The plan

All of my people move to an island together. All of us in one place. And you might make the point that if my people get to bring their people and their people get to bring their people and insert infinite regress argument here that it is going to have to be a pretty big island. But that's OK. This isn't about being practical this is about missing people, this is about wanting continuity.

I hate transitions. But I seem to like new stuff enough to put myself through them. Or something.

Why we write

Premises:
1) I like school a lot and miss it and want it again.
2) a) I like to study lots of different things and most of all I like to make connections between things.
b) The little details bog me down; I am scared of the specificity of graduate study.
3) I want to be able to make a living doing something that I enjoy.

Therefore:
I should go to library school.

Counter-argument:
What if it is boring and "not like real graduate school," being too easy/technique focused? (AKA what if it is not just all about studying lots of different and semi-arcane things and then gleefully uniting them?)

Solution:
Keep reading lots of stuff and writing about it (preferably using it indirectly, stealing its sounds and rhythms). It is OK to only have the attention span of a New Yorker article, it is OK to have wide ranging discussions that jump from physics to linguistics to cognitive science and it is OK to try to explain everything, as a way of showing how and why everything cannot be explained.

I want to funnel information through me and have it come out different and mixed up and beautiful. I want things to mean something. I just really do.

Which is better:

-Squirming around in bed while thinking things along the lines of "OK, if you go to sleep right now you can still get 6 hours of sleep...so, OK, right now....go to sleep....OK..."

or

-Browsing the internet, illuminated only by the light of your computer screen, accomplishing nothing?

See mostly this blog has been all abstract and about ideas and stuff. Well, you know, kind of. But now this is serious, this is real, this is particular and mildly embarrassing. I can't fall asleep because my brain is too busy trying to figure out where I should go to graduate school. I've already planned out prospective schedules at the two top contenders and I've already looked at craigslist postings for jobs....jobs for this summer and jobs for next year. It is too early to be doing any of these things and it is too late to still be awake. And yet.

I'll probably ask you for advice about this. I probably already know what I'm going to do. It'll probably be fine either way. But as with all decisions, knowing that all your options are good ones doesn't help.

Oh and I went to Germany and Austria last week. Berlin: a great city, a city to live in, a city of street art, cafes and history. It was punky. It was comfortable. Vienna: a city of ballets, fancy cakes and tiny pots of jam. It was like a fairytale, complete with those funny Austrian hats. You know the green ones? Sometimes they have feathers. Yeah. I had songs from Cabaret and The Sound of Music stuck in my head for the ENTIRE trip.

The only bad thing was not being able to speak German. Living in Spain has me completely spoiled. Everyone knows that I am not a native Spanish speaker, but by God, they can understand me and I them...with a few exceptions. I can get around without feeling the guilty weight of my English, without feeling like quite such an obvious tourist. And oh it is a glory this level of competent proficiency.

There are limits of course: in Barcelona, forgetting the word for "band aids" and for "cut/scratch" I had to ask if they had "something for small wounds." Luckily, they did.

Lists

Things that I cannot find:
-Stamps (I have four international stamps in my possession....but where? Clearly, I refuse to buy new stamps until these stamps are located and used.)
-Big white sunglasses (We've had some sunny days but alas, I must squint through them.)
-Plaid Macalester boxer shorts (A very important part of my wardrobe.)

Things that have happened lately that I think should end up in poems:
-People falling asleep on the train. Especially strangers sitting next to each other.
-Helping old people weigh their bulk products at the grocery store. (See this number here? You just put your bag on the scale and then press that number? Do you want me to do it, here, really, it's fine, just like this.)
-In a dream I had: I held a dead bird in my hand and moved it's wings up and down, clumsily simulating flight. Then all of a sudden it moved its neck, it turned its head; it was alive.

Categories that I've recently realized all of the stories I tell can be reduced into:
-Once my friends all thought that I was wrong about something, but then it turned out I was right!
-Man, other people are crazy and hard to understand!
-One time something really funny happened. Isn't that funny?
-I read this article on a seemingly arcane subject but really it explains a lot about human nature.

Long Latin palindromes that I've learned:
-In girum imus nocte et consumimur igni. ("We move in a circle in the night and are consumed by fire" or something like that)

Cuando estoy en vena puedo ser bastante sarcástico

I am reading "The Catcher in the Rye" in Spanish. It is kind of AMAZING.

