders are blurry. And therefore they're not really worth fighting over.

Part B

Mornings were priceless in Split. It was mid-November. Cheesy woke up early and left the house without a coat on. The sun was white and the sky was the kind of deep, pure blue that you only get in autumn. The mandarins were ripe and the vines were shedding their leaves. She walked down a side street to get to the center, dodging construction workers and dog-walkers. She saw the burek-man pushing his cartful of pastries from the bakery to the shops. She was going to the fish market. It was a calm, clear day, so the catch would be good. She smelled the market before she saw it. As always, it was buzzing with people and flies. She wandered around a bit, observing some monstrous creatures she could never imagine being in anyone's stomach. Finally she bought a kilogram of mullets for $2 and brought them home to refrigerate.

The point of this story is that there is so much beauty in such simple things. Sometimes only foreigners can see it. That's why there are still tourists, even though everyone always complains about them. When you see something from the outside, you see a beauty that gets lost when you get caught up in all the complications within. This is why storybooks always end when the love-stricken man finally gets the beautiful woman: after that, the simplicity of her beauty gets lost under familiarity and personality. Cheesy didn't think that familiarity and personality were bad things, or were impossible to love. On the contrary, after many years love re-directs itself to precisely those things. But still there was real truth to the saying, "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder." The Balkans were beautiful to Cheesy, and more so because Cheesy was not Balkan. Cheesy had the privilege of watching the world from without while living within. She was the starry-eyed beholder, and to her there was no beauty like those simple autumn mornings in Split.

Month 11. Clarifications.

Ok folks. We need to take tabs. (Can't we say that in English? I wanted to use it in a translation, but I couldn't find the phrase "take tabs" online anywhere.)

This will be a meta-entry. A blog entry about blog entries, and about Cheesy. If you're satisfied with all my other entries, you don't have to read this one.

Cheesy is called Cheesy for a reason. I've mentioned this before. Don't take her too seriously. It's the only way to understand her. And don't take her too personally. Sometimes she slips in a comment just for you – yes, you – but most of the time she's just thinking out loud to herself. If she meant offense to anyone personally, that person would know it.

I grant that cheese is heavy. Cheesy can be that way. But cheese is also goopy and changeable. It dribbles all over the place, then hardens up into a different form. Cheesy is like that too. There's no need to worry about any kind of permanent meltdown – if she's dribbly, she'll get back into shape. Or maybe it's the tough crust you don't like. Don't worry, if you cut her the goop will still fall out. And when you cut open camembert, what's your reaction? Do you cry? Do you panic that the whole round of cheese is going to fall apart? I promise you there should be no other reaction than laughter, and hopefully some appetite for more. Cheese is fun. If Cheesy's blogs are depressing sometimes, dribbly and romantic, well it's just the state of the cheese at that moment. There's nothing underlying.

The thing I've come to realize about writing is that it is always subject to interpretation, like art. At least when you speak to someone, you have extra clues like intonation and body language. But with writing it's just words. And sometimes I think to myself, "Oh damn, people are really misunderstanding me. I must be a lousy writer." But even the best writers end up ambiguous. Take Hemingway. He uses choppy sentences. You think he's getting to the point. It's quick to read. Then suddenly you're at the end of the book and you realize you've missed the point entirely. So I'm sorry if you don't always get my point. The thing is that (a) sometimes there is no point, I truly am babbling, and (b) no matter how hard I try, words can't always convey the point. It's okay if you interpret me. It's okay if the way you interpret me isn't how I intended it. But if you interpret me in a bad way, then it's your loss, because I don't mean anything bad against anyone.

The situation sucks because this blog is the only way for many of you to get details of my life now that I'm in Europe. Maybe I should treat the blog as a conversation with all of you, rather than a conversation with myself.

The next thing is a response to a few of you who have suggested, in your own ways, that I'm one of these white upper-middle-class girls who obsessively seek out problems in their otherwise perfect lives. It's a valid opinion. Maybe I'm a white upper-middle-class girl. And okay, maybe I like problems (ha, ha). But don't you dare conclude that I don't appreciate everything I've had in my life. I love my parents. I more respect for them than any other adults I've met, and not just because they're my parents. I'm constantly amazed at how generous, caring, understanding, wise, helpful and open-minded they are. I love my brother. He's simply tops in my world. You mess with him and you will feel my wrath. (And I don't mean that personally to anyone.) I love my whole family. My grandparents are such an inspiration. My aunts and uncles are like old friends, and I love their company. I love my friends. I'm not naming names but you know exactly who you are, don't doubt it, and I look up to you every day. I love my dogs. I grew up in a great house in a great neighbourhood. I've had a great education. I've had priceless opportunities to work and travel and learn. Do you understand yet? Are you convinced I'm grateful? Here's the point, no misinterpretations: I'm grateful, and I'm thanking you.

