My Name in Russian

Limb Rick

2009-01-09T08:56:00.000-08:00

Dave and I will go down in history for our fine poetry:

I.
I once put domestic abuse
at the top of my list of to-dos
but decided against it
when my ass, shoulders, left tit,
and beaver got covered with booboos.

II.
A guy come to Portland from Wintrop
had trouble with gettin his prick up.
Turns out his fancy
was not his wife Nancy
but his '64 chevrolet pick up.

III.
A man with a great pompadour
forced a girl to lay down on the floor.
He was so sleazy
he got her all greezy
in both the front and the back door.

IV.
There once was a boy who went pee
and asked his classmates to come see
He went to the pisser
but boy did he miss 'er!
His classmates ended up with wet feet.

V.
I know of a man with a mower
who uses it for just one chore:
he shaves his wife's cunt
so he won't have to hunt
when it comes time to fuck, suck and blow her.

VI.
There once was a woman from Paris
who touched herself out on the terrace
she came with such power
that the old Eiffel tower
blew its load all the way to Polaris.

VII.
There once was a chick named Kate
her boobies were massive cock-bait.
When put on display
even a gay
his own skivvies would saturate.

VII.
There once was a fella named Jimmy
whose ass was as wide as a chimney
they tried to extinguish
but couldn't distinguish
the smoke from the smudge on his skivvies.

Malmö

2008-07-23T02:06:00.001-07:00

After one amazing week in Stockholm, I took a night train south (back down south, that is) to Malmö, just to see the city, and it so happened that the family I am now staying by had a gig there last night, so the meeting was arranged perfectly. This is the family I will be wwoofing with for only a couple of days, they have 13 Icelandic horses, and they all play traditional Swedish tunes. The concert was a most excellent introduction to the family, after a long and lonely day wondering the streets of what I found to be a rather...boring...city. Malmö is mostly just shopping, and there is an old part which is nice. I was recommended to visit St. Peter's Catherdral, which I did and it was beautiful just like everyother Northern European Cathedral I've ever seen, and to have a coffee and cake at Konditori Hollander, which I did and it was regally ornamented, charming, and absolutely delicious. I walked around the city, alllll around the city several times, took a nap in the park, used the internet at the train station, and began my next book, Freakonomics, which I am enjoying with a potential newfound interest in some branch of economics. But since I had a rough and short sleep on the train the night before, and had 12 hours to occupy myself there in that small place, I did not enjoy it to its maximum capacity, feeling sad to have left familiar friends in Stockholm, and anticipating anxiously the next people I was to to meet. The train ride...I was in a compartment with a family with two small children, one of whom wet the bed before the train even left Stockholm Central. Perhaps it is a more well-known fact than I had previously assumed that children have a pleasant smell to them...maybe that's just babies. But it is very fortunate, I will tell you, that the human nose is capable of adapting to any odor, no matter how wretched, within a fairly short amount of time, so that we don't wander this earth vomiting all the time.

This farm is so far the most comfortable place I have traveled. Although I of course enjoy the cities a lot, I feel so much more at home here amongst the trees and the countryside and the animals, which I have not seen yet, but hopefully will a bit later. My task thus far has been to pick cherries from the tree outside, the huge cherrytree, with most deliciously dark red cherries. I picked the ones I could reach, but will need a ladder to get the others, and some help.

So, that's the update, I can't wait to be home, but it will be a wonderful final week abroad. Cheers.

Jazzzzz

2008-07-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

Hejsan from Stockholm. This week happens to be the 25th annual Stockholm Jazz Festival, featuring Van Morrison and Mary J. Blige. Pontus and his friends will volunteer there, and I will absorb the music for at least one of the days. It takes place on Skeppsholmen, the island where the Modern Art Museum is located, which I saw last time I was here, and which featured a fantastic Dada exhibit. I'll check it out again this year.

And so I am here after my very first couchsurfing experience in Göteborg with a fellow named Karl, who plays a little bit of every type of music (from folk music to heavy metal) on a little bit of every type of instrument. He has a nykelharpa that his grandfather made, and I learned one tune on that, and then we went to a small folk festival south of the city, where I met a few fantastic Swedish fiddlers and recorded tons of tunes which I will try to learn before I see them next, at the Korrö festival in Småland next weekend. There were a lot of older folks at the little festival, playing mostly tunes that were easily fathomable and not as enticing to my ears as what these fellows, Roger and Erik were playing alone in what they called Logen, which is a barn, but a barn built and designed specifically for dancing in. I asked them what the difference was between their tunes and the other tunes, if it was a matter of region or time period or anything. They said it was simply that they prefer the more complicated tunes, the polskas or all varieties, particulary the Slängpolskas. So next week I will meet them again as well as a million more musicians and hopefully pick up something useful while there.

Karl plays in a bluegrass/country band as well, so last Saturday we went to the Nääsville Bluegrass festival, also south of Göteborg but a bit further. None of the musicians has a driver's lisence, though one had access to an old Volvo 740, so I had my first driving experience out of the states, the roads are so narrow! But driving is driving, and I think I'll rent a car next week to get to all the places I need to be, and to have a place to sleep at the festival (it's a camping fest), so I will have much more experience.

And before I got to Göteborg, I was in Helsingborg and Helsingör and staying with Leon in Copenhagen, at which time the Copenhagen Jazz fest was going on. So, needless to say, I am getting a little of my two MOST favorite kinds of music, traditional Swedish and jazz jazz jazz. In fact, now Pontus is rocking out on the piano right behind me, so I must get my fiddle out! Signing off for now, home July 28th.

Barceloning

2008-06-27T05:16:00.000-07:00

Barcelona is a hot hot hot weather city and that is the sort of city that makes me tired and worn and smoggy like a humidinataur, whatever that is. Thankfully, the meditteranean is only a short walk from the apartment in which I am staying on Via Laietana with Kevin (my cow orker) and his wife and kids and now parents. We are squeezing into the small space, completely furnished by IKEA, and it is frankly quite delightful, they are wonderful folks. Spain beat Russia in the semifinals (?) last night, and all the while I was out walking around on the boardwalk and in the alleys and there were 3 goals scored which I knew because the entire city erupted for each one, whether watching the game or not. The soccer support system of Barcelona (and surely all of Europe) spreads like a virus, within seconds all humans know what is going on in the game.

I´ve been doing mostly touristy things here, but a little bit of playing as well. Lucy and Leo are learning to play little little violins, and currently the song they know is twinkle twinkle little star, so we made an arrangement for three violins and three voices and performed for the family on my birthday. We have hopes of going to play on the street for only 5 minutes, once through the song, but it may well be that none of us have the guts. Leo is 5 and Lucy is 7 so they have a good excuse in that their bodies aren´t big enough to hold large quantities of guts, but I have no such alibi. But because they are so darn cute, we could make some mad euros, and then buy ice cream with them.

There´s a huge bike culture in Barcelona. Or maybe it´s not a bike culture, maybe it´s just a very well accepted and encouraged mode of transport. Bike lanes are plentiful and wide and respected, and there is at least one citywide bike sharing program called bicicle. A flat fee of about 30 euros gets you access to heaps of special bikes all over the city anytime you want. Lots of bikes ride on the sidewalk too, which I think I heard about on the radio sometime back. Barcelonian pedestrians were upset because even though bikes are good for riders and the environment and the traffic, they ride too fast on the sidewalks and knock people down. It´s not a huge deal, but laws are useless here and probably any attempt to remedy the situation would be ignored.

Gaudi is everywhere but way too touristy. But gee he had a fine sense of style. The Park Guell is most beautiful, a place originally designed to be a place for people to build homes, but which would have cost too much to live in, so is now simply a lovely park with beautifully molten public buildings.

Internet time is almost up, so I leave it at this for now. Today´s agenda: the beach, and a little bit of cheesy tourbus experience which I hate but for some reason bought a two-day ticket for so as to ride around with the family yesterday. It´s not a good way to see the city at all, but it is all right for transporting myself from one place to another.

Another trip!

2008-06-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

At long last I am traveling to Sweden via Spain and Copenhagen! I leave today, and am finally over the unexpected anxiety I was associating with leaving what is good here in Portland for what is unknown in Europe. I'm hoping to collect lots of tunes with my new Olympus digital recorder to bring back and share with all of you, and hopefully this musical experience will penetrate and help reshape the SK style of fiddling. I will also be writing some, trying my hand at some songs if inspiration hits, and all in all resurrecting some creative practices I have been neglecting for some time due to an influx of social skills, wonderful human beings, happiness, and unconventional work hours. Please check back for updates!

Arizoning out

2008-02-26T17:59:00.000-08:00

There are probably not so many artistic renditions of human fecal matter in the world, despite the fact that the subject is so common to the hearts and hollows of all mankind, and even animalkind. But would you believe that I, SK Green, was blessed with the opportunity to not only witness one such sculpture on my recent trip to visit Dawn in Tucson, but also to lounge on it and experience it in all manners which one such piece of art ought to be experienced? The whole business began when one of the wealthier neighborhoods in Tucson thought it suitable to commemorate themselves via art. Artist Paul Edwards was hired to think of just the right way to honor the 'hood, and he did so by constructing a large mosaic sculpture in memory of the sewage overflow problems that the neighborhood had fallen prey to several years ago. BLAH! Said the neighborhood, THAT'S DISGUSTING! and they banished it from their proximity. Where did it turn up? Why the poor part of town, of course, and that's where Dawn and I got to enjoy this brown beauty. I thought it was quite a nice sculpture, really, but perhaps I was born into special circumstances. We brought our hula hoops (Dawn is an amazing hoop dancer!) and the ipod speakers down to the park and soaked up the sun on the geysers of mockrock raw sewage! It was by far the most satisfying and pleasant experience of an otherwise absobloominlutely amazing trip. Also below is a photo of a dead saguaro cactus; very interesting!

Derdiedases

2008-02-01T07:35:00.000-08:00

I've been taking a Spanish class on Tuesday nights with my housemate Beth. I studied Spanish for a few years in high school, but have since repositioned the second language function in my brain towards German and all its absurd absurdities. Turns out said absurdities are pretty well ingrained in my mind, so although I can see that Spanish is muy muy facile compared to German, I keep putting all my verbs in a pile at the ends of sentences, injecting abers and derdiedases throughout, and otherwise speaking a German-Spanish-English hybrid that only Beth can understand. This will naturally repair itself soon, but will I then still be able to speak German? I would like to be extraperfectfluent in another language in the future, but am I sabbotaging my progress by mixing and matching? Partly, probably, but this way the skeletons and vocabularies have time to sink into my subconscious while I do other things, which I know is elementary to my learning style; allowing the basics time to sink in makes advancing easier in due course. Hey, isn't that the philosophy behind cramming as much info into growing children, so that thinking skills enhance, and there is a foundation on which to build in the future? Si si si si si si si.

Arizona

2008-01-24T20:49:00.000-08:00

Coming soon will be pictures from my recent trip to visit Dawn in Tucson.

This I Wrote in Summer

2007-07-09T20:55:00.000-07:00

Usually at this time, midnight, I'm dreading the fact that I have to be up for another 9 hours, baking cookies, scones, muffins and croissants for a wealthy audience at Rosemont, who would just as soon toss their egg cartons in their blue expensive City of Portland trash bags than return them to the chicken farmer, let alone turn them into yellow-painted caterpillars with googly eyeballs. Actually, they probably would make an effort to at least return the cartons to the store, one at a time, in their great big air conditioned cars which eat babies and small animals for fuel, so that they may feel good about conserving the environment. But stop that sk, stop with the generalizations. I've been having a real problem with them lately, having emotions that feel like things and experiences and interpreting them as stereotypical truths, which is not a fruitful use of my time. They are not necessarily mean and terrible lumpings together, but rushed conclusions nonetheless, and I have to slap my wrists and bite my tongue sometimes for forming opinions based on impressions. According to the number of Polish joke books out there, this is a natural part of being a human, right? Everybody does it. But I've never known it to factor into my own life so much, and now I'm stuck here, scorning folks who live in Maine but "aren't real Mainers" and can't possibly understand, and recognizing differences between northern climate folks and southern climate folks, and feeling like an all around cruel human being. Generaliztions, categorizations, labels and boxes are all very conducive to some variety of conversation, sure, but in trying to imagine a discussion without generalizations, I am left with a great new appreciation for my mother, who asks me what's new and talks about the past two days and what's fresh in the garden. I think right now the snap peas and strawberries are prime, and the tomatoes are just beginning to blush.