In other news, I've been admitted to two graduate schools and now I'm spending lots of time planning possible futures. Mostly I'm just exploring the cities in question through craigslist:How much would it cost to live here? What neighborhoods are near the University? Can you buy cool bikes here?

So, yeah, I love planning and I love sarcasm. What else is new?

Hello, you are my very special one

It's been a while of no blogging for me. And mostly that while has been enjoyable and enjoyably filled with things like: nice weather, visits (I have happily been both visitor and visited and I hope to continue in this pattern), increased comprehension in Spanish, trying to get my students pen pals from my high school, enchiladas (visitors brought me food supplies), ridiculous clubs full of young Basques, novels, magazines, plans for the future, gossip about the past, a sidreria (that's a traditional Basque cider house, kids), discussions of issues of deep importance (independence, inter-personal relationships, the relationship of the mental to the physical, etc, etc), curry, laundry, a hair cut, not writing much poetry, cleaning the bathroom (but just once), walking on the beach, valentines, Spanish reality television, checking facts on the interent, new shoes and embracing my love of lists, even if it does not always lead to increased clarity and order.

In short I'm not really sure what to say. I'm in between. I live in Spain, I'm mostly happy, but sometimes I am not. I think that next year I am actually going to graduate school and that almost seems real to me. Most things almost seem real to me.

When you don't know what to say you must turn to the words of others so here is a poem by Les Murray that I read in The New Yorker a while back, which I like for it's simplicity, it's rapid line breaks and it's turn at the end. Also, that's just really how I feel sometimes, you know?


Science Fiction

I can travel
faster than light
so can you
the speed of thought
the only trouble
is at destinations
our thought balloons
are coated invisible
no one there sees us
and we can't get out
to be real or present
phone and videophone
are almost worse
we don't see a journey
but stay in our space
just talking and joking
with those we reach
but can never touch
the nothing that can hurt us
how lovely and terrible
and lonely is this

The rain in spain falls mostly on...

me!

Yeah, we've had some serious weather lately. Sometimes it feels good in a "Wooooo, I'm going to let the wind carry me where it will! I am going to fly!" way. But, other times it's more like "Why am I so wet? Why is my umbrella so useless and inside out? Where is my cozy bed?!"

When not under climatic siege (or even in the midst of it), I've been thinking about language competency a lot lately. We use language to do so many different things, which for me, is a thrilling fact, on the one hand, but on the other, it is difficult to master all of these uses in a foreign tongue. I can get my point across in Spanish. This can be a concrete point, an abstract point, possibly even a sarcastic or metaphorical point. I can understand almost all of what is said to me, especially if it is said directly to me and if it is set in a contextual net, which provides me with clues about meaning. I can even eavesdrop with increasing (and exciting) skill. But, then, sometimes I open my mouth and come out with a hugely, obviously, incorrect grammatical construction. And at no point would anyone over the age of say, three, mistake me for a native speaker. My small talk powers (though expanding) are nowhere near my English abilities (in English I can pretty much just keep going and going, spurred on by my fierce fear of awkward silences). Maybe, it is good for me to learn to enjoy silences with acquaintances...to conceive of these as "companionable" instead of alarming. But, I feel like in Spanish my attempts at space filling can come of as jarring non-sequitors, I'm missing some fabric of connection that allows me to move from topic to topic.

I guess, the thing that is most disappointing for me in my use of Spanish is my inability to engage with the language on an aesthetic level in any satisfying way. My Spanish smacks of utility and often I can't stop to appreciate the beauty of other people's language (written or spoken), so desperate am I to understand what the hell they could possibly be saying. I've been reading in English a lot lately (novels that came to me in glorious christmas packages) and I am in a big writing down quotations phase. I pretty much refuse to read without a pen in hand. The things I am underlining, they are not necessarily summations of how life is, they are not pearls of wisdom, or jewels of truth, but they sound so good. That's what I want...their sounds. These phrases, sometimes trivial on a semantic level, they have a compactness, a concise easy rhythm that I want.

I've been thinking that maybe after I get back from Spain, I'll try to learn a different language for a bit. I mean, if achieving the quality that I wnat is this hard, maybe I should just go for quantity. Also, I'm just super jealous of all these European polyglots. Psh.

