So much behind, so much ahead

I turned 18 in the Bahamas.  And it was even better than it sounds. 

I had been nominated by my high school English and science teachers to a scholarship program which sent students to research projects around the world.  In one of the application essays I mentioned my interest in marine biology, and so my luck at being chosen was doubled when they sent me to the frickin Bahamas (another option was an archeological dig…in Fresno).

Andros is the largest island, and has virtually no tourism.  It’s mostly mangrove swamps and jungle.  The flora and fauna defied belief, and the cultural experience of a town that technically qualified as utter poverty and was filled with the most amazing amounts of happiness, hospitality, and just plain positive energy was absolutely invaluable for shaping my opinions of life on this planet, human nature, and the relative importance of material possessions, “status,” and (what word to use?) gratitude-love-appreciation-joy-amistad.

(The only culture shock I felt was when I came back and found myself in the Atlanta airport.  I sat on a mass-produced chair trying not to cry on my mass-produced sandwich while busy busy businesspeople didn’t notice my existence.)

For 16 days I swam in the Caribbean, sampled the chemical content of deep freshwater caverns, played with tarantula and scorpions, tried taking a shower in an afternoon rainstorm, watched heat lighting in the clouds every night, and listened to a local witch-woman talk about voodoo, translated by our professor-guide because we couldn’t understand her thick Bahamian accent, even before the interference of two massive goiters distending her throat, developed after she prescribed herself an herb to counteract a neighber’s curse that blocked her iodine absorption (like two ripe mangoes stuck in her throat).

During the day I swam with ridiculously beautiful tropical fish, and at night ate whichever one of them the neighbour happened to catch that day.  I flirted with the guileless intensity of an adolescent.  Sitting on the outdoor furnite near Molly, the tan Teaching Assistant who I was sure (for 16 days) was the loveliest thing on Earth.  The Aerosmith song “Don’t Want to Miss A Thing” will remind me of that time for the rest of my life.

We all promised to stay in touch, and of course we didn’t.  None of them will read this.  And now I discover I have forgotten two of their names.

Just a few years later I would think back on my days in the Bahamas with nostalgia and sweetness.  And a stab of fear.  That I had already had the best single experience of my life.  That I had lived my best adventure.  That I had already seen my most beautiful new horizon. 

I was very happy with my life.  Satisfied even.  But the idea that I had passed my zenith…

A couple years later I quit my job and left with a backpack for Europe.  Now I can look back to that nervous me and smile reassuringly.  Don’t worry, littler me, that was fucking amazing, but it ain’t nearly over yet.

I still hadn’t practiced archery outside a 15^th century castle called “Kiek in the coq” that still has cannon balls from 1577 embedded in it.  I hadn’t hitchhiked in the Scottish highlands.  Ridden a camel into the Sahara for 3 days.  Built a birdhouse in Belgium (damn right that belongs in this list!)  Hugged orphans in Zambia.  Hung off the back of a moving chicken bus in Guatemala.

Now I feel a vast mountain of experience standing between now and my days in Santa Cruz.  I packed a bag and left some baggage, trailing bits and pieces gradually for two years.

And again I am happy with my life.  Satisfied even.  But the idea that I have passed my zenith…not this time.

There is so very frickin much more to life than just travelling, but since this blog has already gone long and travelling bits are quicker validated, I may just mention that I have not yet…what?  (Something something) elephants in India.  (Something something) temple in Thailand.  (Something something) in the South China Sea.

As you can tell my thoughts are currently tending rather dramatically southeast…but whether my steps lead to Papua New Guinea or around my corner of Belgium, I have lost the fear that the best of life is over.  I must have left it by the side of some road somewhere…

Man, being a productive member of society sure cuts into my reading time.

That was the realization I had as I put my immensely engaging book back into my bag on the train after having read about 2 pages.  The book is 1139 pages long.  I sneak a few minutes in to see what happened after they crashed on the shores of Nazi-occupied Norway during the 3 stops between where I take Dutch classes and where I work.

I am enjoying these days though, each step of the day taken individually and enjoyed for itself, without thinking about all the other things I am not doing with my time.  One of those not-done things is blogging, so before I warm up the rice and beans from last night’s burrito-themed dinner party (God I love guacamole) I’m going to throw some crud up here I’ve encountered lately.

I’ll pick…class.  I am studying Dutch, and one of my favourite things about it is how much the language makes sense.  I love English, and am tremendously glad that birth circumstance made me a native speaker (did you know there are roughly as many words in English as in the next three largest language combined?  [according to my TESOL course, at least]).  It is beautifully flexible, and richly textured…and makes no sense.

The pure quantity of inexplicable exceptions and random bits and pieces would frustrate the hell out of me if I was learning it.  Like the word “up” which shows up(1) in a ridiculous number of places.  You can look me up(2) in the phone book, though I might hang up(3) on you afterwards, if you can put up(4) with that.  Be written up(5) for a rules violation.  Hook up(6,7) a stereo or with that cutie in math class.  Things are looking up(8) and throwing up(9) and calling up(10), hurrying up(11) and beefing up(12) then easing up(13) before backing up(14) and getting up(15) and blowing up(16) and waking up(17) and standing up(18) and showing up(19) and breaking up(20) being brought up(21) dressing up(22) and ending up(23) filled up(24) before giving up(25) and growing up(26).  All before your computer can boot up(27).

Dutch has some of that, with bits of words kind of flitting around, but generally far more logically and consistently.  And there is no chance for accidentally saying something is logicaler or consitenter.  In English you are big or bigger, cold or colder, fat or fatter, but more excited, more enthusiastic, and more irritated.  One might guess that short words take “-er” and long ones “more” but that explanation would be more fun if it was more fit to explain the phenomenon.