Cuban

2007-06-14T17:46:00.000-07:00

On my most melancholy days, I feel like an old Cuban man relaxing on a bench, wearing a light gray linen suit and a flat cap, smoking a Bolivar, watching the world pass. The midcentury winged Cadallacs in fading pastel colors steam by like pigs on their way to nowhere, and the sun spreads with no other purpose than to be hot, and to make men want to smoke on benches. There is no reason to interrupt.

J.A. Hinkley

2007-04-04T15:41:00.000-07:00

My grandmother always referred to death as "kicking the bucket," never as demise, loss of life, or a natural part of existence. She had a cat named Charlie who had dreadful kidneys, just like she did. They were both on dialysis. Grammie went to the clinic three times a week for half a day at a time, and Glenna and Richard came to inject fluids into Charlie every evening at about 7 o'clock. Charlie had real trouble walking and his hind legs curved in like a crowbar, but supported little, if any, of his weight.

Grammie had a stroke in September and when I went to visit her, she didn't remember me. I grew up next door to her and considered her one of my very favorite people. I wrote to her as often as I could when I was out of state at school, and she wrote to me in her beautiful, deliberate penmanship, final-draft quality, as was taught in the 1920s, even in Northern Maine one room schoolhouses. I was devastated and burst into tears when she didn't know
me, and while she was aware that something was awry, she didn't know quite what to do, because after all, she was in the ICU. I cried all the way home, and then all night. I went to see her a couple days later with my mother, and she seemed mostly back to normal, maybe even a little bit happier (drugged). She knew who I was, and seemed right on the ball, but had to stay in the hospital for a while because her legs were not strong enough to support her dwindling weight.

She later came home, under the condition that she would be under 24-hour surveillance. My aunt Marilyn lived with her and Ruth and Glenna, the nurse and the teacher, came almost every day to stay, and all the other children came at least once a week for many hours at a time. Grammie went into the bathroom one day and fell and had to go back to the hospital. This happened a couple of times. She came home, fell, looked like she'd been beaten by thugs (her skin bruised at even the thought of impact, just as "merely looking at a bed," as her doctor had said, meant pregnancy in her earlier years; a highly sensitive English woman), and went back to the hospital.

Charlie kicked the bucket a few months ago, which was a relief for Glenna and Richard, and Grammie was not affected much because she was in the hospital, and at that point was unaware that Marilyn's cat Leah was not the same animal as Charlie. She continued to talk about him as if he were alive long after he died. She had always said though, that she wouldn't know what she would do when Charlie kicked the bucket. She didn't want to live without her cat, her only constant companion since her second husband passed in 1980.

Most recently she had fallen and broken her wrist. She was staying at the Winship Green nursing home in Bath, with a roommate that she got along with winningly, which was somewhat rare. My cousin Miles had a baby recently and went to see her around Christmas to show her. Despite having 7 children of her own, as well as taking care of her younger twin sisters when she was just 13, she seemed to dislike babies, and felt extremely uncomfortable whenever someone around her had an infant, let alone asked her to hold it. When Miles came to visit, she was elated and requested to hold the baby, and looked at it and carressed it lovingly. She had forgotten her old inhibitions.

Last week during my school vacation, I was due to visit Grammie, but I decided not to because Mom told me she didn't remember who Glenna and Ruth were not two days before. I knew I wouldn't be able to handle that situation again, and I also knew it was probably one of the last times I'd see her. She should have died several months ago, but she didn't want to, perhaps because she was embarrassed of dying in front of anyone, or else she didn’t want to burden us with death. I didn't visit her, and I don't regret it, because I remember her the way she was when she was alive.

I associate her most readily with molasses. So sweet. She used Molasses for everything, on her pancakes, in Graham bread, in cookies. She bought it in brown gallon jugs, and when she finished the molasses, she made birdhouses out of the jugs, so everyone in the family had a molasses bird feeder. She was endlessly encouraging of me no matter what I did, saying, "Oh isn't that good?" or "Gee whiz!" after every puzzle piece I correctly placed when we did puzzles together even into my 20s. She was uncritically supportive of my brother, and who tended towards destructive activities rather than creative pursuits. She was one of few people who thought the absolute world of him, just because he was who he was. Grammie judged few on their actions, but on their true character, even if circumstances didn't allow that character to shine in a positive light.

I haven't cried the way I thought I would since Tuesday night when my mom called me well past her bedtime, and I knew something was up. I do find myself getting lost in memories, gazing into my minds eye when I oughtta be learning differential equations or error analysis, but I remember her feeling and get stuck in it, stuck on that black and white rug in the office, stuck on the plastic baggie of warm (rectangular) muffins I am bringing home for my mom; that bag that isn't closed because it will make the muffins soggy, and so I put my black rubber boots back on, the ones with the red stripe across the top and the small puncture in the rubber (so my feet will get wet) and I say good bye and run down the hill, over the stream via the little bridge Grampie made of rusting
metal tubes so the water can still run through, slam the door to my mother's house and we together slather butter on the warm muffins, and they taste awful good, and now we don't have to get dinner.

Molasses Classes

2007-02-07T14:54:00.000-08:00

Well, this is my last semester as an undergrad, and it's cushy cushy. Yes, I'll be graduating in May, after approxomately 10.5 semesters in school (that's the 5.5 year plan, for those who thought I'd be in school until I'm 80). When I graduate, I'm going to buy myself a fancy dress at the Moda Bella in Gardiner, and then I'm going to stay in Maine for while, because I've got a contract as an exchange student coordinator with ASSE, which is part time, but interesting enough to keep me around to earn a bit of dough.

Classes are interesting, except for one, which is the boringest class I've ever experienced and ever will, and I suppose it's okay to have just one of those in 5 years of school. It's called Numerical Analysis and it's about I don't know what. Seems to have some connection with analyizing errors to figure out a close-enough equation that will tactfully get you where you need to be without actually doing the work. So far, we're converting decimal to binary and back, and playing with Taylor's theorem, which I haven't quite figured out the significance of, but Muhammad says it's "important." It looks like this:

P(x)=f(x(0))+f'(x(0))(x-x(0))+(f"(x(0))/2)((x-x(0))^2)+...

The formatting is crummy, but it's just a series. It might be an interesting poetry medium, leading to an intense conglamoration of emotion, or else a really funny kind of fish, or else poop on a stick.

I'm also taking German, which I love eternally, mostly because I'm getting better and better, and the teacher is entertaining. Differential Equations is a fun class. Chris was telling me about the time it takes for hot glass to cool in glass blowing, so that's an interesting application. I would not like to blow glass, but I would like to transfer the ideas and techniques of glassblowing to the kitchen, and make crystal-caramel bottles and squids and things. I shall try, as soon as I get the right sort of straw.

Tai chi is a good class too, giving me a final credit to reach my 12 min for financial aid. Yesterday we walked around like apes, cranes and cats, which is a pleasant activity.

Alles gut! Now off to Swedish, at the Language Exchange; I think it's 5 degrees (F) outside, if that. Hope I don't get intellectual frostbite.

Underpants Krone

2007-01-12T19:40:00.000-08:00

Let me tell you a little something about LUCK. On the first day of this year, I awoke from my usual 4-12 slumber, feeling my usual crumbly morning feelings, and rubbing my usual sore hip, when I came across what felt to be a coin in my underpants. I giggled just a little, and removed the coin to find that it was not just any coin, but 1 Danish Krone, equivalent to about 17 US cents. I have seen this coin before: it came from Pernille the Danish girl I met in Germany, and since then, I have kept it in a zippered pocket in my purse, for lack of a better place. However, how it made the trip from my bag into my sleeping attire, I cannot tell. I did not bring my purse with me anywhere the day before (New Years' Eve). I did go out drinking and Funk dancing at Gritty's, but I did not encounter any Danes, at least not that I remember, and I'm fairly certain that it is the very Krone that was once trapped in my bag. For the time being, I'll interpret this as a good luck omen, mostly because I have been thinking a lot about luck, lucky people, what luck is, and how much does it disrupt or support mathematics. I consider myself lucky in life, but not in games. I always lose games, even Cribbage, my specialty. No matter how skilled I am, I lose because I get the wrong cards, and perhaps because I think too much instead of intuiting. I have always just tried my best, and let the 10-year-old opponent beat my ass, because there seemed nothing I could do about it. This year, however, my luck will change, for I am the bearer of an Underpants Krone, and that is an amazing thing. Watch out, I've started playing poker.

2007

2007-01-01T18:52:00.000-08:00

Things I will do this year:

Graduate from college.

Blue (revisited)

2006-10-26T18:38:00.000-07:00

After last night's ever-entertaining Swedish class in South Portland, Rachael and I went to Blue to check out the Irish session. Blue is a fairly new club, very simple and slightly classy. The walls are orangey red, and the art is highly sexual, but secretly so, and reminiscent of grafitti. Guinness is on tap (only $3!), so I was happy. We caught the tail-end of the 7:30 concert by an excellent Irish fiddler, Oisin McAuley, yakked with Glen Loper for a few minutes and enjoyed the tunes at the seisun. I didn't bring my fiddle; my Irish repetoire is no larger than the buttons on my sweater. I did hear some tunes I knew though, and I think I'll make a habit of going. Eventually, the tunes will get so stuck in my head that I'll have no choice but to scratch them out on the old four-strings myself.

Blue has a lot of folky events. Tonight is Rakish Paddy, another Irish group. I've never heard them, and I'm skipping it in lieu of more important things (writing my blog...). Their website has all their shows, www.portcityblue.com. I like the ritual of going out in the weekday evenings. I used to go out dancing (Scandi, Morris, Rapper, Tango, etc.) at least 5 nights a week, but since I've returned to Maine, no such activity. I have decided to crack down on myself and do most of my schoolwork during the day, from 9-5 or 10-6 or whatever, and then excommunicate it from my consciousness. After I've done my time (and changed out of my hunting-orange jumpsuit), I can head to town and chill like a villain at Coffee by Design, or check out music or a movie. This will be healthier for me, because otherwise I put the work off and think about it obsessively, disengaging from the part of life that happens on the outside of my head. That's not very SK, according to the Gospel According to SK. And so, a change attempts to manifest itself, and since beer is involved, it has potential to hold.

Are you free Friday night?

2006-10-13T10:15:00.000-07:00

I have noticed that time and space occupy the same dimensional area in my mind. When I think of time passing, events, clocks, dates, futures and pasts, it is chronological, but not on a line, just in a miscellaneous and insensible jumble in my brain. I know exactly where/when each item is in relation to the others though, and it is the same with spatial things. Always have distances and relative locations been clear to me without question, and now I am realizing that it is the same with time. How to describe the situation? I can't yet, but they're the same thing, so I must personally argue against the scientific and analytic separation of the two. More on that later.

