Prolific Reflection

Sailing Part 2: Living Aboard

2009-10-18T21:59:00.001-07:00

Immanent Threats to be Wary of

In a boat, I've learned, absolutely everything must serve more than one purpose, and not knowing what those purposes are, I'm now convinced, may as well be a direct threat to your life. For instance, there is a wooden step in the V berth (below deck at the front of the ship) attached to the surrounding storage areas which allows you a place to sit while rifling hopelessly for what you need inside them as well as providing a boost to open or close the hatch in the ceiling. This, I had surmised, must be the complete list of uses for such a small structure and near died in the process of learning I was wrong. At our anchorage in the wilds of whatever state this is we are so far removed from civilization that there is no unnatural light whatever to compete with the stars. This I first noticed through the three inch opening of the hatch above me and, instantly dazzled by their brilliance, I called Alaina to come look and jumped up onto the obliging step to stretch my head out for a better view of the sky. As it turns out, that "step" is also a miniature storage unit all its own, meaning the top of it is a sliding removable lid which, as it is designed to do, abruptly fled from beneath me sending me slamming down against the edge of the hatch which knocked the heavy lid on my head and furthered the violence of my already being hung by the throat from our roof. Alaina fell almost into the head (sailing lingo for impossible-to-keep-clean ship toilets) overcome by laughter and I tried to join her but was relatively limited on oxygen even when I wriggled free of the what we now refer to as "the guillotine hatch" and now conduct myself with even more exaggerated care about the ship- which is difficult enough when it's not moving but near impossible when it's pitching in someone's wake.

But the boat can be equally dangerous to those who know their way about it as well as their own body. Recently Jan (wife of Kevin, owners of our boat's twin sister who're headed the same direction and have therefore joined us t form our own mini floatilla the last week or so) hailed us with an offering that might as well have been the Holy Grail: a baggy of long, raw carrots, the only fresh produce we'd seen in weeks. She waved us down as we passed her and Kevin on the Pearl of Eastport but we weren't close enough and the precious gift didn't make it aboard with her toss. My darling siblings took it as the perfect opportunity to demonstrate "man overboard procedure" and our neighboring sailors immediately made for enthusiastic spectators. Luckily no one thus far HAS fallen overboard because Alaina's arms resulted to be too short for rescuing and she missed the bag when Pat expertly guided us back past it. Simultaneously he started laughing, our audience started "Aw!"ing and I started grieving the loss of our only opportunity to swallow something that neither had any trace of starch nor required being mixed with our typhoid water to be eaten. Then- midway through a mocking imitation of my sister's failure- her husband accidentally smashed his jaw into a metal cleat and dove through the companionway into the cabin below sputtering that someone had to steer. How he managed to bite his tongue in such a way that it split down the middle like a snake we shall never know. What we DO know is that Alaina doesn't have much of a stomach for gore and I don't have much of a faculty for emergencies. Patrick filled the sink with mouth blood, Alaina turned pale as she slumped over the tiller on the edge of fainting, and I abruptly forgot what the object floating under me was called -along with every other piece of knowledge that might possibly have been useful in helping to navigate it unassisted. Kevin and Jan watched us bewildered as we sailed straight on in a state of chaos whose source they couldn't possibly identify from that distance. Pat, like a true captain, dried his tongue off, stuck it back together and resumed control of the tiller. We, on the other hand, once the shock had passed, were useless crewmen because he could only communicate instructions with an unrehearsed and, therefore, unreliable system of "MMMM!"s and gestures which were so pathetically hilarious it took us triple as long as it should have to understand through our own laughter- which was only intensified by the ironic discovery that our pantry was down to absolutely nothing but bread and peanut butter. It had been 6 hours since Patrick's last meal. We tried to argue him out of eating it anyway. He regretted it.

Long Unrecorded Sailing Memoirs

2009-10-16T19:27:00.001-07:00

Some late transfers from my sailing journal... First installment.