I remembered just now all of you who have advised, "Don't be defensive." Well yes, I guess I'm justifying myself here. But mostly I'm just trying to explain. I don't feel angry at anyone for interpreting what they interpreted from my blog.

And here's another argument justifying certain "moody" undertones in my writing. There are four parts to the argument: (a) Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky, (b) The Myth of Sisyphus by Camus, (c) The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway, and (d) autumn. If you read (a)-(c) during (d), I guarantee you won't feel like a million bucks either.

And so: happy happy! To hell with existentialism! We are all exactly what we were meant to be! Maybe there even is a god! Hoorah!

Actually I do think that if you've never read any existentialist works, then maybe you won't fully understand the blog. That's not an incitement or a self-classification or a definitive conclusion. It's just a thought. Treat everything Cheesy says that way.

Almost forgot the last thing I need to clarify. Here's the point, no misinterpretations: I'm not running away from anything. I'm not fundamentally against North America or Montreal. I just think there are some things that Europeans do better. And I'm just having a good time living in different conditions, learning different languages, different lifestyles, different frames of mind. I truly enjoy entering into different frames of mind. I truly do enjoy becoming different people for periods of time. I imagine you might not understand this. For some insight, you can read Invisible Man (great novel, see link). The point: I sometimes say things that "I" don't really mean, because I'm in the frame of mind of someone else. The way to understand other people's beliefs is to truly buy into them. Then you can evaluate. How can I learn about a foreign culture without ever really entering into it? I need to become European in order to understand Europe. Hell, I need to become European in order to fully understand North America. Cheesy is also there for that reason: she represents the fact that I'm taking on different points of view. I'm not "becoming" anything. I'm just curious about how other people think, and I find it amusing to try to think the way others do. I'm cheesy. I take many forms, but I take nothing too seriously. I know I often seem serious, but don't let appearances fool you. Cheese always comes with a grain of salt. I'll be back in Montreal soon enough.

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.

Month 9. Cheesy visits home.

       It took Cheesy 30 hours to get from Croatia to Montreal.  

    Cheesy had had a flight booked from Split to Montreal at 11:30 p.m. on a Saturday. On the day of her departure, friends from France were visiting her in Split. One was a street musician and wanted to play a show that evening, so they drove her to the airport at 6 p.m. Cheesy checked her bag in and decided to wander around to kill the next 5 hours.  She left the airport and walked along the highway for a bit.  An African man in a Smart car pulled over and asked if she needed a lift.  He didn't seem to understand the concept of just wandering around.  He gave her his phone number and drove off. She was hungry but all she found was an abandoned fast food bar on an abandoned beach.

       Bored and hungry (a combination Cheesy knew all too well), she wandered back to the airport.  Her flight was the last one of the day, and it was delayed.  She arrived at Zagreb at 1 a.m. and slept on a bench until her flight to Frankfurt at 8 a.m.  That flight was also delayed, because they had loaded someone's bag into the plane who didn't ever board the plane.  Once she arrived in Frankfurt, Cheesy ran at top speed to her gate.  She got to the gate at 9:58 a.m.  The 10:00 plane to Montreal had just left.  So they re-booked her on a flight to Ottawa at 1:30 p.m.  From there she took a flight to Montreal at 6 p.m., or midnight Split time.

       So you can imagine that by the time Cheesy got to Montreal, she felt very, very far from the life she had set up in Europe.  She began to notice things she had never thought twice about in Montreal.  Here are her observations.

1. Advertisements were force-fed to passengers on Air Canada. There was a screen on the back of every seat. Within 10 minutes of flight, each passenger had images of restaurants, Mitsubishis, and MasterCards whirling just inches from his face.

2. Food and company names were way kitchier in North America. Cheesy's snack on the plane was called "Maized and Confused Corn Chips." In Canada, shops that sell cheap Chinese trinkets were called things like Dollarama or Buck-or-Two. In the Balkans they were called… China shops.

3. Company signs were way simpler in Split. They said something like, "Ivanovic Brothers. Garage doors." Or even just, "Furniture." In North America whole careers were devoted to studying which colours and shapes attract consumers more. Fortunes were made and lost depending on who came up with which logo first. Flashy was seen as favourable.

4. The point: Croatians were much more to the point than North Americans. The best example was the communication Cheesy had witnessed between the airplane pilot and flight attendants over the loudspeakers. On the Air Canada flight, one announcement went like this (no joke): "Hi folks, your pilot speaking. The reports of turbulence from the other planes flying in this area are beyond my comfort zone, so I'm going to have to ask the flight attendants to please pause what they are doing and have a seat until further notice." On Air Croatia: "Flight attendants, sit down."