I especially like the line about the ants

NIGHT PICNIC

What is what, you ask?
So much is undefined.

Astronomical is a word that rhymes with gastronomical.
Language is often general in nature.

Is is a weak verb. What is an interrogative all by itself.
The trees are carved of wood. All their planks are tongue-in-groove.
Ants are just as happy someplace else tonight.

The moon is reflecting its better half.
Stars are not the dead brought back as stars.

This is the spread we promised you.
This is eating out.
This devil’s food is not half-bad.

Dew is beginning to settle on the grass,
but if it is okay with you, we suggest staying in the dark, even if it means
we must ask what is it
before and after every bite.
The stars are something else.
Which is to say, in the end, that we are what we’ve done,
that this drink is strong,
and we are feeling it.

-Kirk Lee Davis
(Diagram, Issue 7.6)

This is where you should be now

When it´s Christmas eve and you are on a crowded bus, in a place (Granada) that you used to live but now feel disconnected from, surrounded by strangers (some of whom maybe should bath soon), half car sick from the jolting stops, you do not feel in the right place. You miss your traditions. Your very own tradtions, however small.

But then later after making gingerbread cookies, you take a walk with an old friend. And you end up at the Mirador de San Nicholas over-looking a beautiful view (one of the most breath-taking ones you´ve ever seen). It is dark. The sky is all the arker for the contrast with an illuminated Alambra, with an almost full moon. It is quiet, quiet even though there are bells ringing. You are cold, but you like how it feels.

On the way home you stop at a church, right on time for midnight mass. You´re nervous, you´re not Catholic, but as you walk in you´re scooped up by nuns. You sit in the front with them, you sing Christmas carols with them. You listen to the service with them. It is new to you and you love it´s grammar, it´s history, it´s joy. Afterwards the nuns invite you back into a small room in the church. You sing more, you all eat chocolate and you drink liquor. Nuns play drums and guitar! Nuns love chocolate! Nuns drink liquor! And you are the only Americans and they make you sing the english part of "Feliz Navidad" so they can learn the words. You are laughing to hard to do it properly, but no one minds.

Just before 2am you walk home. You are exhilarated you are refreshed. It reminds you of swimming in the ocean late at night, of the waves, of the calm, of the thrill. This is where you should be now.

Warming Up

It has gotten cold here! Well, not Minnesota-cold, but cold nonetheless. Cold enough that I have had to take action. One such action was the purchase of a new coat. It is from Zara, it makes me feel classy, it is warmer than my old coat, and if you are interested I am willing to talk about it at much greater length. Another action in the war against the temperature? The mulling of wine. Yum. And what a great verb "mull" is, let's try to use that one more often.

Another good way to warm up is in the glow of friendship. That's right, I said it. And on that topic I feel like I'm starting to actually have Spanish friends! I mean really we are still hovering around acquaintance-ville (population: many) but this weekend I had this nice feeling of actual friendship, based on conversations that plumb below service level pleasantries. I'm really excited by the idea that I can make friends in Spanish! Like, I can express myself well enough in a my second language to seem like a person who is interesting enough to merit full on friendship. Wow. Like, wow.

Also, warming is the glow of impending holiday cheer. I spent today talking to my students about Christmas and in many ways their celebrations sound very familiar to American ears. There is even a Basque Santa Claus named Olentzero. Olentzero seems merry enough, dressed in a traditional Basque outfit, puffing on a pipe and bestowing gifts on well-behaved children, but he is rumored to be a drunk. A drunk! Yeah, so while I was leaving Santa ginger bread cookies, the little Basque children were setting out wine or champagne for Olentzero. Huh.

Your new nickname

Today I discovered that Spain, though sadly anti-peanut butter, is pro-honey roasted peanuts. Good call, guys, good call. They were just sitting there at my local super market in the frutos secos section (literally this means dried fruits but it is used to mean nut and the word nuez, which I was taught for nut, is ruthlessly ignored). They are so good. They call themselves "cacahuete frito miel" and the package provides the useful translation of "fried honey peanut." Aw.