Basic Sustenance

Keeping hydrated has steadily become a simple question of "how many senses can you simultaneously disengage?" Spending upwards of 10 hours a day in blazing sunlight- both that from the sky above and that of every beam that might have missed you on the way down reflected up from the water below- creates an obvious thirst that is nearly never satisfied because of the complicated skills required to ingest the only accessible fresh water. You see, the small engine used to help fight currents when in unfavorable winds (which so far has been nearly always, in our case) happens to be built directly next to our water storage tanks and generates a shocking amount of heat considering its size. This, in turn, makes the water an unbearable temperature to drink when you're already sweating, strained, and sunburned. Solution: disengage sense of feeling. Meanwhile the water itself, after a day or so of re-filling the tanks, generates a sort of sickly-stagnant smell which, paired with the diesel fumes that almost perpetually fill the cabin while we're under way, becomes so nauseating that straight up sea-sickness would be a welcome relief. Solution: disengage sense of smell. A day or so after that the stagnant smell aided by the heat settles into a stagnant taste only worsened by the sour diesel-dominated air, at which point there's one solution: disengage sense of taste. All of this I was beginning to get a handle on until a few days ago when we accidentally refilled the tanks with a hose normally used to power-wash decks and sails which stirred up some kind of whitish sediment slightly resembling wood shavings in the bottom of our holding tanks so that every glass we fill now bears a visible water to ??? ratio of 3:1. At this point, I'd be happy to resign myself to the less complicated option of never taking a drink again, except that I can at no point ever possibly be farther than 30 feet from my suddenly-extremely-maternal older sister for at least a few more weeks and, therefore, will never be out of earshot from her demanding that I "swallow something before I shrivel up and die." Solution: disengage sense of sight. I've never been quite so familiar with the miraculous synchronization involved with the many small muscles in the mouth and throat required to move something downward as quickly as possible. Because once you've removed nearly every possible thing that could draw your attention that's about what you've got left!

Cabin Fever

Things are different than I'd expected. Living in such limited space I thought I'd never see a moment to myself again until we docked in Baltimore and all started working but that isn't the case. I'm learning a lot about everything. They tell me I'm learning quickly too, but lately we've been going for long stretches (as in several days) through areas that haven't been dredged well and if I were to make a mistake we can't afford the time or money for a tug to come get us if we were to run aground. Between times that it's safe enough for me to practice anything interesting, I'm assigned to tying lines, hailing on the VHF radio, or keeping a lookout for logs or anything else that might damage the ship to be avoided. None of these tasks require constant attention. Alaina and Pat get so absorbed in the charts and depth finder that most days they go for hours (and sometimes the entire day) without hearing a word when I talk to them so I haven't really bothered anymore. I understand. They've got everything riding on this ship. It represents an enormous investment, their temporary home for the next few years, and only hope to make it to their new city. But I can hardly believe there are the same number of hours in these days as every other that I've lived. I read constantly, I listen to their arguments over routes and how the sails should be trimmed to learn more about how everything works, but still there are hours upon hours left to fill and now that I've already alphabetized the CDs, DVDs, and spice cabinet as well as performed what could have been a surgery on the mass of wires in our electronics bag to separate and organize them I'm low on options. Much of this time, I've realized, I spend listening with an intensity I had never known myself to be capable of, first to the great deluge of sounds as a whole, and then I separate them distinctly one at a time. Especially the engine. There is a constant emission of a million and one sounds coming from its place below the deck at the front of the cockpit and I shatter them into categories of hums and whirs and metallic clics and rhythmic drips like an orchestra. I keep finding that I can hear things far quieter and far further away than I ever knew and wonder if this was always the case but I never knew with all the other competing distractions or if it's developed over the course of this frequent exercise. I'm half convinced it's because of the sensory adaptations which become imperative every time I get dizzy enough to make myself force down a drink leave my hearing as the sole operating source of input… I've never been particularly interested in machinery before this and I have to laugh at how childish my imagined picture of this engine is having matched each sound in my head to knobby gears or thin springs and cogs that could just as easily be buttons and yarn or paper chains. But I realized that sometimes I see it as an oily old man grumbling and spitting about "doing all the work around here." Patrick opened the wall to look things over the other day only to find that we've been leaking oil badly for a while now. We joked that our engine's "crying black tears in protest" but in my mind's eye he'd just been sweating 'til the bilge was full of motor grease.

My Personal Film Review Column

2009-04-06T18:03:00.000-07:00

I recently visited a friend for a sleepover which, as any female with the capacity to speak will tell you, almost without exception requires watching a movie. The one my friend had rented was the newest released romantic comedy entitled “Bride Wars” and I was immediately reminded how much I’d enjoy a profession as a film critic. Since my thoughts will probably never be published, I see no reason why I shouldn’t at least express them here.