In linguistics classes in college I remembers studying something called the “Maximal Onset Principle” which basically says that a consonant in a word prefers to go at the beginning of a syllable, instead of the end.  This explains why a popular word breaks into syllables the way it does.  It is “po-pu-lar” and not “pop-ul-ar” like one might think.  That second p wants to be in front of a vowel if it can.

This phenomenon is cute and fun and cross-linguistic and basically irrelevant.

But not in Dutch!  In Dutch, they have long vowels and short vowels.  So “bos” is a forest, and “boos” is angry.  In order to not tell everyone that you are a forest today because way too many politicians in your homeland are soulless bastards (there are some benefits to being so busy, such as missing out on some of the actions of the Republican congress) you have to pay attention to the vowel length.

I don’t want to make this waaaay too long (English has long vowels sometimes too?) and it is all I can do to not go on a sizeable rant about defunding Planned Parenthood (seriously guys, what the fuck?!), but basically that Maximal Onset Principle comes into play in Dutch with the long vowels by grabbing consonants, particularly in plural forms.

(Note: a syllable that ends in a vowel is considered “open” which makes the vowel “long.”  Ending with a consonant conversely, is “closed” and makes the vowel “short.”)

For example, “zon” is the sun, “zoon” is a son.  You generally pluralize a noun by adding “-en” but if you have two sons you have twee “zonen” not twee “*zoonen” because the Maximal Onset Principle takes that “n” and pulls it into the second syllable, leaving the first syllable open, and thus long, so the second “o” would be redundant.

So then if you have two suns in the sky it would be twee “zonnen” because that second “n” is necessary to keep the vowel closed, and therefore short.

(I wish I knew how to make "two suns" a hyperlink, but since I'm html incompetent, here's what I would have linked it to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/01/20/two-suns-twin-stars_n_811864.html?ref=fb&src=sp)

The point is that Dutch understands itself better than English.  To have a linguistic theorem like the Maximal Onset Principle overtly reflected in the orthography of the language is impressive.  We don’t need to go into English spelling, right?  (Ask me about “ghoti”some other time.)

Did any of that make any sense?  I would love to clarify it…but I gotta go to bed, got class and work and whatnot tomorrow.

Oh, and if you live in the US, go get screened for cervical cancer before the Senate has a chance to be as asinine as the House.

A fine day for another multi-lingual argument over which country has the hottest women.

Movement is oddly effortless when it is raining.  Riding home from the train station I suspect the warmer air of improving the functionality of my chain and gears, and I wish I could bottle some velocity for tomorrow morning’s cold arduous trudge.  But this is not another blog about bicycling in the rain.  It’s an entry into my long-overdue virtual diary that you can read if you want.

Dutch class today was fine.  Good.  Normal.  I don’t really remember it, it was so long ago. Oh yeah, I remember, it was an impressive show of patience by my teacher as she tried to do a “word slide” exercise.  We each got little squares of paper with a verb in the infinitive on top and an incomplete sentence below.  The exercise is that someone reads their sentence, which is completed by the infinitive verb on someone else’s card, who then reads their sentence, which is completed by someone else’s infinitive, and so forth.

It’s a great idea which normally works well, but today my little cohort was just not up to it.  Long pauses before someone would grudgingly give the infinitive form of the verb, when the whole purpose of the exercise is the present perfect.  I could not believe my teacher didn’t throw anyone out the window.  I expected to show my imperfect skills to the Belgian police when I told them “My teacher has just defenestrated the Albanian.”

Work was good.  I got a kebab with the Italians and a Polish guy and we told football hooligan stories and alcohol stories and they argued about whether Polish or Italian women are hotter and ended up agreeing that Russians were the best.

And even the work part of work was good.  I chatted up some secretaries and nurses, and no one hung up on me all day (although one of my favorite things is calling hanger-uppers back and saying so nicely that pure honeyed niceness oozes out of their phone onto their clenched little chins “Hi, I’m sorry, I think we got disconnected there.  Sorry about that.  I was just calling to see if…” and listening to them squirm their way out of being called out for jerkish behaviour.  Plus my pleasant amiability is contagious, and I reckon they actually go away a smidge happier, so hopefully it is one small point for the Positive Feelings of the world.  I have not been tempted to call back and tell anyone off in days and days.  I am the spirit of equanimity, reaching out across VOIP lines to a bored and irritable nurse in Indiana.  You’re welcome Sherrie-Christie-Janet-Sheila-Kelly.

I was also entertaining myself terribly with a fax or two.  I have sent about 468 faxes, and have heard back from precisely 0 of them, so have logically concluded they are an utter waste of time and paper.  I am okay with the former, but in order to assuage my guilt at the latter I’ve started altering my form letter a bit more.  I think I addressed it to “The Musketeers of Oncology at” such and such hospital, and can’t remember what all else I put in there, but it tickled me a bit, I confess.

But the best part of the day was the wee Dutch girl, who for some reason is calling Thailand, despite not speaking any Thai.  She sits on the other side of the room, but her voice carries overhead as she asks doctor after nurse after doctor after nurse about their ultrasouuuuund.  I noticed the progress of their accents infiltrating her own speech, and I think her frustration opened the floodgates, so she carries that last vowel for a good ¾ of a second, with a nice little melodic fluctuation.  Periodically she’ll say things like “no, no I’m not pregnant, I want to talk to you about your ultrasouuuuund.  You are nurse?”  Another impressive display of patience.

Now I’m going to bed.

Actually, here's a totally unrelated picture from last weekend in Gent.  Now I'm going to bed.