But with that in mind, I have to say, the weekend is the place to be. Last weekend was an amazing menagerie of land, water, and friends. I traveled to Boston on Friday evening, which I used to do quite frequently, but now I feel the need to either stay really local, or travel really far, not in between. I stayed at my friend Andy's house and we drank sparkling watermelon cider that I had brought him from Sweden in May (he saved it to drink with me!) and yakked about various important life matters like New Math and delicious food. I woke up earlier than worms on Saturday morning to meet my friend Dawn at the airport. Dawn was my cherished roommate when I lived in Portland west and haven't seen her since I was there. We had a heartfelt reunion and fell in love all over again, and went to the only place that was open in the whole city of Boston, the South Street Diner. The food was dinery and the sugar packets were made of art deco. Then we went to IKEA!!!! It was closed though, because it was so early, but we just took a little nap in the car, since neither one of us had gotten much sleep. When it opened, we were in and out quick like bad little bunnies (which was what we used to call ourselves when we stole yummy basil and tomatoes from our landlord's garden, since it didn't seem like she was ever going to harvest them - they kept rotting on the bush! Wasteful.). I needed some cheap apartmenty stuff, so I was happy. Then we met my pals Amy and Scott (from Pinewoods) and went to the North End, as the most important part of any outing is marvelous, beautiful, coloquial victuals. Mmmm, that meal, we ate at a place...I forgot the name, but I know where it is. I had squid fettucini, and tiramisu for dessert. Tiramisu, Tiramisu, what can I say of Tiramisu? It is the most perfect texture of all foods, I must opine, and it's suitable caffeinated (not too much) and just the right sweet. I will make it soon. In the evening, we went to the BodyWorlds exhibit at the Science Museum, which was oddly unemotional. Sometimes presented as an art exhibit, it is based on a process called plastination, in which dead folks' bodily fluids are replaced with a polymer that preserves the whole bodies without the shrinkage or liquidishness of other methods. The bodies were all in specific positions, to show what happens in the body when it moves in a certain way. There was a yoga lady, some skaters, and even a gigantic Bactrian camel, which was my favorite part. It was odd though, to be sure, and I was baffled by whatever sort of emotional reaction I was having, or lack thereof. It was kind of sterile. I think that was the point. Sciencey.

The next day, we woke up early to catch an 8:30 Duck Tour out of the Science Museum. The guy driving, Colonel Ducttape, was rather masochistic, but he told us interesting things. The vehicles are old amphibious DUKW things used in World War Two to go up the beaches of Normandy from the water. Twas grand. Then Dawn and I met my friend Brendan in Quincey and we drove to Hingham Bay where his sailboat lives and spent the rest of the day sailing! That's twice in one year, for me, and I liked this smaller scale boat (25 feet instead of 90) more than the Schooner. Brendan taught us a little about sailing and had us jibe and steer and whatnot, and then we helped him take down the sails for the winter. Then we came back to Maine, Brendan too, and hid photos of ducks all over Dean's (my landlord/our good friend) apartment (downstairs from mine), as part of a running joke between them. (!)

I showed Dawn a bit of Maine the next day, though not as much as I would have liked to. I took her to visit Gramma and Pop because she said she wanted to meet someone in my family. I took her to the dolphin Marina for lobster (she lives in Arizona currently, so all this water was good for her soul), and then for a quick walk at Mast's Landing. Then to the bus sation, and she was gone!

The weekend before that was Dean's amazingly fun wedding at the Stone Mountain Arts Center in Brownfield, ME. I've never been to such a fantastic wedding, and I was so happy to finally meet Dean's real children (well, exstep children, but close enough). His daughter Sandy is married, but his son Dave was like a long lost brother! He plays an amazing bass, so we jammed a bit, and yum yum it was delcious.

The weekend before that was the Common Ground Fair, which was wet and cold, but still more fun than jumping off a cliff.

But I am going on, so I shall stop. It is the weekend again, and I don't have plans, but I have grown used to the overstimulation of DOING things as a way to rest (new to me.) so I must find something to keep myself occupied, because the less I think about schoolwork on the weekends, the harder I work during the week. Invigorating!

Cough Cough!

2006-09-28T06:26:00.000-07:00

SK is sick; send flowers.

Salty

2006-08-16T06:34:00.000-07:00

I sure would taste delicious this summer, mmhmm, because I am always salted from dance dance dancing. And if not from dancing, from standing in that kitchen with my elbows in French Potato Salad, and my fingers perpetually garlicked. This week though, was a special treat, for I spent a day at a private beach in Wood's Hole, swimming (actually swimming, not just numbing, which is the Maine way) in the ocean. The waves mixed me like pie dough and the sun enriched me with vitamin D, and when I and my host and company were suitably baked, we walked to the ferry terminal and headed for Martha's Vineyard. There, the dogs there were all groomed, and the ladies and gentlemen were too, and we arrived at the Black Dog to catch our scheduled Schooner to sail out to sea. The wind was a howlin' (more than usual), so we stayed mostly in the bay, but the 90-foot ship was a bounty of interesting knots and monkey-boys who swang from the ropes to raise the sails. It was an exciting 3-hour ride, sponsered by my friend Emily's family reunion, and when I got back to camp, I was a sandy, salty salty, bleached out clam, and I went to bed and had nice dreams.

Skunks

2006-07-26T21:51:00.000-07:00

I heard skunks skweeling outside my cabin, so I whistled a tune as I passed them by, so they wouldn't expect that I was being sneakrative and bellow from below their tails. Success!

Early Music Week

2006-07-21T08:43:00.000-07:00

Swimming, as you may have guessed from previous posts, makes me feel as good as a popsicle tastes. Cherry popsicles are my favorite, although Shark Bars, which are lemon-flavoured (not shark-flavoured), are beginning to dominate this particular arena of my existence. They are like swimming on a very, very hot and humid day, whereas cherry popsicles are more like going to the dentist and having a flouride treatment. Orange popsicles are like going to Funtown, and root beer popsicles are like my mother. Blue raspberry popsicles are confusing, lime popsicles are sort of unsatisfying, coconut popsicles are like vanilla popsicles, and mango popsicles are incomprehensibly delicious.

Yesterday morning I put in my earplugs to swim, and it was a lime/coconut swimming sort of day. I couldn't hear the water sloshing as my feet went in, nor the breeze in the trees, though I could certainly see its force. I could not hear if anyone was coming up behind me with the intent to murder, and I couldn't even hear the gossip in the kitchen, which usually echoes from one edge of the lake to the other. What I could hear, and it cast a great and rather dreary dream quality unto my morning babtism off the Back Lads dock, was recorders, and lots of them. (Note the use of 'was' instead of 'were,' due to the fact that 'recorders' is not really plural; it is a group, a flock, a mob. 'Was' is correct in this situation, according to Strunk and White.). Welcome to Early Music Week at Pinewoods!

Geese

2006-07-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

I went swimming after my shift in the kitchen this evening, before drinking my gin and tonic. The geese were down by the crew dock, the ones that used to be small and strictly brown, and who swam with their regular-old-Canada-goose-looking parents, but who are now full grown, and I always knew they would eventually look just like their father (and mother). They were swim swim swimming, and I jumped in, and they didn't change pace, but rather told me a racist joke:

What do you get when you put ten ducks in a box?

A box of Quackers.

Fiddle

2006-07-01T11:10:00.000-07:00

My fiddle is not an extension of my body, and only on rare occasions does it feel even remotely so. It is not an instrument of complete expression for me; it is more a method of communication, a language, which I can use to help myself relate to other people. I can have basic conversations, but I can't talk philosophy or politics very deeply. I can use it to discuss ethics and humor, but not medical science or even music theory. I haven't been speaking with it since wee childhood, so it doesn't feel intuitive, and perhaps never will feel as natural as, say, the English language. I don't quite understand the grammar, but with a little drilling, it could come quickly. Tomorrow I will have a fiddle lesson from Amelia, based on rhythm and back-up, and will come a tiny step closer to understanding this strange cancerous thing that sometimes finds itself attached to my neck. However, somethings simply cannot be taught.

This one's not that interesting.

2006-06-26T11:28:00.000-07:00

Birthday festivities were entertaining this year, but never to be compared with the whiskey, cigars and limericks of last. We held a Greek Syposium of sorts, and you might be interested to know that despite the modern connotations of the word "Symposium," which to me implies an open and lovely gathering with maybe a specific topic in mind, originally it referred to a men's party with lots of drinking, flutegirls, and sex. Ours was somewhere in the middle (or maybe just on the outside of anything), I suppose, for we drank some wine, diluting it with ice cubes in the beginning of the evening, and lessening the dilution as time progressed. We discussed philosophy, but not as diligently as we on the Pinewoods Crew are known for: we actually just gossiped. Also, we played entertaining creative games, and Dan wrote me a contradance, which we tested out. The dance is called "The Colonel," named affectionately for the Great Big Hobart Mixer, which I taught him how to use in the kitchen. We all wore fancy and/or sexy clothes for the occasion, and it was indeed very classy. We took a break (we broke?) midway to venture into the world of the campers, for it was skit night, and there are often entertaining things that go on. Amelia and Emily performed with their Rapper team. Nothing very eventful happened, but that is just fine. We had a lovely time, and enjoyed each others' company, and I am satisfied.

What I am not satisfied about is that I had the flu last week and I am still feeling its repercussions. I sound like a dead duck when I talk, and I have to make sure that I rest a lot, which I wouldn't mind, except that this is International Week, my absolute favorite, and I hate to miss the dancing! So frustrating, but I can deal, yo. However, I don't really like all this "do things in moderation" business. I like extremes, because I am young, and although I can see the reason behind moderation, I must reach end-to-end and full-breadth NOW to fully feel all that I can, and then the moderation will come naturally later, I'm certain of it. So that is that.

Night and Day

2006-06-19T09:00:00.000-07:00

Swollen with laughter I occupy my days. Never have I thought that being around the constant stimulation of human beings could bring so much energy to my soul, without wearing it out completely. But the favorite shirt that is worn until its final thread snaps may be said to have been a happier shirt than the one that was only shabby because it had been used as a garbage disposal rag one too many times. This is a new experience, satisfied exhaustion. My creative insides are oozing everywhere, for there are many on the Pinewoods crew sharing my interests and reasoning tactics, or at least who are willing to let me tell stories when the need arises, and not squirm with my awkwardness of telling. And still there is plenty of time to read and write, though with the opportunity of speakspeakspeaking so prevalent, writing isn’t as much of a necessity than a joy.
But what I am most of all fascinated by currently is that I have been having nightmares almost every night since I arrived. Some of them are really scary. Many of them are perfectly normal dreams, with an extraneous flash of terror not pertaining to the rest of the dream. In one, I had a sudden image of myself walking into the basement of my mother’s house, with a man dressed in black clothes running fast towards me and then leaping into me as I woke up. In another, My brother and a friend of his had my dog and a miscellaneous Dalmatian stowed away in an attic, and I snuck in to take Nina back, but there were so many doors, and we were almost out when the final door closed. Bennett had locked me in. All of the dreams are disturbing in different sorts of ways, and I wake up really disoriented. There is a similar darkness in each of them. I have a couple of theories about the origins:
It could be that I have been feeling so vigorously satisfied all day everyday, almost to the point of leaving the ground with joy (I really can’t contain my laughter), that my mind needs some place to expel the "negative" emotions, so it takes advantage of the night to do so. It’s true that there are things that disturb me in the world, personal and otherwise, but right now there is too much immediate wonderfulness to bother with them Idiotically or Egotistically, only Superegotistically (I don’t think one can use those Freudian words that way, but I did anyway).
Or, it could be that I am deep down fearful of the END of the happy time. To be so high has an equal and opposite low. I can’t help but wonder when it will come and what I will do when it does, so I dream of terrible things.
Or, my cabin could be infested with dark spirits, but I don’t think it is. Only lightbulb-infatuated insects.
So, I’m not really concerned about the nightmares. They are entertaining, as all dreams are, like watching a scary movie. There are sometimes when I don’t even want to wake up because my dreams are so interesting. Which makes me think, that the opposite scenario of what I am dealing with is probably much worse: to have a life that I dislike so much that I go to sleep to find better. I’m sure there are people in that state all over the world. Sometimes I am in it in the wintertime. But, I shall consider myself EXTREMELY fortunate; for the mold is only in my head, not in my bread.