The moment the end credits began to roll I became conscious of my experiencing a familiar feeling in an unfamiliar context: in place of the expected superficial happiness which results from a far-fetched story that makes you feel a sort of delicate blend of silliness, warmth and loneliness (since you probably wouldn’t have watched it in the first place if you had a boyfriend to be spending that time with), I was overcome by the sensation I have just after a friend recounts to me the plot line of a movie I haven’t seen that wasn’t quite good enough to leave things out for me to learn by watching it myself. In short, it was not a story. Only the skeleton of a story comprised of a series of unsupported ideas we are made to believe because they told us to and not because they actually exist in the film itself. Not one single character was developed in even the smallest way, the narrator- who wouldn’t even have been necessary had they put any thought whatever in building the plot line- was a marginal character whose perspective is useless to the action of the story and never explains how they manage to be occasionally omniscient in their explanations, and every epiphany is abrupt and confusing due to the lack of a real backstory.

Now, as far as substance-less movies go, they started with a good enough idea. Two best friends who turn on each other due to the stress and chaos caused by planning their weddings at the same time. I’ve seen quite a few decent and very few actually funny films made from less. Of course I understand that every movie on earth cannot be expected to be artful and insightful, but even those which from the start were never intended to have any real significance beyond entertainment and giving single girls butterflies followed by heart-aches need to demonstrate SOME level of continuity within itself. There is a methodology to be followed which demands so little real planning it’s personally offensive that under these economic circumstances so much money was poured into a project that clearly was only the outline of some 13-year-old’s creative writing project before her language arts teacher got the chance to recommend that she look into tying up at least one or two loose ends at the close of the story if it was really such big a hassle for her even to try to tie up all of them (which is how every story -including worthless ones- should be done) before making it to cheerleading practice that night. Who knows, perhaps by some inexplicable mishap that’s actually what happened and some only slightly more credible writer is mourning the loss of her yet-to-be-located original manuscript that would have made me sincerely laugh more than the one time I can give this movie credit for. Though I’m sure if that’s the case we’ll be hearing about it very shortly in the form of a new mindless comedy entitled “Finding Love on the Brink of Suicide After an Adolescent Robbed My Moment of Glory.”

And, as horrifying as it is to admit… I’ll probably see it at another sleepover.

A Cup of Sticks

2009-03-19T21:56:00.000-07:00

There’s an enormous wild mint bush growing on our back patio. When I feel so inclined, I boil some of the branches and enjoy a cup of rather feral tasting tea while thinking over my most recent lessons, how many articles from the local paper are about exceedingly distant parts of the world due to the lack of existing actual local news, or why the man with an insufferable perm is so intent upon sabotaging the romance between the muscular archeologist and beautiful memory-loss-ravaged-orphan/circus-acrobat-runaway named “Cielo Magia” (“Heaven Magic”)in the novella I’m following for practice. This just so happens to be one such occasion, but as my stay here is drawing to a close, my cup of boiled-untamed-porch-leaves turns my thoughts to a my confusing emotional state half way between nostalgia and wanderlust- which, according to most reliable dictionaries, are near exact opposites.

I can’t decide if I’m growing to like turning points as their frequency of appearance in my life during recent years allows room for me to grow accustomed to them, or if I’m developing an increasing annoyance for them as they continually recur just as I’m settling in after my exhausting conquer of the last one. I have a feeling there’s a mix of the two in me- though more of the former than the latter. Regardless, I have only twelve more days left here, and that means twelve more days until the next relapse of “what now?” questions and the nagging sense of urgency that comes with them. In theory, I’m putting all these on hold for the time being so I can enjoy the relaxed lifestyle of the Latin world while I still have it, but I won’t say my dreams haven’t been becoming steadily more complicated and filled with characters from past decisions of which new direction to take. (Though I’ve also had a dream about a pet cockroach named Dorothy who wore pink curlers in her antennas and another about riding on swings made out of thick red ribbons tied to the feet of pelicans in the last few weeks.)