I can't stop my brain

So, lately, I haven't been getting enough sleep. I mean, it's not like I'm terribly busy but I came out of the weekend tired and it is impossible to get enough sleep during my mini-work week (I mean, honestly, I cannot go to sleep early enough to wake up rested at 5:30am). This has led to a series of...mishaps:

1) Run in with a tree
(This is only a presumed run-in because I have no memory of it but I did discover a lot of sap in my hair yesterday afternoon. I have, then, inferred that I had some contact with a sap bearing plant based on the persistent stickiness of a small section of the back of my hair. I did not take immediate action on this front, aside from a pony-tail to keep me secret, but maybe I should have because this morning a very vigorous shampoo and generous conditioning proved ineffective in the removal of the offending foreign substance.)

2) Broken Knife
(You know that one really dull knife in the kitchen, come on there's one in every kitchen, you know, yeah, that one. Don't cut bread with it. Especially not day-old bread. Especially not before 7am. Yeah. Because the handle might snap in half and somehow wound your unsuspecting index fingers in the process.)

3) Spilled Nescafé/Shattered Nescafé Container
(First of all, this item was brought to my house and I have consumed none of it, though, in my European incarnation I am not strictly against the consumption of instant coffee. Secondly, who would have thought that shoving lots of food items haphazardly onto one shelf at increasingly bizarre angles would ever result in catastrophe? Not me, apparently.)

Well, today I've protected myself from further exhausted clumsiness through over-cafination. Yup, I've had 3 cups of coffee today. Interestingly, I did not pay for any of them. Though, I may be sleepy, I am clever. However, my cleverness not withstanding, I should be able to buy my own coffee for a while since the Basque government has finally (but, finally!) decided to pay me. So far I've used this money for: smoked salmon, mushroom ravioli and Hagan Dos chocolate ice cream. Maybe, soon I will buy clothes/shoes (one of my favorite conversational subjects is how I need better shoes for when it rains).

Oh, and lest I forget: Happy Hannukah! I have a tiny menorah with tiny candles (thanks to my lovely mother) and I just borrowed Carlos' lighter sneakily without asking. Oh, I do love tradition.

Potato chips, museum trips, linguistics

1. At home I eat potato chips, oh, maybe, once or twice a year. Usually because somebody else has bought them and brought them to a party that I am attending. In Spain I eat potato chips, oh, maybe, one or twice a WEEK. That's because here they are made with olive oil, and, ergo are very delicious. Also, I spend a lot of time waiting in the Beasain train station with a vending machine as my only companion. I like to think that the olive oil makes them healthier, too, but I have no idea if this is actually the case.

2. I went to the Guggenheim on Thursday with a few classes from my school. It was pretty amazing and I had that same feeling that I get whenever I go to museums, namely, "why don't I go to museums more often?" I wish I'd had more time to wander freely and to hang out with the amazing, massive, and amazingly massive Serra sculptures, but instead I had a guided tour of "Art in the USA: 300 Years of Innovation" conducted entirely in Basque. One of the teachers on the trip translated a lot of it into Spanish for me, but it was still a pretty strange experience: American art history through the prism of Spanish-Basque culture. Huh. It was funny to have this Spanish woman telling me things like "in the 1920s Jazz was becoming very important to American culture" or, even better "this is a picture of George Washington, the first president of America." What? Who? Really? I've never heard of him.

3. Generally, I tend to reject the Sapir=Whorf hypothesis (which at my level of understanding amounts to the belief that the language we speak shapes the way we think in pretty clear-cut and unbending ways) but I do have a tendency to import certain grammatical structures from English into Spanish. There are certain ways of saying things in English which are so intermingled with my sense of the logic of how things work that it is difficult to get rid of them. For example, the present progressive: common in English and appropriate in a variety of circumstances ("I am drinking tea," "I am teaching English") and rare in Spanish, generally being restricted to what is actually happening in this very moment ("I am drinking tea," but not "I am teaching English," rather "I teach English). And yet. I use the present progressive all the time in Spanish because to me it just....sounds right. I don't know that thinking in the present progressive really shapes my wider world-view that much, but still it is an English construction changing how I conceive of something. Then again, probably as I start thinking in Spanish more (presuming that this will indeed happen) the good old P.P. will leave me alone. I'll keep you posted Sapir and Whorf.