Water is wet

2006-06-13T07:25:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I took my first dip in the pond of the season. The rain has been raining STUPID amounts of rain, and causing the bodies of these young workers to be saturated at all times with wet water*, so the ponds have not been so inviting as they would be if we were in the desert of midsummertime. But yesterday, after such a long spell of inconvenience, and after sweeping rooves of irregular buildings until my jeans were so stained with caterpillar guts that I felt like an insecticidal horror film, I stripped and jumped into Round Pond. Ah! It was so pleasant, rather chilly, but very refreshing and today may just be warm enough to do it again. Swimming makes me feel so loooooong like an eel, slippery like a squid, and freer than a space man. I anticipate at least 2 swims per day for the entire summer, but I'm sure some days will elicit even more. I feel like I'm in Herland.

*When I was in High School, and Ms. Krauss was my English teacher, I wrote a paper containing a sentence which stated the obvious. Ms. Krauss' red-ink response was "Water is wet." This comment infused me with laughter for days, and nothing makes me happier (except swimming) than reliving the faux pas forever and ever.

IKEA

2006-06-10T16:59:00.000-07:00

I went to IKEA today with some mates from Pinewoods, the folk dance camp I'm working at this summer. We ate meatballs and drank pear cider and nearly tipped over with affection for the fair nation from whence IKEA came. I have convinced Amy and Dan to happily learn Swedish in the car with me, using the Berlitz tape we got at the Plymouth library, and which was published in 1989. So, we rode in the rain (because MY how it has been raining!) to Stoughton and found that Saturday is the day that the entire of the population of Massachusetts shops for Swedish home furnishings at reasonable prices, which means that there were 6,349,097 shopping carts being pushed around blindly by overstimulatingly dazed consumers. Despite that, it was great! The food was yummy, I bought a giant, red shoe horn and some herrings in mustard suace, and felt like I took a little weekend trip to Scandinavia. There were a suprising number of Swedes there, I think, though I realize that I can't yet recognize when a foreign accent is Swedish rather than something else. A fine Saturday, "Saturday" and "Sunday" indeed. ('scuse the private joke).

English Muffins

2006-05-26T21:28:00.000-07:00

When we popped the trunk this evening after the North Whitefield contradance, there were English Muffins everywhere. They were waiting to be squished and squashed and handled, like an older dog who gently places his head beneathe his owner's hand, so we didn't even know that they were craving attention. We picked up the little packages and moved them about, but there were 3 fiddles debating for space and so one of the bags was smooshed, much to it's delight. The fiddles were in their caskets, zipped up and arrested, so there wasn't much dialog coming from them. The English Muffins squealed all the way home, and I listened from the back seat, where I sat with my purple scarf.

Polish Monster Language II

2006-05-20T11:57:00.000-07:00

The girl wrote a story about an obscure tongue known as (and this is the English translation) Polish Monster Language. No one had ever done that before, and there was a reason for it: it was a banned language in all parts of the world except for a small island in the Indian Ocean (exactly opposite the town of Bowdoinham, Maine, if you were to dig a hole through the earth), an island known for breeding vegetarian dogs. Polish Monster Language was even banned in Poland. The island was one of Poland's old colonies, but is now sovereign. The language is not really spoken on the island, except by the occasional Polish Monster, but it is not banned. The people of this island (there are only two hundred or so, as of May 2006) are mostly of native decent, with a little bit of Polish blood. There weren't many Poles who stayed on the island because the temperatures were warmer than they were used to, and most of the settlers were of the impression that such a climate would "detonate the quality of life that we know and love in Mother Poland (Rufusk 76)."

By writing the story, the girl put herself in great risk. If the government of her home country found out what she had done, they would track her down and dipose of her body in an obscure place reminiscent of the place they store nuCLEar waste, perhaps in the desert. I guess it was pretty foolish of her to post it on her public blog, but she was unaware of the status of the language, and now that it's done, it's done. But the girl wonders, why? Why is this language, which is almost dead anyway, so treated? What harm has it caused to the world at large?

Very Mysterious.

Polish Monster Language

2006-05-19T18:58:00.000-07:00

One day, Frankie Tweezers was attacked by a monster who had red, big pupils, green skin and dirty fingernails. The monster covered Frankie with nearly-hot wax, which was still liquid but not hot enough to burn his skin. As the wax cooled and solidified, Frankie tipped over because he burped. The potential energy of the burp caused this, and Frankie thought that was kind of funny, scientists giving a name to something that didn't even exist (potential energy). "This is like claiming to be good at multitasking, and then proving it by standing by the back door of your house while simultaneously NOT standing by the front door, and even still at the same time NOT standing on the side of the road with your thumb pointed towards the heavens in South Dakota." That was what Frankie thought, and since the monster had pretty good mindreading skills, he thought Frankie was offering to be his personal secretary. "Well, I don't really need a secretary. But can you speak other languages?" asked the monster, in Polish Monster Language (PML). Unfortunately, Frankie could not speak other languages, and so he didn't comprehend what the monster was asking. He thought, though, "The monster sounds Polish. My mom taught me how to sing a birthday celebration song in Polish when I was a kid. If I weren't covered in wax, I'd ask the monster if he were Polish."
"Well, I am Polish, but I speak in a dialect only known to Polish Monsters," said the monster, "But I know the song of which you speak, and I wonder what this word 'mother' means. In Polish Monster Language, we have a word that might be of the same root, and it is 'motlehkczek' and it means, in English, 'Green Prada Handbag.'" Frankie only understood the phrases 'mother' and 'green prada handbag,' and assumed that the monster was accusing Frankie of wanting to slay him, sell his hide to Prada, and use the profit to purchase the handbag to give to his mother for a holiday gift.
"No, that's not why I covered you with wax. I covered you with wax because I am good at it, and since you are a stranger to me, I wanted to impress you with my keen skill. I would very much like to see what you are good at, which I assume is multitasking," the monster explained. Luckily, the word for 'multitasking' is one of those American words used 'round the world, so when the monster ended his sentence with it, it was clear to Frankie that the monster must have been reading his mind. Frankie wondered why the monster didn't respond in English, if he new what he was thinking, and it would have made things much easier.
"Well, my English skills are not so good. I know a few words, but really I can only understand you because thoughts are transmitted via energy waves. I can understand the concepts and emotions (even scientific seeming ones) that gad about in your mind, but I can't communicate in English. The mindreading suffices, in most cultures."
Frankie began to figit and the wax shell broke. Although it was a fine wax shell, maybe even the best of its kind, it was not thick enough to contain Frankie for too long, which of course was not what the monster had intended anyway.
Frankie's lips were now free to move, and he asked the monster why he had covered him with wax. Since the monster had just explained that a few minutes ago, he got a little frustrated and smoked out the ears and turned his back to Frankie for a moment, which was a mistake. Frankie took his Swiss Army Knife and murdered the monster. The monster realized that this was because Frankie had perceived him as a threat, when in actuality he wasn't at all, he was just an immigrant. Frankie was relieved to be out of danger, and had also decided that the green Prada bag idea was a good one, so he thought he'd make use of the cadaver. The monster said one last thing before he died: "If you're not going to learn other languages, you should at least learn to read minds."
His mother was very pleased with the gift.

Statler Brothers

2006-05-18T19:33:00.000-07:00

I loaded the cd player up to capacity: 5. Billy Joel, The Sound of Music, Leon Redbone, a local folk duo whose names I have forgotten, and the Statler Brothers. I have written a limerick about the latter:

'The Best of the Statler Brothers'
shall not be compared with the others.
But if I were forced,
why they'd be the worst
yet still the best, given my druthers.

I feel that it represents the complex set of emotions evoked when I hear, "Playin' Solitaire 'til dawn with a deck of 51; smokin' cigarettes and watchin' Captain Kangaroo, now don't tell me there's nothin' to do." I heard these lyrics a lot growing up, because my dad liked to listen to their cassette in the car. I thought they were really nerdy, and I ridiculed them as 'old fogey' music. This is a term I had adopted in the 6th grade when someone accused me of favoring such a taboo-genre after I revealed to them my taste for 50's rock and roll and the Glenn Miller Orchestra. At that point I decided to give more modern music a try (though OF COURSE never compromising the Chatanooga Choo Choo), which included learning all the words to Ace of Base's "The Sign," (and many of their other songs!) and The Crash Test Dummies' "mmmm mmmm mmmm mmmm." I was proud of myself for my attempt at high culture. A few years later, my dad started listening to the Crash Test Dummies and I told him they were so over.

One day I went to visit my grandparents and my grandfather, whose name is Pop, had gotten a new truck with a cd player. He had a total of 1 cd, and it was the Statler Brothers. I had no idea that more than one person fancied the group, more than just my dad. But given that is was his dad, that fine a capella family maintained its stigma; this just wasn't music for teenage girls.

Recently a friend of mine had a play list playing on her computer, and a song, those familiar lyrics recited above, began to chime from her bedroom. I immediately expressed intense affection for the song, like this: "I love this song! I can't believe you know it!" But it's not true! I KNOW the song, word for word, and every other song on the album (though she had only downloaded that one). I know the song, it is familiar to me, we are friends. I think of many things when I hear it, sections of my brain change color, and I feel GOOD when I hear it. I now listen to it voluntarily, because it is now such a source for fairly lighthearted memories.

Maybe I do love it, like a brother.

Please Note!

2006-05-16T15:18:00.000-07:00

The blog will now receive comments from outsiders, not just folks with blogspot blogs.

Photos

2006-05-16T12:14:00.000-07:00

Here're a few photos from Germany. There are more, but I'm having difficulty uploading them onto blogger.

German grafitti is the best I've ever seen.

My teachers, Norbert and Beate, a classmate Jocelyn, and myself in Bamberg, all gussied up for Faschings Dienstag.

SK with Ursula Sowa, the Green party candidate for Bergermeister in Bamberg, whose campaign gimic was Onions.

An Old German Custom

2006-05-16T09:33:00.000-07:00

Something else I learned about in Germany, which has also been covered in American press, was the the case of Armin Meiwes of Rotenberg. In 2002, this man was sentenced to 8 years in prison for manslaughter. In January of this year, he was put on retrial and found guilty of murder, and sentenced now to spend his whole life in the slammer. It seems that there is always question of technicalities in homicide cases, which I suppose a is a good thing: you get what you pay for, as they say, or the other way around. But I find this to be a particularly interesting case: Mr. Meiwes had a childhood fantasy of having a younger brother, so that he could eat him and therefore always be close to him. At age 42, he posted an advertisment on the internet, a sort of a personal ad, seeking a well-built young man for "slaughter and consumption." All folks have their fantasies, and Germany is a country of the 21st century, completely westernized and subject to freedom of speech and expression and whatever that might entail. Nobody had to answer this ad, but somebody DID! It was Bernd Jürgen Brandes, another German man, who apparently felt comfortable with this request, and maybe even it was his fantasy to be eaten, in the literal and non-sexual sense of the word. So, the two gentlemen met and, sparing the details, played out this dream. The problem was, that Brandes wound up DEAD!

But wait!

Wasn't that the plan? Did he not enter the situation as a consenting adult? It seems to me that Meiwes is not a dangerous man, he simply has a taste for posh meats and barbaric traditions. I can see that in the definition of murder, there are 2 criteria that must be met: aforethought and malice. Really, both are met. He thought about it first, and he caused harm to his victim (though it was welcome harm - so was it harm at all?). If the world were black and white, then he would be a murderer. But over and over again trials, novels, poems, and many other forms of life-representation and human judgement prove that if we're gonna give ourselves god-like status, where we decide that human lives are more important than all others, we must also admit that there are probably other variables at hand, and every one of those is different in every situation. By law, we cannot generalize, but by law, we do.