Now that I’m taking inventory of everything in my mind, it’s unbelievable how much I’ve learned here. I really feel like something just fell into place in my mind for the first time this week and I’ve been able to communicate with more fluidity than ever. Today I was sitting at the table reading the local news paper while my Mama Tica was making dinner and chatting away, as always. She asked me what I was reading, to which I answered, “Según este artículo, ha sido un epidemico de cólera en Zimbabwe hace casi dos años; yo pensaba que no la existía más en ningún parte del mundo.” Which is, “According to this article there’s been a cholera epidemic in Zimbabwe for almost two years; I thought it didn’t exist anymore in any part of the world”. I think one of these verbs were conjugated wrong if not more that I didn’t notice, but even still, I nearly spilled my plate of rice out of shock when I realized a few seconds later I was having a conversation about plagues in various regions COMPLETELY IN SPANISH after only a little over 2½ months of being here!
The human mind is such an incredible thing… and the force of wanting something as well…
I’m convinced that if I hadn’t wanted this as badly as I do I could easily have left here with no more understanding of the language than it takes to make some grammatical flashcards. But I feel like every part of me grows in proportion to the development of my understanding. As if I’m actually expanding from within to make room for this second world that now must be accommodated because I can never again simply stop knowing about how different history and existence looks here. I don’t know why I feel it to be such an improvement. In all honesty, I would try somewhere else if I decided to live in a Latin American country for an extended period of time. There are a lot of factors that come into play… the sort of lack of national identity I’ve yet to formally address here that causes every wisp of influence from the outside to be accepted with open arms and make things feel in many ways unsteady and unoriginal… the 73% divorce rate caused almost exclusively by infidelity which has created an enormous disenchantment with the idea of matrimony, virtually obliterated the thought of father figures entirely, and thereby resulted in generations of men who manage to be both domineering and dependent toward their women… the less important but nevertheless evident personal preference I have for styles of music/art/dress ect that are very different than those provided here… Don’t get me wrong, there are reasons to stay too. But I can’t help enjoying the idea that learning to understand other people-regardless of the location- changes you so significantly. I have a feeling I could continue expanding in this way through empathizing equally with people when I’m home again too, but when you’re busied with your every-day life nothing seems to prompt the need for such understanding- at least not to the same extent as in these cases. Anyway, the point is that I hope to maintain as much of the differences I’ve encountered in these few months after this is all over as possible- especially my Spanish. Though I suppose I never will learn what happens with that turbulent history behind all the fake curls and muscles and circuses in the end. I seriously doubt they have much of an audience in the states.

My Restofmylife Resolution:

2009-03-02T11:51:00.000-08:00

I solemnly swear that if I have even the most insignificant form of control over it I shall never again in my entire life live farther from the city than I can ride a bike. I grew up with such romantic sentiments about small towns. I always thought I’d love to live in one until I did. Unbearable.

I spent the preponderance of Saturday in the center of San Jose searching through various shops and especially through the artisan market, which is essentially a long tin roof supported by beams to protect a tightly woven network of tents overflowing with almost nothing that isn’t handmade from the elements. I thoroughly enjoyed myself despite being repeatedly made to feel uneasy by an unattractive vendor who stood far too close to my face, spoke far too quietly in an attempt to make me lean even closer, and winked so often I was inclined to wonder what on earth he possibly thinks winks mean to Americans- not to mention that his brilliant response to my telling that I simply couldn’t buy a scarf even at his “special (wink) price just for me (wink wink)” because I still need to eat this week was that sandwiches are really cheap. I was horribly curious what his genius thoughts would be if I explained that I’m already living off of peanut butter and jelly (which is even cheaper than proper sandwiches) to ensure that I’ve got enough money to bring anything back for my loved ones at all, but getting myself away from his booth before my flight on the 31st held the higher priority. It’s more work than you’d think.