A sequence of words, often alliterative, difficult to articulate quickly

Yup. This week is tongue twister week for the students at Txindoki Alkartasuna and for the most part they are eating it up. I may have blown my heretofore assumed coolness by revealing that I can say "Betty Botter bought some butter..." at warp speed, but I think it's worth it for the resulting laughter. Whatever. It's kind of a neat skill. For the first 15 years that I possessed it (or maybe more like 17 ), it was regarded as supremely annoying. Now is its moment of redemption.

Also enjoyable: in trying to understand the phrase "selfish shellfish" at least three students have independently guessed that "selfish" means fish seller. They are so smart! Though, unfortunately, also so wrong, at least in this case.

In non-tongue-twister related news, I went to a lovely Bloc Party concert in Bilbao this weekend. It rocked at just the right level for me: at no point was I frightened for my life but I did frequently feel inspired to jump around. After the concert the venue turned into a club and not just any club but a club full of Spanish hipsters. We could have been in New York, we could have been in Minneapolis, we could have been in Seattle, but actually we were in Spain and maybe that's why we stayed out way too late. We caught the 5:54am train home (to my friend's house in a town near Bilbao) and had to deal with a lot of very drunk teenagers. I have, I believe, in the past complained about the drinking age in the US but now it strikes me as entirely appropriate. Teenagers should not drink because drunk teenagers are really annoying.

Hamaiketako

This is my favorite Basque word that I've learned thus far. An Hamaiketako is like an early lunch, it's when you eat delicious food at 11am. Hamaike means 11, and tako? I don't know, but I like to imagine that it means delicious food.

So this week I've had two hamaiketakos at school. The first one was with my favorite and smallest (only 7 kids) class. It was potluck style and they were all so cute with the things they made. Everything from tuna sandwiches to muffins to tortilla. I brought chocolate chip cookies and one kid (one of the many Jon's, a basque name which is amusingly pronounced like 'yawn') was all "Oh, it's like chips ahoy." I responded in a friendly manner but I thought "Oh, you poor boy, you are only exposed to lame american culture. These cookies are NOT like chips ahoy."

The second hamaiketako (how many times I can I use this word in one post? well, let's see)was with my fellow teachers in celebration of a few birthdays (god only knows who's). This one was just so overwhelmingly Spanish, what with the tortilla de bacalo, the chorizo, the ridiculous amounts of bread and oh, did I mention the wine? Yeah, there was wine. Can you imagine the entire faculty of an American high school drinking wine together in the middle of a school day? Yeah, I can't either.

So, yes, my life here definitely revolves around food. And speaking of which: Happy Thanksgiving! We are doing a cute little ex-pat style dinner tonight and yesterday I made 3 pies (2 pumpkin and 1 apple) for the occaision, so I'm pretty psyched. Oooh and we used the extra pie dough to make these amazing little vegetable empanada things. Just the dough filled with sautéed mushrooms, onions, eggplant and spinach. Way better then the sugar-cinnamon cracker things that I usually use extra dough for. I highly recommend them.

But, back to hamaiketakos. What I really like about this word is its elegant specificity. It's becoming clear that I'm only in the learning new languages game for moments like this, moments when you can say something in one word that your native tongue would need several words or even several clauses to express. It's Occam's razor for words. Why say 'to take advantage of' when you can use 'aprovechar?' Why say 'food that you eat at 11am, that's not lunch because you'll still eat lunch at like 2 or 3 and certainly isn't brunch because everything is savory and probably includes wine because why wouldn't you want to have some wine half way through the morning' when you can say 'hamaiketako' and call it good? Also, why not say 'hamaiketako' all the time? It's fun.

Seriously, come on

OK. So it is 6:45 am and I do not want to be awake right now. And yet. So, body I have one question for you: what's up?

I admit that I allowed you to catch a cold and that congestion can make sleeping more difficult. I also admit that yesterday we consumed more cafinated beverages then usual (two cafe con leches and two earl grey teas). I just wanted them for their warm, throat-soothing abilities and I thought that since we had them all before 6pm, that things would work out. We didn't go to bed until 1am. And weren't you tired by then? You didn't want to keep reading (even though we're re-reading "A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius" and it is so pleasantly familiar, like getting back in touch with a friend and remembering that you forgot how funny he can be) so I turned out the light. And pretty quickly we weren't feeling so conscious anymore.