    And it seemed that in the Balkans, if someone felt his point was not getting across properly, he just started yelling. Cheesy had been on one bus in Montenegro where a passenger, some young French tourist girl, had lost her bus ticket (they really do just look like receipts, Cheesy had nearly lost one herself). The co-pilot found the girl without her ticket, and lost it completely. So here was this gigantic Balkan man howling at this skinny French girl in a language she couldn't even understand, She just looked up at him and burst into tears. On the bright side, she did get the point.

5. Despite their apparent curtness, Croatians frowned much less than North Americans. They walked around with perfect posture, slim and confident. If they made eye contact with someone, they smiled or said hello. North Americans checked each other out secretly. They looked down in shame if someone noticed them staring. Then they would peek again when they think the other person was distracted. North Americans frowned when they saw a line-up ahead. They frowned when things fell behind schedule. They frowned when something cost more than expected. They frowned when they were tired. The brilliance of the Balkans was that everyone somehow knew how not to worry. The line-up is long, but life is short, so smile and make the best of it.

6. For some reason people had lovely abs in Split.

7. Montreal had better graffiti than any other city Cheesy had seen anywhere. In general Montreal was way more artistic that most places Cheesy had seen. People wore broken fishnet stockings, dyed their hair green, wore fake retro eyeglasses, and still managed to pull off a fashion statement. People spoke freely about art and sex and drugs. Locals went to the museums and galleries, not just tourists.

8. But even if Montreal values were very open, the people were not. Cheesy had had many random conversations with many random people in the streets of Europe. But when she went to a café in Montreal and started to chat up the barista, all she got was a weird look and an expensive bill. (Okay well maybe soy milk wasn't the hottest topic to start new friendships with… but Montrealers were foodies, weren't they?)

9. Cheesy did appreciate the fact that Montreal and Split share similar coffee cultures. When people had nothing better to do, they went and got wired up on espressos all afternoon. Except in Montreal they tended to eat sandwiches or cakes with the coffee, and often people would bring their laptops along to do work.

10. Work! North Americans were obsessed with it.

11. Rules were generally stricter in North America. What clothes to wear to school, which way to drive on the street, how much money to tip the waiter, how long to take to finish university…

12. Down to food business. Quebec sorely lacked burek. The Balkans sorely lacked poutine. (Cheesy sensed a genius restaurant idea coming on…)

13. The attitude towards food in North America was totally schizophrenic. No wonder people were either too fat or too thin. You opened a magazine and the message was this: "Lose those extra pounds! Here's exactly how to do it. We have all the weight-loss secrets. You don't have to think at all. You will be perfect. You are not perfect now but you can be perfect just by obeying these five simple rules. Everyone will love you and then you'll be happy." And then on the next page: "Indulge yourself! You deserve it! You're unhappy and you work so hard! Double fudge chocolate cake only $13.99!" - They always wrote "only," even if the price was obviously exhorbitant – "and only 500 calories per piece! You will learn to love yourself and then you'll be happy."

And so the deep questions of North American life were these: Am I happy if others love me or if I love myself? And is that kind of happiness achieved by eating or by not eating? And if the price is right and the calories counted, is happiness guaranteed?

There was an enormous attachment to calorie-counting and rule-following that Cheesy still couldn't see the logic behind (note the irony). Did North Americans not want to think for themselves? Did they want their health and happiness to reduce to nothing more than a set of numbers? Maybe it was very comforting to believe that something as mysterious and fleeting as happiness could be achieved algorithmically.

(Wrong! Cheesy's brain screamed. It's instinct, happiness is achieved by instinct! North Americans have lost their instincts, and so they have to follow a set of rules in order to mimic the results that instinct achieves naturally! My god, Nietzsche must have been one of the most brilliant assholes ever to have lived. And for those who couldn't care less about Nietzsche, just watch American Beauty again.)

14. Chopsticks.

15. There are more things like reusable shopping bags, recycling, and hybrid cars in North America.

16. The following grim observation, as well as a few of the above ones, was courtesy of a friend of Cheesy's: In North America, they chopped down trees and then named the streets after them. (Although to be perfectly fair, they had just razed down a park of old trees in central Zagreb in order to build a shopping mall.)