Everyone who sells there isn’t necessarily this disagreeable, however, which is what made an afternoon at the market, penniless as I am, still enjoyable. I met a girl selling skirts and spent a period of time talking about- of all things- church and ex-boyfriends, then a man who makes jewelry out of various minerals and explained to me how to recognize and work with various ones of them, and then my favorite: the old man with inch-thick glasses. He was selling scores of the most beautiful quilts I’ve ever seen, each elaborately embroidered with dozens of individual pictures of people and animals that had such a rich and ancient appearance. The third or fourth time I stopped to marvel at them he introduced himself and showed me some of the more complicated ones in the piles. He explained to me that they are all made by an indigenous tribe on a Panamanian island that has (and I don’t know how accurate his information is, but it was intriguing either way) the highest population of albinos in the world due to the rampant inbreeding that’s resulted from their isolation. He had a whole book of pictures of them. I can’t imagine where he’d gotten them all from or how he was connected with those people to be selling their wares in the first place, but I would have been just as happy to buy a few of those photographs as one of the blankets themselves. Some of them dated all the way back to the 1920’s and the people look virtually the same in the pictures from the last few years. It hadn’t occurred to me before that I’d never seen an albino in my life, but I’m sure most of them don’t appear as strange as the ones in his book because they have such extensive genetic problems. The people nearly all looked like they could be exactly the same person- extremely short and stocky with identically stretched facial features wearing the same excruciatingly detailed quilted clothing. The only real difference was whether they were an albino or as dark as we normally imagine an indigenous person to be. It was fascinating. I don’t know what I wouldn’t have given to buy one of those quilts, but they were all near $150 which simply isn’t doable, but it’s the frequent conversations like this that make me so utterly unconcerned with the fact I’ve been the only person who hasn’t been able to afford to go to the beech the last several weekends. I don’t feel as if I’m missing out on anything here in the city even if it’s not exactly the city I find ideal due to unusual circumstances…

While San José offers in excess two of my top three favorite aspects of the urban world, which are people with stories worth hearing/willing to tell them and never ever having to say “we can’t go out, everything’s closed”, it lacks a certain element of city living which just so happens to be first on that list: the anonymity of crowds. I always thought everyone was exaggerating to make me unhappy when they talked about the kind of attention blonde hair draws in the Latin world but, whatever their motives, it turns out most of them were either underplaying the reality of it or hadn’t experienced the full capacity of these people to yell and/or hiss (at least for this area, I can’t speak for the entirety of Latin America). I now can stop lamenting that my childhood dream of becoming an actress never quite came to fruition under the absolute certainty that I’d rather die than be a celebrity. The very first thing I intend to do upon my return home is make a dozen laps around the ever-overcrowded Atlanta airport and just relish the beautiful feeling of being ignored. Maybe it’s only because I’m such an excessively private person, but after any length of time grocery or window shopping here I find myself longing for the sweet relief of going back to school the next day which always promises the guarantee of being unwanted by all of the rich art students who , thanks to years of mindless Americans flooding their halls with horrific attempts at using their language and throwing themselves all over the locals, couldn’t be more disenchanted with us regardless of what you look like. The girls seem almost vindictive in their looks- when they look at me at all- but no part of me feels in the least troubled about it in comparison with having strangers put down their phones in the middle of a conversation to stare shamelessly, or swerve their motorcycles at terrifying proximities to ensure their hissing is audible over the muffler-less engine, or blatantly force themselves in my way as I shove through the hoards, or forcibly give me their phone number while I’m minding my own business on the street. (All true stories.) But considering that I have no other real complaint here, and taking into account the fact that this same irritation is also the very reason I have been able to manage so much practice of the language since, in the majority of cases, I have to work to make people not talk to me, I’ve decided to regard this as a fair trade.

Surprize Treats

2009-02-26T12:40:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I walked into school heavy-laden with dreads of an enormous presentation only to be met with the best possible of surprises in the main hallway of the university: a used book fair. Obviously I dropped everything to browse through the tables and quickly identified the most promising vender as his table was filled with the oldest and most attractive books- not to mention that it was the only one not predominantly occupied with text books. He was a personable younger man who appeared genuinely interested in everyone who came close enough to ask questions and quickly had me talking about my studies here. I explained to him that I’ve been trying to read as much as possible to practice my Spanish and how much I’ve loved learning it here and he immediately began searching through some boxes under the table for authors he would recommend because so many of the books I’d been thumbing through- while well bound and titled- had been written by Americans or Europeans and translated into Spanish. The first book he fished out for me was a collection of short stories by Augusto Monterroso who he assured me “es el maestro de los cuentos cortos y centroamericano tambien” (the master of short stories and a native central American as well). The book (which I bought on the spot for 1500 colones) is called “Animales y Hombres” and I can’t even believe how much I’m enjoying it so far. Most of them are extremely short. As a matter of fact, the first one I read I chose because it looked to be only one paragraph which interested me but it turned out to be only one very long sentence and here’s how it goes:
(but it isn't supposed to be all spaced out like this... don't know how that happenned...)