I'm uneasy about the verdict. To me, it seems like a violation of personal liberty, on the side of the offender as well as the victim. What happened is what they wanted to happen. Death was a sideaffect, and they knew that too. It seems like one of those, 'I wouldn't do it but it's your life,' situations. Governments should stop interfering with people's personal lives, and I don't mean by not stepping in when a facilitator is actually needed. Rapes, beatings, things that happen when one person's desires overpower the other's - that's when a third party is needed. So my gut says that this guy should go free, but my logic says that he should probably get some punishment, but not life in prison. I think the 8 years would have been good enough, and really only as a model for other people who might try to get away with it because it seems like an easy way to murder someone without getting punished. Argh. I think there is a movie out about it in Germany: Kannibale von Rotenburg. Watch for it in the states.

In That Case

2006-05-14T20:02:00.000-07:00

I'm going to take a few moments to talk about cases. Cases are containers for objects, usually specific objects, and frequently resemble a kindergartener's 3-dimensional sculptural rendition of that specific object, and are colored black. Suitcases are boxy, like heavily shoulderpadded, super-professional looking business attire. Violin cases are the picasso-like shadow of the instrument itself, or else the fully-automatic firearm within. Stair Cases are shaped exactly like stairs (infact, I can't tell the difference between the two). Court cases are full of holes and knots, yet still manage to sustain the impression of a real, physical situation. They are very black indeed.

Upper cases, as in A and not a, are certainly physically Taller than their Lower case counterparts, and incase you don't know where those terms come from, I'll tell you, because I've learned it twice in my life: once from dear Dr. Fischer, the most incredible pedagogical master I have ever met, and once from that old and foresaken Gutenburg Museum in Mainz, where there were diaramas set up EVERYWHERE (which I liked). It's quite simple: the Upper Case was where the larger stamps (A B C) for the overbearing, old-fashioned printing presses were stored, and the Lower Case was where the smaller stamps (a b c) were kept. Whenever the printer needed a letter, he would pull the drawer in which that character was to be found from the Great Case and afix it accordingly. You see, it's a very real sort of a case, not just a hoity toity ploy to make people think perplexedly about the social class system of the world (particularly Victorian England), heirarchy in general, and all linguistic representations associated.

In the philosphy of logic, one must frequently consider many different Cases in order to prove that something is always, sometimes, or never true. These are not violin cases, or even glasses cases. These are conceptual roads to venture down, such as Positiverealnumber Street, Negativerealnumber Avenue, and Zero Road. Still though, they are just like the aforementioned boxes, confining the traveling philosopher to existence in one place at a single moment. That's what cases do. Confine. Protect even, by keeping things clear, simple, and in their place.

There are also cases in language, and I don't mean the ol' speaker-verb matching game with our friends I, You, He, They (or Yo, Tu, El, Ellos, whatever your language is); those are called something else, though our brain probably processes them as the sort of case mentioned in the previous paragraph, aka If/Then statements. If 'Yo', then 'tengo'. If 'Tu', then 'tienes'. And so on. No, a 'case' in grammar refers to the subject vs. the direct object vs. the indirect object, and the 4 most common cases in any language are the Nominative case, the Accusative case, the Dative case and the Genitive case. In English, these cases are really only applicable (eg make a change; they are always THERE, but usually invisible (like Radon)) in our use of pronouns, as far as I can see. That is, I or you or he or we are Nominative pronouns, used in referring to the subject of the sentence; me, you, him or us are Accusative, used to refer to the direct object; and my, yours, his, or ours are Dative, used to indicate possession. It's not really very confusing in English, although I know I still occasionally struggle with when to use 'Father and I' or 'Father and me' or other such unimportant clauses. German, however is a different story, and if you want to learn German, or any German-based language (as well as many other languages in the world), it is a little bit important to understand what the hell these things are. I say a little bit important, because I believe that by far the BEST way to learn language is the way children do: listen to it, get comfortable with it, use it, take chances with it, and the grammar will come when it needs to, intuitively, based on your models.

Nevertheless. I am so ANNOYED with these cases that I feel the need to understand them so that I can hate them validly, rather than with ignorance. I think that it's okay to have enemies in the world, as long as they are grammar-based.

In German, when dealing with each of the cases, (and by the way, an example of the Genitive case is 'Survival of the Fittest,' or 'the book of David.' It makes the direct object and the subject swap identities, I think.) it is customary to not only alter your pronoun (der, die, das, den, dem, etc. etc. etc.), as we do in English. No, it doesn't stop there. Depending on the case (and gender of the noun), one must also use a differently spelled Adjective, and frequently a differently spelled noun. That means that in addition to remembering that a Chair is masculine, Math is feminine, and Peppermint is gender-neutral, you must also be aware of which case each part of your sentence takes, and alter the words accordingly.

An example might be helpful. Consider the following sentence: The beautiful woman drinks cold coffee with the large man. The beautiful woman is the subject here, so we can determine that her gender is feminine (though it seems that linguistic gender is not always based on physical gender, so beware), and use the pronoun 'Die.' Now we must make sure the adjective, Beautiful, agrees with that pronoun and the noun itself, which in this case (feminine, singular, nominative), the adjective ends with an 'e': 'schöne.' Frau happens to be an unchangeable noun, I do believe. So this clause is: Die schöne Frau.

Cold Coffee is the direct object of the sentence, so we will use the accusative case. Coffee, we first find, is masculine, so we'll use 'den.' If it were accusative, it would be 'der,' but it's not. If it were dative, it would be 'dem,' but it's not. That means our adjective will end in 'en.' 'den kalten Kaffee.'

The large man is the indirect object of the sentence, so we must use Dative case. The man is masculine, of course, so his pronoun (in dative) is 'dem', and the adjective will end with 'en.' 'dem grossen Mann.' The whole sentence thus becomes: Die schöne Frau trinkt den kalten Kaffee, mit dem grossen Mann. I think. You may even have to change the order of the words and clauses, but Lord knows. Argh! Everything is so frustratingly over analyzed! For your information, it is actually a completely different excercise to SPEAK German rather than write it, because in speaking, one can simply slur and mumble the ends of the words and it don't make a licka diff'rence; they know what you mean.

But the more conceptual cases are really just like the physical sorts, if you think about it. They are like boxes of tools to use: the nominative tools, the non-negative number tools, et cetera. Tools and rules. I like the phrase 'let your tools do the work for you.'

Which reminds me....

Here's is how I skirt the issue:

There is a suffix in German, '-chen.' This suffix makes any noun into a small one. A Hund is a dog, a Hundchen is a small dog. A Mann is a Man, a Männchen is a small man. An additional effect of this suffix is that it always causes the verb to be gender-neutral, so you can see the trouble it saves to simply always talk small. It's a great way to not get overwhelmed with the storms of memorization that comes with learning German, at least in the beginning, but probably no German teacher would ever advocate this. However, I do. There are probably other suffixes that consistently change nouns into masculine or feminine words. I have yet to find them, but if you know of any, do let me know.

So children, I conclude my section on Cases. Cases are great when you use them to your benefit, but they can kill you or harm you severly if you let them. Just remember the St. Valentines Day massacre, all those mobsters 'playing their violins.' Yes, they can indeed be tricky, unwieldy, or even sinfully rotten, but if you learn to handle it wisely, a case will be your best friend.

The Radon Room

2006-05-13T20:34:00.000-07:00

Most houses don't have a Radon Room, but we are lucky. This building, our home, was built on a concrete slab, they say, and when a house is built on a concrete slab, there's not much separating it from the bare-bones of Mother Earth. Traditionally, houses in New England are built upon a more three-dimensional sort of foundation, which are known as cellars. Cellars serve many purposes, including protection against geological shifts such as Frost Heaves, the phenomenon which in the wintertime causes our lead-footed friends, family and neighbors to slow down dramatically as they cross over that frustratingly corrugated patch of road down there by the Niles'. Cellars also insulate the house from beneathe, by existing in a state of perpetual emptiness, except when we store our bicycles down there, and maybe the gas grill, which we'll bring up come springtime. Actually, there are usually many items in the cellar, and sometimes they get wet, because sometimes cellars flood. Sometimes there are monsters, too, because cellars are poorly lit. The point being, though, that the cellar is a place where all the things we don't want in the house can go to feel like they're in the house, but really aren't, i.e. cold air, geological destruction, outside things, grimey water, evil, and less notably, yet ever so importantly, Radon.

New England houses are also traditionally furnished with poorly insulated windows. Many in the world might consider this a flaw in such a climate as ours, but there are two good reasons why it's not. Firstly, this feature allows cold air to get in, at least a little, so that we can have fires in our woodstoves in the winter, and snuggle up all cozy and content with hot cocoa and a book, and maybe stay there for 5 or 6 months, which is important to the well-being of Northerners. Secondly, the draught from the windows is evidence that air is flowing through the house, cleansing it of impurities and keeping it fresh as a brand new box of Cheez-Its, in a very 'Feng Shui' sort of way, and everyone knows Mainers won't do anything unless it's Feng Shui compatible. Having a draught going through the house is clearly as good a feature as the basement, and could even be said to be in cahoots with the great cavernous entity below, preventing anything that happens to get into the house from staying there for too long, diffusing potential danger to the inhabitants of the house. You might imagine the sedintariness that might overcome a house, and maybe even kill it's dwellers if the house had properly insulated windows.

So clearly you can see that the early architects of New England were thinking only of The People when they built their 'Cape Cods' and their 'Saltboxes.' Clearly each design that we now take for granted, and even sometimes complain about, is characteristic of perfection. But then some west-coastie comes along with his fancy pants ideas and 'new age' and 'environmental' concepts. He makes the coolest house ever. He makes the house that any creative entity in his or her right mind would love to live in, even if just for a moment. He comes, and he builds this house, our house, as it were, on this concrete slab, which cracks in the turmoil of Maine winter, and the yet-unnoted-upon tightly-sealed windows, and thinks the world of it and himself. But you see, in warm climates, windows do not need to be well insulated, because, well, isn't it obvious? So, this striking young lad from California, who noticed the draught in his cousin's uncle's brother's wife's house in Dover-Foxcroft, thought himself quite wise to build a draught-free house, quite energy-efficient indeed, as if the natives had never thought of it before. You can see why the tourists should watch themselves before getting too keen on making changes to our fine state. It's just like when the Brits colonized Australia and decided to build all the new houses with illustrious and large south-facing windows.

Additionally, Maine is a state consisting of a great Granite pluton. That is, there are rocks everywhere; in the street, in the woods, underwater, underground. Ledge is what we call it when it's underground, and it's fun when it curiously pokes its head up some spring and all of a sudden the children have new terrain on which to set up their GI Joes and Barbie Dolls. Aroostook County Barbie never caught on in the rest of the country. But usually the ledge stays underground, and what you don't realize is that it's toiling. It's coming up with a plan, just like the man who thought of Panama Canal. It's there thinking, not about pleasing the whims of children, but about causing them great medical misfortune, and not just in the form of skinned knees and stubbed toes.

No. The granite is thinking RADIOACTIVELY! It is devising ways to get into the house, no doubt, how to deceive its great enemies, the Cellar and the Poorly Insulated Windows. Most of the time, it fails, but in the event that a house is created with little-to-no cellar, and that little-to-no cellar happens to get a crack in it (as it most assuredly WILL if you live in a region with heavy frost-related ground shifting), and/or the house has poorly poorly insulated windows, such is ours, the granite sends in the Offense: RADON.