17. Final thoughts back to Cheesy's age-old question about whether and how people can change. Sometimes one believes one has had a deeper or shallower change than one has. People might say, "Oh I know I've changed a lot," and they're still the same goddamn person (if they would just admit it, then they could begin a real change). Not everyone notices change, either in themselves or in others. Cheesy also realized that sometimes a change could reverse itself, as she fell back into her old Montreal habits. But Cheesy suspected that if one puts oneself in the right environment, one can re-reverse a change. And when she stepped out of the airport in Split, and saw the highway she'd wandered along 12 days earlier, and smelled the sea, and saw the dry Dalmatian hills in the fog, she actually began to cry with happiness. Her instincts had suddenly re-aligned and everything just came together with a perfect clarity. Her instincts had told her to come here, and she did, and she was happy, and there was no greater happiness than finding out that you were right to have trusted your instincts. There was no greater relief for Cheesy than finding that the great wave she had been riding was right in mid-air where she had left it.

Month 8. Settled in Split.

I think a lot about shiny happy people. I wonder if they are circular. They are happy because they are shiny, and shiny because they are happy. I wonder if I would be happier if I were shinier. I wonder how easy it would be to make myself shinier. I wonder to what extent shiny happy people are natural or self-made. Maybe if you believe you can create your personality, then you can. And if you don't believe you can, then you can't. I don't believe I can, even if I want to believe. (But I do believe others can, so that's at least a step towards optimism.) (If you consider the belief in self-made personalities to be optimistic.) (I do.)

The other thing I think a lot about is thinking. I think thinking is bad, so I've been trying to not do much of it. Hence my silence. (I'm also sure I've written all these things before, only with slightly different wording.) Writing forces you to think. So I was thinking, maybe if I don't write, then I won't think. But in the end, thoughts come back. Cogito ergo sum. Or sum ergo cogito.

And I figure, if I can't suppress the thoughts, then I might as well start writing them down again.

So here I am.

Split is hot and lazy. But then you go to the center, which is like an anthill of tourists right now, and suddenly you're all strung out again. Who are all these people? What are they looking for? If I point them in some direction, will they kindly disappear? But they don't. The sun sets, and streams of people come tumbling out of the buildings like cockroaches. Screaming Brits. Bickering Spaniards. Drunk Aussies. (The Italians are well-behaved though.) And I guess they must all be having fun? I don't know. My least favourite cities were Venice and Florence, because I felt like "just another tourist" there. So I can't imagine that all these tourists are truly happy about being tourists in Split. They all arrive and say, "Why is it so crowded?" Well duh, because you came here.

So in a matter of weeks, I've become the prime "local" couchsurfer of the city, turning down a bazillion couch requests per day but trying to take everyone else out on the town, pretending that I know all the "best" places, pretending that Split is peaceful and chill town… which it was three weeks ago…. But damn, you get jaded quickly when you're surrounded by drunk tourists. I say to each of my surfers, You're not seeing Split at its best. (What I don't then say is, Split's best is when you're not here.)

You see? I'm being jaded. I'm being cynical and not shiny the way I'm sure I could be. I do like meeting people, I do like going for drinks and discovering new little alleyways, I do like the bustle, and I do love couchsurfing. So why aren't I shiny, dammit? I want to be glow-in-the-dark, I want aliens to see me all the way from Mars, I want to be the next aurora borealis! I want people to look back and say, Remember 2010? Steffi made the lightbulb obsolete that year…

Okay I'm just being an idiot, thanks for your patience. But if you, reader, have some insight on how to shine, please let me know. I've been told it's good to hang around shiny people. But that doesn't always work, because if you are rusty and you stand beside a shiny person, then sometimes you just feel rustier.

A note on rustiness: All of you must investigate Salad Fingers.

Or do you think that maybe it's okay not to be shiny? After all, Salad Fingers loves rusty things. And rust is more interesting than shine. There are more nuances, more surprises, when you run your hand over a rusty spoon than over a shiny one. And that's why David Lynch and David Firth are brilliant. Because they know how to tap in to that part of the human mind that loves dark creepy things, that rejects perfection and orderliness. For example I think people understand sado-masochism a lot more than they will ever admit. (If you haven't seen any Salad Fingers or Lynch films, you may be totally lost. Maybe that's for the best. Because if you get what I'm saying, that dark part probably exists in your mind. And maybe you're better off without it. Lynch and Firth are maybe just creating comfort zones for messed-up people, rather than providing any real insight into psychology.)

(Another aside: Most people I've met claim to like shiny happy people. Almost no one ever says, "I like people with deep insecurities and serious mental problems." But one guy I met, way back in Montreal before any of this running-away business ever started, told me that he was always more attracted to girls with "issues." I really respected him for admitting that. Because if Firth and Lynch do have a following, then some of you out there like darkness more than you're willing to admit. So I encourage you to admit it to yourself if you have some creepy habits that you enjoy. And I encourage you to be okay with that, because someone out there understands, and someone out there might even like you more for being crazy and messed-up, and without doubt someone out there is very similar to you.)

Soooooooooo… Split.