El Apóstata Arrepentido
Se dice que había una vez un católico, según unos, o
un protestante, según otros, que en tiempos muy lejanos y asultado por las dudas
comenzó a pensar seriamente en volverse cristiano; pero el temor de que sus
vecinos imaginaran que lo hacía para pasar por gracioso, o por llamar attención,
lo hizo renunciar a su extravagante debilidad y propósito.

This is my personal translation:

The Repentant Apostate
They say that once upon a time there was a catholic,
according to some, or a protestant, according to others, who in times distant
and assaulted with doubts began to think seriously about becoming Christian; but
the fear that his neighbors would imagine that he’d done it to pass for amusing,
or to call attention (to himself), caused him to resign (himself) to his
extravagant weakness and purpose.

Do you love him?
Because I do.
This isn’t the perfect example of his style. I chose it because it’s easy to fit- though I’m as much enthralled with this as any of them. Perhaps it’s only because reading in romance languages for the first time is so romancing, but if there’s anything I’d rather be taking home I haven’t heard of it.

Having the doors to a whole new sphere of literature so suddenly be opened to me is superbly overwhelming. Last semester in my World Cultural Literature class I realized for the first time in my life that I’ve only ever been exposed to North American and European literature. What we call “the western world” is such an unbelievably small fraction of what exists and it has been a recent ambition of mine to start expanding my knowledge of the written world to other countries. I had intended to start with some of my favorite authors from that class who both happened to be from South Africa, but I’ve had to do some rescheduling as this, to me, is clearly preferable for obvious reasons.

The other book I bought by my new friend’s suggestion is also by a Central American named Julio Cortazar. It’s called “Todos los Fuegos el Fuego” and I’m unsure whether it’s a novel or another book of short stories as I haven’t looked at it much yet. I sincerely hope that it’s equally as brilliant, though I’ve every confidence that the table-side-book-vendor steered me the right direction. He had very good glasses. He’s reliable.

Surprize Job Offer

2009-02-25T18:12:00.000-08:00

Last Wednesday I paid a visit to the university’s marketing office in response to at least a week of corresponding via email with one “Pablo Mastroeni” who apparently works in that department. What made me open the message from a random stranger rather than assuming it to have somehow evaded my spam filter and erasing it without a second thought is as much a mystery to me now as the message itself was when I opened it then- which is why it resulted in so many confused and curious messages to follow. He was never clear about exactly why he wanted to see me, but for some unknown reason we had an appointment to see if I could “help with something”.

That “something” turned out to be editing the official student guide book they distribute to internationals when they come to orientation.

Why me?

I still have no idea. But needless to say, I couldn’t have been more willing to lend a hand!
Apparently when he asked Marcella, who works in the internationals office and spent a good two weeks prior to my arrival faithfully writing back and forth with me sorting out all of the details, who she thought would be up for the job I was the first person she recommended. Presumably because of her having seen so much of my writing?... I honestly have no real guess as to what happened, but I was too shocked and thrilled to ask very many questions.

The guide book while conveying all of the necessary information was quite obviously written by a Spanish-speaker who had learned English well enough to communicate but not enough to read smoothly. I had thought so from the very beginning when we were given copies of them with our class information for oral examinations, but would never have expected a chance to clean it up myself. Most of the changes that needed to be made were simple- such as replacing “water to drink” with “drinking water” or “throughout our territory” with “the majority of the country” and the like- but others were so badly phrased I just rewrote them completely.

The bottom line, however, is that I have my very first, albeit unofficial, writing job! They may be paying me with a school sweatshirt, but considering I would have been more than happy to do it for paperclips I don’t feel robbed in the least. Pablo said he understands that I’m in classes and to feel free to take my time- weeks even if I need to- but I’ve been so thrilled about it I already fished my final revisions last night and dropped it off to him this afternoon. He was surprised to see me back after only a week, but also appeared pleased to have it taken care of so quickly and asked me to come back on Friday to pick up a letter of recommendation the head of the marketing department will generate for me to do with as I please!