Radon is everywhere, but it doesn't matter unless it's confined, just like bad ideas and useless analogies. It is created when Uranium decays, and there is (or was-but now it's dead?) a lot of Uranium in soil and in rocks, like Granite. Really, there is a risk of it EVERYWHERE, and there is a warning put out by the federal goverment that goes a little something like this:

If you smoke and your home has high radon levels, your risk of lung cancer is especially high.

That's right. Especially high. That means that Radon's primary form of attack is a tumer, or at least the augmentation of an existing one, and so we feared only for our lives when we found that the radon level in our house was 7, which is not neutral as a lover of the pH-scale might think. Actually it is very high.

Fortunately for us, we at 9 Pine Needle Alley are a Social Democracy, so we submitted a referendum to the local House of Representatives, and then the Senate, and we all agreed that we didn't want to get cancer, especially from something not nearly as enjoyable as your common, everyday vices, like smoking or drinking too much coffee.

The problem was, though, that the government wouldn't fund us in our not wanting to get cancer. No one organized a walk, or sported green (the official color) ribbons. There was, however, a pretty good suggestion from our local Radon expert, which was to get a radon diffusing system. We did so, and the system is really nice, and works like this: a hole was drilled through the concrete slab, into the soil. The hole was shaped like female Radon to attract the Offending Radon, and lure it up into a Radon Refinery, which is kept in the Radon Room, underneathe the stairs in the house. The Radon Refinery mixes the radon with sugar and bleaches it white, essentially brainwashing it into assimilating with the rest of the air in the house. It works 90% of the time, and so now our Radon level is 4 instead of 7, but we'd like to get it down to at least a 2. Maybe we should eat more Subway sandwiches?

Despite the vague and varying tone of this piece of writing, Radon is a very serious (invisible) problem facing mankind today, especially in radically designed homes. The only invisible problems that are worse than Radon are Germs and Restless Spirits, both of which, unfortunately, we also have in our house. We need to be aware of the number of people who have DIED because of Radon and it's evil clan of overlords, Rocks. If you have stories about Radon, please write in and share. We want to hear your voice!

Dental

2006-05-07T18:50:00.000-07:00

Ah, Maine...

I have so much energy that I don't know how to contain myself! I run around the house and make funny noises and wonder how it could ever be any other way, and also question whether it is from being home, amongst my family, where everyone is free to be you and me; or if it's an effect of simply being in Maine, my comfort climate, geography, horticulture, blood; or if it's from traveling and discovering newfound direction in my life. No doubt it is a combination of those, and any number of other factors. It is a warm spring, and that always brings me out of my shell. I have a month to relax at this wonderful house, before I go to Pinewoods to chop vegetables, play music, dance, swim (and get paid!), and sacrifice absolutely nothing for pure bliss. I am learning how to make a perfect soft-boiled egg, which yesterday came out a little too hard, and today came out a little too soft (Yes, I ate a raw egg), and so logically tomorrow's attempt will be just right (if German fairy tales have any substance). I also love toast, and now I have some lovely Marmelade from England, and I die of eating food that tastes so good every time I eat it, because it tastes so good.

I often have dreams in which my teeth fall out. They come out in big bulky pieces and feel like sea shells in my mouth, and I say to myself in the dream (every single time), "Oh no! I've dreamt that my teeth have come out so many times, and now it's REALLY HAPPENING!!!" And I wake up with a jolt and remain frightened until I fall back to sleep. Someone told me once that it was a sign of insecurity, but that never seemed quite right. Certainly, if anyone has insecurities, it's me (in the tradition of my English heritage, I presume), but but but, my TEETH don't know that. I had one such dream the other day, but only ONE tooth came out. I decided that it was finally time to consult some dream interpretation guides, just to see what they say, even though of COURSE they don't apply to me, because I wasn't there when they were written. All of the books said the same thing: fear of growing up, or becoming an adult.

Uh.

So here I am, happy as can bee, and all I can do is express myself by making things up and having most useless (but highly entertaining) conversations about squids and force fields and upsidedownness, and then bouncing from wall to wall at whim and not even being afraid to fart. I struggle to picture myself sitting with one leg tucked neatly behind the other as I sport a navy blue suit and talk about business matters and bar charts with people who wear ties to express their innermost feelings. That is my image of adulthood. No wonder I'm scared.

Just so you know...

2006-05-04T06:09:00.000-07:00

I'm back in Maine, staying at Dad and Pam's STUNNING new house (see photos on Pam's blog at fiddlehedz.blogspot.com, though really they do the place no justice). I'm sad to have ended my adventure, and would like to spend much more time abroad, particularly in Sweden. But indeed, I am pleased to be back home. More later.

Science Fiction Bokhandeln

2006-04-26T08:17:00.000-07:00

In Gamla Stan, the old city, there exists a triptych of shop windows supernovaing with Science Fiction and Fantasy books, DVDs and other more shapely paraphanalia intended to stop even the most oblivious passerby dead in his tracks. And I use 'his' not as the gender-neutral term that it once was, but as a reference to virtually all the sons, grandsons, boyfriends, husbands, and gentleman strollers (and also a hand-holding lesbian couple) who happen along, for these are the ones, as if by Sorcererforce, who cannot proceed any further once they come into contact with the divine essence that is the Science Fiction Bokhandeln of Stockholm, Sweden.

The female counterparts of these gentlemen stray to the opposing side of the narrow, gray brick street, inching slowly forward with all their might, hoping to lure the boys along (for really, they are all boys when in the presence of this window). But then they themselves notice the next window, a small one, lined with tea cups of white china, displayed in a moderately uninteresting way. But as it is, ceramics are much more appealing and much less offensive to these women than the alien warriors and spaceship-attacking dragons so popular amongst the menfolk.

With the exception of the loving Lesbians, only a few women ever go into the shop. This occasional entrant of the female sex is always elderly with golden earrings and short, curled, henna-dyed hair, with her eyes cast downward towards the fold of paper in her hands. It is a list, declaring EXACTLY which videogame sequel to purchase for which grandson. She doesn't browse the store at all. She heads straight for the counter and mispronounces every game name to the long-haired, bespectacled fellow, who knows exactly where each item is located, and has plenty to say about them all. He also has recommendations, and reasons why another version of the same game is better than the one the woman wants. He persuasively (and with all of his heart) causes the Mormor to buy the alternative, because if it is BETTER, then the grandson will no doubt like it more.

It's open from 10 to 6, but the window is of course available at any hour. And indeed at every hour, this phenomena which I have described occurs. But ask almost any man here in Stockholm if he has checked out the storefront and he'll deny it, for one of two reasons. Either, he is young and would be ashamed if anyone knew he were a scifi fan, because that's for nördar, or, it is such an unconscious effort that he simply doesn't know that it happened.

Pontus, my host here in Stockholm, admits to eyeing the window a couple of times. But I, though often easily engaged by clever window displays, didn't even notice the store until I was situated in the window of the coffee shop directly across the street, nursing a tea cup of my own, staying out of danger. Alas, such is the way when dealing with dragons.

The Danish People

2006-04-12T09:48:00.000-07:00

The relief of Springtime is exaggerated, for now I am back in Wiesbaden with Suzanne, and there is so much English to be spoken that has missed it's expellation over the past month. But too, I find that the German comes out also very easily now, not necessarily correctly, but without hesitation. Suzanne's uncle Leon is here from Copenhagen, and he is a hoot, to be sure. He has so far told me so much about the Danes that I might prefer to learn Danish than German. The night I returned, he and Suzanne tried to teach me the most difficult thing they could in Danish, which is the name of some dish which I can't even begin to write. The result, though, was some very much needed laughter, because when one says the word for 'red' in Danish, and then nothing more, the final contortion of ones face is with the curled tongue peeking out of an O-shaped mouth like a mole spying on a gardener.

Sunday is Easter, and we'll be eating a traditional Danish lunch. My friend Peter is coming to celebrate the holiday, because he is in Düsseldorf studying neuroscience, and I thought he might like a place to be at such a time. I've sort of made Wiesbaden my homebase for this trip, so returning here this time feels like I've come home, so I am happy.

That's all for now.

Akkordeon Meet's Gospel

2006-03-28T07:02:00.000-08:00

Well, I went back to work on Saturday, a little weak, and slower than normal, but successfully. The weekend was absolutely tropical. The air was moist and warm, and it felt so good to be fraternizing with such degrees of freedom. No pains to report, my body is healing well.

A couple of things to note: Sunday was Landestag, which I am led to believe is voting day in these parts. To celebrate, the town Church held a concert, entitled (and I quote) ‘Akkordeon Meet’s Gospel.’ Entry was free, it being a church, so I simply had to investigate.

Upon entering, I found packed pews, and two different groups of uniformed performers were loitering about; one set with white shirts and blue scarves (these were the accordion players) and one with black shirts and rainbow scarves (these were the German gospel singers, non of whom were black, and one of whom I’m certain was either a transvestite or a hermaphrodite, which I noticed because I just finished reading a novel called ‘Middlesex,’ which I highly recommend). I took my seat, and a few minutes later, someone said something into a microphone (in dialect) and the blue scarves proceeded to the front of the church. Men, women, old, young, nerds, beautys, folks of all types, and about 30 of them, claimed their accordions, and their seats. Some of you may know that I have a certain fondness for accordions, a grahamcracker and orange juice sort of a fondness, an afternoon sort of a fondness. Such a strange invention is the accordion, that I am endeared that it has found popularity in so many different traditions. It is gentle, yet powerful, and I was quite thrilled about the performance that was about to be.

They began with ‘Palladio’ from Karl Jenkins, which I recognized immediately as the piece from the Zale’s diamonds ads on TV. Throbbing and mighty, the accordions filled the church, though I could sense an eager fellow rushing one of the parts along. When that was finished, a lovely Piazzolla piece brought memories of Tango-filled evenings in Oregon, and made me crave the dance and reminded me that I haven’t even been out to Tango since I returned from the West. Also at that moment, the sun shone so brightly through the west window behind the group that there was nothing to be seen but light, and it was indeed an Augenblick of pure magic. So beautiful was the Melodia en la menor! Then things got a bit sketchy.

What followed were two pieces from the film ‘Sister Act,’ by all means not intended to be played by 30 German accordionists. I thought maybe the choir would join in to make it heartfelt and spiritual, but their only contribution was some occasional and rather pathetic rhythm clapping from the back of the church, but since the speed of sound isn’t THAT fast, it sounded offbeat. When the first of these pieces were finished, the whole room burst into an incredible applause that one might expect at a Rolling Stones concert, which I suppose was in order, but I wasn’t emoting in that direction. I applauded the first pieces because they moved me, but I clapped for the others to be nice.

The second part of the show was of course the choir, whose program consisted of 10 traditional and nontraditional American gospel songs. They came marching up the aisle in glorious song, enjoying themselves to be sure, but I recognize a stick up the ass when I see one. I’m sorry to say that I chuckled to myself, just a little. Though so pleased that these folks were singing at all, and enjoying themselves, one has to admit that you gotta be black to sing songs like these (for an audience), or at least you have to be able to FEEL them with your entire being. We white folks do them no justice! It was a little bit painful to listen to the choppy German-English wordage coming out of such highly spiritual songs. The people of Friedlingen loved it though, and that is what matters. They were the intended audience, not a mildly judgemental American with poor German skills (who consequently also has a stick up her ass, and certainly wouldn’t be able to sing the songs any better) who believes that if you’re white and you wanna sing these pieces, you MUST be Joss Stone. You Must. Or else an old blind man who sits in a rocking chair on his front porch observing the world with only his heart. To note though, the piano player was AMAZING.

In other news, yesterday was Rosa’s nephew’s birthday, so we took out the party carriage and brought 6 5-year-olds out for a spin with the horses, which was great fun. Die Kinder sind gut um Deutsch zu lernen. Later, we visited the house for delicious Cherry Torte and cappucino, and watched the kids have races with grain sacks, and then with very colorfully decorated hardboiled eggs.