But. Then. A mere four and half hours later, zing, wakefullness re-emerged. I tried to wait it out, to ignore your protestations, but I gave in. I got you water. I took you to the bathroom. I blew your nose. But you remain steadfast in your refusal to go back to sleep.

Cada loco con su tema

This is a phrase that I overheard last night that I'm pretty sure I've come across previously, though I can't remember in what context. Anyway, I reallly like it. "Every crazy person with his theme" or maybe to be more coloquial "Every crazy person has their thing" or "Everyone has their own obsession." OK, I'll stop with the endless 'ors' of translation.

But it's just so true. And I think that it is true in three ways. And here they are:

1) As I grow up I start to find the connections between all of the seemingly diverse subjects that I find fascinating. It's like "oh, I like words and I like people and I want to know all about both and about their interactions." I'm just trying (allbeit clumsily) to access this theme from a variety of angles.

2) Everyone has "a thing." A thing or, two, or three. Everyone likes River Pheonix, or biking, or chess, or vinegar, or prose poems or something. We share or hide our quirks as the mood strikes, the theme we are crazy about.

3) Everyone has "their thing" in that everyone has hang-up(s) which they keep re-encountering. More and more you find yoursef following the same patterns of behavior, oh, it's hard to avoid your theme.


In other news, my housemates really need to clean the kitchen, joder. Gross.

Obviously, I should read poetry more often

You cannot control your laughter.
You cannot control your love.
You know not to hit the brakes on ice
but do anyway. You bend the nail
but keep hammering because
hammering makes the world.

-Dean Young from "How I Get My Ideas"

Second Order Feelings

I'm in a good mood and I am happy that I'm in a good mood. I'm in a good mood because I just remembered that I know how to take care of myself! I know how to sleep in a bit and then get up and make tea and delicious scrambled eggs. I know that, actually, you don't need a toaster to make toast, you can just use a pan! I know that it's fiction week on Slate and that I can read lots about books. I know that I have a book that I want to read and that there is a hot shower waiting for me whenever I can manage to get out of my pajamas. I know what bands to listen to in order to amplify my happiness. I do.

Today I've just got this growing sense that I know myself well enough to seek out the things that I need and want. I know things about myself that are not circumstance dependent, things that I can always come back to. And even when I have trouble explaining myself to others (oh, say in Spanish, for example) I stilll...well, I still have myself. Maybe that is the sort of sentence that will make me cringe when viewed from a week's distance, but there it is.

And, although I'm not crazy about Myla Goldberg as a novelist (OK, I've only read "Bee Season" but that book gets pretty messy in the end) I do really like this quote of hers from Slate about books that you are supposed to have read, but haven't:

"As much as I admire and value intellectualism and experimentation, I've discovered that unless a book has a throbbing heart as well as a sexy brain, I feel like the story is a specimen in a sealed glass jar and not a living, breathing creature I want to take by the hand and talk to for hours on end."

Yeah, exactly.

It was peculiar in its ease

Every week (OK, I like to generalize it hasn't been very many weeks yet) I don't want to go to work on Monday. My ridiculous four day weekends lull me into a level of relaxation that is difficult to shake off. But then once I start work, it's fun! It's like bath time when you're a little kid, you don't want to get in and then you don't want to get out.

This week I've ben talking about Halloween with my students. Actually, I've been giving them lame Halloween themed jokes and then we try to figure out what they mean. The biggest hit so far? "What do you get when there's a witch in the desert? A sandwich!" Yup. I think that it's popularity is due to its breath-taking simplicity...or something. The students are pretty cute. They actually get excited when they understand a joke. Today I heard some of them talking about the "sandwich joke" in the hall. Oh , yeah. Also, I've been giving them candy, which can't hurt. Though the portion of my budget spent on candy is getting a little ridiculous.

The week in review (OK, yeah, the last 2 days):

Best Moment:
Me: What did you do this weekend?
Student: I looked up Seattle on google earth and saw the Space Needle.

Worst Moment:
Student (in Spanish): I don't understand anything that you're saying.
Me: OK. Sorry. I can say it again more slowly...
Student (in an annoyed voice): I just don't understand any English.

Weirdest Moment:
Student: Have you ever been to the Playboy Mansion?
Me: No. Um....no.

I other, non-teaching related news, I am becoming a master soup-maker. Last week was lentil and this week is mushroom. It's really all about chicken stock and garlic. Delicious.