All other causes for celebration aside, it was so interesting to look at how such subtle differences in word order or usage could give away that it hadn’t been written by a native English speaker- not to mention trying to understand why they made the mistakes they did based upon what I now understand of Spanish grammar. Translation is such an incredibly intriguing thing to me… that language is so perpetually bound to culture... You aren’t simply exchanging words for their equivalents. You’re trying to re-create the same idea with the same implications in an entirely different cultural system. It’s nearly unfathomable that we can do it at all! Because words themselves are only symbols without any correspondence to the objects or ideas to which they refer outside of the minds of those speaking and listening- assuming they are a part of the same cultural system and interpret the symbols the same way. That we can communicate even the simplest thoughts effectively at all is unbelievable!
But we do.
It’s exquisite.
Beautiful.
…Unspeakable.

Insult of the day

2009-02-17T19:17:00.000-08:00

Having triumphantly concluded my very first novel en Espanol I could not have been more pleased with my progress and therefore today, exultant, I made my way to the Libreria in the center of downtown San Jose to buy the next in the series (thanks to the parents ;). More confident than ever in my competency, I greeted the man at the counter with my next story to conquer who answered me in a slurred lisp of a mumble that I could never possibly have made out even if he had been speaking English. “I’m sorry?” I asked in perfectly clear Spanish and after taking in my obvious blonde-blue-eyed-and-still-unrelentingly-pale-even-after-nearly-two-months-in-a-tropical-environment self turned to the other employee and said “Me ayudes, por favor. Esta muchacha no me entiende y habla muy poco.” Which I could have translated as “Help me, please. This girl doesn’t understand me and can barely talk” well before being immersed here. The other worker came and talked to me in broken English and I was so frustrated that my Spanish responses with which I intended to defend myself were jumbled at best despite their perfect grammatical order in my head and I was forced to leave despondent and insulted by the patronizing looks with which they watched me leave. The Tico sitting next to me on the bus home was almost re-assuring when he said I speak very clearly, but then he also insisted- with sunglasses half-way down his nose and undulating eyebrows which somehow called to memory a picture of someone smoothing their mustache in a half-buttoned floral, silk shirt- that the best possible path to fluency was a Latin boyfriend which somewhat diluted his reliability in my mind. Gracias por nada, Gilberto.

There were several other encounters of this type this afternoon (of being spoken to as if I know nothing because I’m clearly American regardless of what I say- not of being eyed by people who belong drooped over a bar with pinky-rings, though I wouldn’t have been surprised) but, in short, I was frustrated until I sat down for dinner with my Mama Tica and, to my profound relief, realized I was able to relate the whole afternoon of frustrations (not in the kind of detail with which I prefer to explain frustrations, but enough for her to understand generally what happened and how I felt about it) to her with very few hiccups. She was nearly as affronted as I had been which was very sweet and insisted that I tell them I’m listening next time. I promised I would.

All frustrations aside, there is something so interesting about the mental blocks we have with people. For example, the Chinese family that runs the grocery story three houses down speaks fluent Spanish but I have a terrible time understanding them, not only because of their accents, but also because no matter how many times I tell myself “She speaks Spanish!” in my head I’m still looking at a small Chinese woman and nearly all I hear are Chinese vowel sounds that make no sense. I KNOW better. But, regardless, it’s a thought process that’s nearly impossible to break. To me, this is the truest form of self fulfilling prophecy: I know every word she is using but because I believe I can’t understand her, I don’t. And the same was true with the salesman at the bookstore. Because I couldn’t hear his useless mutterings, obviously I’m an idiot American who has no clue what I’m saying even if I’m speaking perfectly well. (Yes, I’m still insulted. You didn’t see the way that flimsy, lisping desk clerk rolled his eyes at me.) These are habits that seem near impossible to break, but there are so many things that I believe to be made possible or impossible based on what we think is true.