Tonight, I will go with Rosa and Antonia (the youngest daughter) to see Brokeback Mountain in the theater. I’m certain that it will be dubbed, and I have my reservations about that for purity’s sake, but I do like listening to the German words, and can even get a very impressionistic idea of what is going on. I think it’ll be pretty clear though; these Hollywood films are often very visual stories…

Also, bis spater.

Always Wear a Helmet!

2006-03-23T06:55:00.000-08:00

On Monday the weather was so lovely that Peter and Rosa suggested that I ride the bicycle to Hohentwiel. Hohentwiel is the name of both the great geological horn which can be seen in the distance from the farm, as well as the castle on top, built in 914 AD. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, the temperature was upwards of 14 degrees celcius, and really everything was just so beautiful that my head exploded, resulting in 6 stitches and a night in a German hospital.
The story goes like this: Per the suggestion, I waited until the air warmed slightly, and around 11am ventured into the barn to retrieve a bike. The day before, I had used an older one and gone for a lovely ride on the dirt roads through the fields and along the river, and I thought it would be fine to use again. Then I had another thought, that I should use the Fancy, Newer, Red Bike, because this trip probably included going up hill, and the more up-to-date bike may suit better. I found an air pump, and attempted to inflate the slightly-under-pressured tires of the red bike, but instead only managed to replace any and all air that had been in there with nothingness. After fussing with the device for a while, using it like I would have used any other air puimp, I was stumped, and used the older bike, whose tires were already well inflated, as originally planned.
So I ventured through the fields into Singen, then over a bridge and under the railroad tracks, and there I was at the base of the mountain. I had been told that there was a museum and restaurant somewhere, so I thought I’d leave the bike there as I climbed to the top. I found a sign indicating that these were located just a little way up, so I walked my bike up a slippery snowy path, and soon came to a road, up which I also walked the bike, and then came to the said commercial venues. I parked the bike, went into the museum and bought a ticket to go inside the castle up top, as well as some information in English, and started walking. It wasn’t very far, though very steep, but soon enough I was walking through a cobblestone tunnel into the yard of a Tolkienesque castle. While remaining fully present, I couldn’t help but pretend that the castle was in full working order. I imagined riding horses and hearing their hooves on the stones. I looked out over the wall to see factories and modern houses (though not the Alps, because the air was thick with moisture), but imagined it was only countryside, over which I was the ruler. Yeah yeah, I suppose it’s a generic and expected fantasy, but it really was incredible.
I entered the castle, which was all open (some because it was meant to be, and some simply because much had been lost to age, but mostly because when Napoleon invaded some years back, he tore down all the 'expendable' parts, whatever that means). I went up furthur, to the highest point, and looked around, and sloshed in mud, and then I spread out on a stone bench and absorbed the sun like a greenhouse, bringing my little SK seedlings back to life. It’s been gray here, so I couldn’t help but worship the sun while it lasted.
When I was ready to go, I did so (the joys of traveling alone), and walked back down to where my bike was parked. I had decided that I could be home in a flash to help Rosa with the horses if I just rode down that road that I had come to before, all the way to the bottom, so I hopped on, and rounded a corner. I started to go down. I was going fast, faster than I wanted to be going. It wasn’t the hill on the White Road, the one that was always a relief because it was the final and easy stretch before arriving home. I knew immediately that I had had a lapse in judgement. I also realized that I was not wearing a helmet (I didn’t even think of it when I had started!), nor was I carrying any form of identificaiton, two things I am usually sure to have on me on my American bike.
I couldn’t put the breaks on because I knew I would fly over the handle bars, and there wasn’t really a decent side-of-the-road to resort to, so my only choice was to keep going down and hope for the best.
Ahead, I saw a vineyard, and a fork in the road. The right side looked like a dirt road that didn’t go very far or to anyplace promising. The left fork was the main road, and I decided to try for it. In retrospect, the right fork probably would have been the better choice, because it led to the Winestube where I picked up the bike the next day. The ground was soft there, but not where I landed.
I briefly woke up to find myself lying the road, and I saw some blood. The next eyeblink revealed a red-haired woman holding my hand and speaking German. Then there were two men, and a big red truck, which I assume was the ambulance. It turns out that I was only 50 meters from the hospital.
Next I remember laying in the ambulance, and the sun was shining in. There was a man speaking broken English to me, and I told him my name and address immediately, I think, because that was all I could remember. I didn’t know where I was, not the city, and certainly not the country, nor did I know why I was there, or anywhere. He was saying stuff, but I don’t know what, but then I remembered the names Peter and Rosa, so I said them out loud. Then I remembered their last name and that they lived on a street called Im Zinken in Friedingin. I said I was staying with them, and I think I even said it in German, because of course, this is the sort of stuff they teach you in first year German class, how to say your name, where you’re from and where you’re staying, perhaps for just such an occasion.
I lay there trying to remember things. It was the feeling of taking a nap at an irregular time of day, and not remembering that you had even taken a nap, because it simply felt like the next day, and the next life. It lasted a while, then it went away, and I knew exactly what had happened, and I remembered more and more details everytime someone asked, which many people did. They could mostly understand English, but not speak it so well.
There were 2 policemen, and they questioned me, in German I think, and then when they left, one of them was so pleased when he managed to say ‘Good Bye’ that he became giddy and smiled, like a kid proud of himself for remembering all the capitals of all the states. Or, like me when I finally can say something right in German. I guess it really is a phenomenon of language learning to return to a child-like state, of both excitement and vulnerability.
Rosa showed up eventually and said ‘Oh Kate!’ in an understanding way, because she is a nurse. We waited for a while in the hallway, and were soon (or not so soon) brought to the Xray room, where they took pictures of my head and shoulders. Then I went to another room, where there was a doctor who spoke fairly good English. I appreciated that so many people were trying to speak English to me (even Rosa) because my head was a bit shaken, and even broken English is easier to understand than German, sometimes.
The doctor moved my matted, blood-soaked hair to reveal a wound, which Rosa said was ‘commisch’ because it looked like lightning. The doctor put some mind-numbing cream in my head, and sewed it up. They also had to take some blood, but soon found out about my other identity, Miss Difficult Veins. I told them about her, so they were aware, and eventually managed to find a good candidate, and poked it successfully. The nurses cleaned some of the scrapes on my face and hands. They told me I could go home, since I didn’t feel sick or naseus, and since I had come to my senses. Rosa helped me up. My leg had a big bruise, so I had to sit back down, but within seconds, I felt sick, so my freedom was revoked and I had to stay in the hospital for the night.
They brought me a bed and wheeled me to my room. I had a male nurse, Fabian, because he spoke pretty good English. In Germany, a ‘nurse’ is a ‘Krankenschwester,’ which translates to ‘sick-sister’. So, I asked Fabien if a male nurse was a ‘Krankenbruder,’ which seemed logical to me, but he said no, he was called a ‘Pfleger,’ which means ‘carer.’
Fabien brought me tea and a paper to sign. He said it was about the German Social health care system, and told me all about it in English. It was very interesting, and meant that my bill will not be nearly as high as it would be in America (600 Euro instead of $7483579430547825849036489036478690.50 ) (but still, it’s a good think I took out travel insurance!). Then he left and I heard him repeating, in English, what he had just told me, to his collegues, because he was so pleased that he was able to explain all of it in a foreign language. They, of course, applauded.
I slept the night, and came back to the farm the next day, and have been resting ever since. The diagnosis was nothing severe, just the external wounds, thank God. My leg feels better now, and I don’t have a headache, but my hands are quite scraped, making everyday maneuvering difficult, and my head and face hurt if I move to quickly. So, I won’t work for a few days. But now I am faced with an issue: the deal is that I work in exchange for room and board. The stitches don’t come out for another 10 days, so what is the fair thing to do? I must discuss it with the family. Perhaps I can cook or something, but I can’t really do much until my hands heal. Even typing is taking it’s toll.
But, that’s my story, and I’m fine, lucky enough to have avoided brain damage. But the moral of the story is…

The 3-pronged Pitchfork is for food, not S$%&

2006-03-17T02:15:00.000-08:00

Here is the deep south. It's rural, it's far away, and I can't understand a bloody word of the dialect. That's not true. Rosa, the matron of the family with whom I am staying here in Friedlingen, usually speaks slowly and loudly for my benefit, so that I have a little more than just intuition guiding me as I learn the great art of shoveling horseshit, my primary function as an inhabitant of the farm. For 2 or 3 hours everyday, I employ myself with a shovel and a rake, or a 4-pronged pitchfork, depending on the behavior of the terrain. The horses aren't stupid; they don't shit where they eat, so it's usually all in one pile, which is convenient for everyone. When that's done, Rosa and I haul out the Kutsche (the carriage) and harness up 2 of the 9 horses, who are all of German heritage, and go for a charming jaunt along the countryside. Indeed, it's just as cold as it is beautiful.

The first night I was here, Monday, Peter (the head of the household) came in and asked me if I wanted to come with him to milch die Kuh, whose name is Emily, and of course I jumped at the oppotunity. My job was to hold the flashlight, since the barn has no electricity. It was interesting, to be sure, and then we returned to the house for supper, which is a small meal. The warm meal of the day is Lunch, which suits me just fine. But this first night, I watched a real German eat. Peter is a large and strong fellow, with a beard and overalls. He spends his days working with metal, his nights fighting fire, and all the time in between tending to the animals. He cut himself a long strip of miscellaneous dry meat that was in the house, probably something he slaughtered himself. He held a boule of bread near his heart and cut a large slice for me and one for himself, the way I always wanted to cut bread, but the way that parents always tell you not to use the knife. He ate pickled cucumbers and pickled peppers. He used a wooden plate, and but his food into cubes as he ate them. The Germans, I have found, always hold their knife while they eat. They use it to cut, to spread, and to push the food around on the plate and on the fork so it is just the right size and shape to put in the mouth, no strings of kraut ambling about. When he was finished eating, there were crumbs everywhere, and he had created a royal mess, but a German one. His air is that of a woodsman, Herr Nägele, and he carries himself proud.

This, my friends, in an experience to be had! Despite the fact that communication is so difficult, I'm very content here for the time being. I enjoy the manual labor, the fresh air, and especially the animals. You must understand, that this is practically a childhood dream becoming fulfilled. My childhood play was always based around animals, farms, stables, and secret adventures, and this satisfies each one of those fantasies. And too, I have many times thought that I wanted to be a world traveler, but I am beginning to understand that it is actually time travel for which I yearn, and this is practically the same thing.

Today I have a free day, so I have come to Konstanz, a larger city by the lake Bodensee, which is 9 miles wide and 46 miles long. I am not sure what is here, but there is activity, so I must explore. Signing off.

Great Expectations

2006-03-11T01:04:00.000-08:00

In the middle of the 15th century, Johann Gutenberg perfected the printing press. In Mainz, the sister city of Wiesbaden, located just across the Rhein, and accessable by the linea 6 bus, there is a museum devoted to his work, as well as to the history of writing. I traveled there yesterday with great enthusiasm, which I often have for some things, but not all things. Writing, the written word, the way words look on the page, these are intrinsically magical to me, (iconified most beautifully in a book by the name of Codex Seriphinianus (http://www.almaleh.com/serafini-e.htm)). Needless to say, I had high expectations for the very museum devoted to the origin of a few of my favorite things. Expectations. When will I ever learn? The creation of high expectation only sets one up for disappointment.
To make a long story short, my critique of the museum is this: The captions on the exhibits were very inconsistent. All were in German, but only some had English translations, and some had Chinese translations instead, and some had only German. This was incredibly frustrating! I tried to read the German, but the language was very specialized, and therefore very difficult for a Kindergarten-level German speaker like myself to understand. I asked for an English guide booklet to the museum, but they had none, and instead sold me a booklet with general information about Gutenberg and writing and printing and such. Interesting to read, but not helpful in the museum.
The old books were, understandably, encased in glass. They were to be touched only with the eyes. But, I realized, it is neither entertaining or interesting to me to only be able to see the books from the outside of an orb. It created a real sense of inferiority, which I am finding is a trait of all things German anyway. Always there is a heirarchy, someone or something who is the best, and someone who is lesser. I do believe it is a cheap high. But I like to hold books, to touch them, and to READ them.
There was 4-part diarama detailing Korean book printing in the 14th century, which was thankfully in English, and very much of interest to me. They used wax to make casts for the letters. There was also a little exhibit where kids could type on typewriters and draw on newspaper to make Zeitungs, so I sat and drew for a while, which is ever fun.
I guess it is that I simply felt helpless at this museum. It must be how children feel when they must go to such an establishment, intended for adults. Learning a language, whether it's first or second, is so frustrating, because there is much on the inside that cannot get out, as well as much on the outside that cannot get in. To know what it is that you don't know is equally a powerful motivator, pacifier and infuriator. I'm thirsty to learn this language, but I yearn to speak in English, and I find myself thinking of people in cafes and on the streets, why don't they just speak English? It's so much easier. blublubluelueglbuelube. That's what it sounds like. A radio station in the Arctic Circle.

But, Mainz is a very beautiful city, though I like the Bavarian towns better. This is a very wealthy part of the country, and everybody wears fur coats and shoes with pointy toes. Frivolous, it seems to me, and pround of it. I went to the Kaiser Friedrich thermal bath the otherday, 4 hours for 17.50 Euros, a really good deal considering that Daniel and I pay 20$ a piece to spend 30 minutes in the hot tub at Urban Oasis in Somerville. At the Therme, there is a cold pool, a series of hot pools that range from 37 degrees celcius to 42, which is quite hot. There are also a few different saunas, steam rooms, foot baths, showers, a cafe, and so on. I felt very relaxed afterwards, and found entertainment in seeing so many wealthy naked bodies. hehe!

I head south on either Monday or Wednesday, into the Hegau Mountains, near the Bodensee and just north of Switzerland. The farm I'll be staying at is indeed a horse farm, and they told me I'd be learning to ride as well as driving the carriage...Sounds thrilling! There are sheep in the pasture, but they are not for cheesemaking.

Ah, I've lost my train of thought, so I'll end here before I write to many non sequitorial sentences. Au revoir!

classic German Conclusion

2006-03-03T06:25:00.000-08:00

Today marks the end of a very fulfilling stay in Bamberg. I have made some wonderful friends and enjoyed the very quirky teachers of TreffPunkt, and will remember fondly my stay here. Every morning up at 7:45 for an 8:00 breakfast of Nulecta, toast and coffee, followed by my morning walk to school, everyday passingby and Gutenmorganing a beautiful young man with rounded glasses and a long black coat smoking in front of the antique bookstore. Over the oberebrüke, which doubles as the Rathaus, and into the Markt Platz where dogs and people set up fruits, flowers and vegetables in the light and fantastic snow, which has been precipitating all week. Mornings are lovely.

Daytime has been conducted auf Deutsch, of course, and I am better than I was, but now I am super paranoid about my Grammar. I think, though, that is probably a necessary step in becoming comfortable in another language, being uncomfortable. Most days I have been Lunching with folks from school, and occasionally there is an afternoon activity, a tour or a movie or the like. FaschingsDienstag, of course, was this week, and is was a bit tired, like a funeral with candy.

I will head back to Wiesbaden tomorrow by train. Sian (pronounced 'Shaan') from England is flying back to her home from Frankfurt, so we will venture west together and part there. I'm a little sad to have this end, as I usually am, but alas, the trip really just keeps getting better. There were a few moments last week, I admit, that I was not so happy with the course and thought I could do better on my own, but sometimes it isn't IN the course where the learning takes place, but BECAUSE. This is a new lesson...I'll explore it further.

But so, since this is an ending sort of a time, I shall end this post with a classic German conclusion and live sort of happily ever after. The end.

Karnival!

2006-02-28T04:19:00.000-08:00

Today is the very last day of Faschings, the German equivalent of Mardi Gras. I am sporting green hair, striped leggings and some obscenely unatural 'makeup' (that's Deutsch for 'makeup') and I shall head to the Bamberg parade with my classmates in a few minutes. We went on a fieldtrip to Würtzberg on Sunday and experienced 190 floats worth of celebration, plus an extremely friendly (and drunk) Viking and some mysterious German aliens, with whom we had our photos taken. The excursion was supposed to be for learning about the fancy churches, the Residence and other sorts of historical curiosities, but the excitment, color, and alcohol of Karnival was simply unavoidable, thank Gott. (I can only bear so many golden crucifixes in one day).

Bamberg is not quite so enthusiastic about this holiday time (which began 11 November) as Würtzberg, so we'll see how the parade plays out. I'm certain there will be candy tossed towards the sparsely populated streets, and perhaps perhaps perhaps at least a small number of beer bottles smashed on the cobblestones, but uncomparable to the eccentricity and drunkeness experienced the other day.

On Saturday, I traveled to Nürnberg with a woman from school. We went to see the old rallygrounds and the document center, which is a Huge museum about WWII. I learned so much there that I hadn't picked up on before, and saw a brief film interviewing older folks who were young at the time that Hitler had the Congress hall built in their city. The perspectives were Extremely interesting for someone like me, who has heard only the American version of the events. For these people, the whole situation was about 'fitting in', and acting as a community. Hitler united the people by making them feel special (through alienation, among other tactics), and of course that's what one seeks when they are young, so OF COURSE they marched in the displays, with pride! I thought of American politics several times in the exhibit. Very unnerving, the whole experience, but could it happen again? Not exactly, but almost, I believe. Shudder.

The Bluest Eye

2006-02-23T05:35:00.000-08:00

The Germans have eyes like the sea. Rich blue, dark blue, glass blue, clear blue, grey blue, green blue, all shades of luminescent beauty. They peek out from behind personalities which I find average, normal, without flourish, some more rigid than others, quite serious, VERY concerned about jaywalking. They are hidden by the Coca-colonialism that seems to dictate this German life as much as it does American. These eyes of such color, they are a treat, an überraschen, unexpected like a wish, and are perfect for gazing, should one get the chance.

My teachers here in Bamberg, they do not necessarily have the same ideas about language learning as I do, but I think their way works for intensive learning, as is advertised for this school. I have class from 9 to 12:30, with a pause for 30 minutes in the middle, and all morning every morning, the teacher lectures to the students auf Deutsch, about grammar in particular, asking questions of us, allowing us a brief chance to spit out a broken sentence or two using the new knowledge. The students, however, do not speak with one another in the class; always our attention is on the teacher. We do speak a lot out of class though, naturlich.

Beate is the first teacher, with tiger-red hair and the definative yet soft air of a potter. Hers are a pair of light greenbeigeblue eyes, and they are framed rectangularly by metallic lavender glasses. Norbert teaches the second 90-minute section. He always wears a pinstriped suit, and I told him he looked like a Betrüger, a swindler. He has a small ponytail and little dots of white dandruff in his sideburns and on his eyebrows. But his are a very thick grey, his eyes, the texture of cake batter.
My host family is also indigo-eyed, but the sister has the bluest, and they are like fresh marbles anointed with ambrosia. I have eaten dinner with she and her boyfriend for the last two nights. He is a folk-rock musician and sometimes plays at the local Blues Bar. He likes very much Dar Williams and James Taylor, and gave me cds to listen to, but I couldn't bear them for the sake of emotions, both pleasant and not. I travel to make new memories, because the old ones have too much sentiment, whether from the best of times or the worst of times. I am a sponge; I intake everything, and when I am wrung out, something always stays, stinking with mildew.

BUT, all is well, I must say. My German grammar is improving, though my vocabulary is still rawther small. I can recognize what people say when they talk to me, but that is not to say that I understand. It is an impressionistic world when ones language isn't all there, akin to modern art, which I like. So.

Gastronomy

2006-02-13T04:18:00.000-08:00

'Scuse me while I get this out of my system:

Ireland's food's not the finest of ilks.
The butter is great, and so are the milks,
but black and white pudding, so salty and strange
and bacon cooked slightly too long on the range;
the fruit and the veg, soft brown or unripe;
the usual order of kidney-stuffed tripe;
(it's all unidentified sections of meat
cooked over a flame made of freshly-dug peat.)

It's true that old Eire is not known for cuisine
but this is the funniest I've ever seen.
Serve anything, though, with such a warm heart
as I've seen here each day since Wednesday, the start,
and I'll eat it with pleasure yet unseen by man,
and then run to the toilet as fast as I can.

Other than that, all is well. There are some fairly delicious items to be eaten, such as Hazelnut Yogurt and Cadbury Creme eggs (much better than the ones in America); but a girl needs real sustenance, too. Last night and the night before, I stayed on Malcolm's couch and yesterday morning we fried up some fresh fish and ate it with home-fried chips. Very yummy. It was a welcome break from the hostel downtown. I've been staying near O'Connell street, which is the main drag of Dublin, but really it is just a bit too cityish sometimes. Malcolm lives in Cabra, a region of the city that is more realistic, and all the little children go around swearing their little mouths to shreds, and it warms my heart like a good, hot whiskey with lemon and cloves.

I've been hitting the pubs, since they are everywhere, but only played tunes in the Old Time session at the Cobblestone on Saturday. The Irish sessions are more strict; they require that one either knows the tunes (which I don't) or can pick them up and make them sound good right away (which I can't). So, I'm happy listening in the pubs. Malcolm and I played a bit together yesterday, and he taught me a couple tunes. I also went set dancing one night with a Japanese girl from my dorm. There was live music, a guitar and a buttonbox. The dancing is akin to square dancing, but with a constant sort of polka step, though that's not exactly what it is; there's a kick in there somewhere. I also happened to meet a guy there who works with Malcolm (the only person I know in the entire city) at Dublin City University.

Hiking on Howth was beautiful on Friday. Howth is a peninsula just north of Dublin, accessible by DART. The cliffs are high and promote spectacular views of the Irish sea, and supposedly you can see Wales on a clear day, but I don't expect there will be a clear day around here for a while. The climate is very much Pacific Northwest; rainy, gray, but with fairly moderate temperatures. There are, in fact, palm trees, and I even spotted a couple of Monkey Puzzle trees, imported from South America.

I must be off for now. Lots has been happening, and I'm getting used to the slightly smaller and much more efficient scale of things around here. The houses, the cars, the tvs, the sinks, and the people are all tiny; the personalities, however, are mighty, and full of stories and laughter. I will return to Ireland, I am certain of it.

What of 'what of'?

2005-12-27T08:56:00.000-08:00

I remember hearing a poem. After a series of tedious existential 'what of's, what of life? what of the geranium? what of the heart? The verse ended with the line, "what of 'what of'?" and it has stayed with me. It was a question that made light of the unbearable weight of previous whats, and although it was serious, it acknowledged that I was still there listening, not from an abysmal pedestal of being, but from my couch, or was that the uncomfortable 9th grade English class chair-desk unit where I sat trying to make my legs not look fat? Yes, I'm sure that's where it was. There are always scars like that in the mind, the dashes of verbal memory, the flavors of someone else's ideas, that stay forever and seem to mean nothing. But sometimes it's nice to invite them up, have some tea, and discuss their isms and political agenda, or maybe just how tasty the tea is, sweetened with the honey from Pleasant Pond Orchard, across town.
What kind of tea do you like to drink, and who will you next invite?