And there’s also something to be said about the dynamic of not being understood. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten too comfortable with my speech and accidentally confused something like “quedar” (which is to keep) and “quemar” (which is to scorch) leaving me the only one laughing at the end of a story because I wasn’t paying attention to what I was saying. There are so many cases in which I feel no need whatever to defend myself because if I know I’m not an idiot or out of line then it doesn’t concern me if someone else has so little to do they wish to linger on my apparent incapacities. But this is something I want. Not just to have but to be a part of me. I feel that my intent upon the learning of languages is the means rather than the end- that perhaps my initial anxiety wasn’t about not being able to speak them but not being able to speak to those who can. Or rather, that the thought of so great a percentage of the world being forever barred from my knowledge purely because of this difference in speech is somehow intolerable. Which, in those terms, is a fruitless endeavor as I’ll never be capable of knowing all the companions of my native tongue in the first place much less have the chance to feel the need to know more, but let’s just call it youthful caprice instead of unrealistic goal-setting. We all want things we can’t have, after all. I know I’ve got lots of them- I just don’t commit time to writing about swapping various body parts, features or talents with people without their permission or having a pet cloud.

More catching up directly from my diary.

2009-02-12T14:35:00.000-08:00

January 19th 2009:

My personal goal for today was to learn how to use the public bus system well enough to make my second haunt at Q Café. When the same waiter as my first visit served me politely with few words despite obviously recognizing me, I could not help feeling satisfied with myself that things were right on schedule:

-Step one: polite strangers
-Step two: strangers who recognize/remember each other but don’t address it
-Step three: occasional brief but friendly conversations about casual things such as what I’m reading,
what song is playing, how’s the weather…
-Step four: mocking other customers and similar forms of more interesting conversations that eventually lead to our actual selves
-Step five: friends who no longer secretly look forward to seeing each other on the given day
-Step six: seeing each other outside of the given day

Unfortunately, part of my homework today was to ask a handful of locals who they think the most important historical figure of Costa Rica is and when I was paying the very sweet hostess I thought I might as well ask her and my waiter who was lingering by the desk. By accident, this started an actual conversation which was over rather casual things but also touched on how long I’m here, what I’m studying and that they’d like to see me there again to help me practice my language ability. Now I’m a bit disoriented as to where that falls between steps 3 and 5 and my entire experiment has been overthrown by a factor I forgot to account for in the initial plan: the irreversible warmness of Latin Culture. I’m back to the drawing boards trying to decide whether I can count this as a sort of catalyst that sped up the reaction time and resulted in success or simply an unexpected addition which altered the results entirely. However, being ahead in schedule, while lacking in the romantic development I’d counted on, has the advantage of the possibility we may actually be close friends by the time I leave- or at the very least, I now have consistent conversation partners not to mention the assurance that I’m capable of holding up conversations with strangers in Spanish which is one of the best feelings in the world.

Speaking of the development of my language skills, yesterday I purchased “Harry Potter y la Piedra Filosofal” at a book store in town and have been positively shocked at how much I understand. Naturally, it helps that I’ve already read the story in English but that was the beginning of high school and I never actually read the first good 30 pages but I can read it without a dictionary and, to my surprise, not only understand but actually enjoy myself! I have decided to use a dictionary anyway so I can learn new words but I can’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me sooner that the one and only reason I ever passed English classes what with my horrific spelling and grasp of grammatical rules in elementary school is that I suddenly began to read like crazy in junior high- and I did exactly what I’m doing now: read a book just slightly above my vocabulary level with a dictionary and notebook at the ready to learn new words and then intentionally practice using them at least once that day. I already feel myself being able to speak more fluidly and understand more quickly. The most perfect thing about it is that this series increases by book in length and complexity of both plot and language as more things happen and the characters get older and speak more intelligently. Therefore, my most recent personal goal is to finish the series in Spanish so that my understanding can progress along with the books. Depending on whether I have things too well memorized for it to be useful by the end of this round, I’ll do the same when I take up French at UGA (which is the next language I recently decided on for certain after reading medicine instructions in French and understanding the vast majority of it).

I don’t think I could love anything more than learning as I am now. I feel positively romanced by knowledge… perhaps that’s the reason relationships fail to make my priorities. I’m not too headstrong or idealistic; I feel lacking in nothing.

An exerpt from my diary

2009-02-11T16:39:00.000-08:00

January 17th 2009:

I’ve decided to practice constructing new lives while I’m in town for such a brief stay. Heaven knows I’ve had more than my fill of “starting over”s in the last few years (moving to Georgia, moving to South Carolina, and the constant movements back-and-forth between two only partially constructed worlds which are too unstable to go without serious maintenance upon returns during summers etc.) throughout the course of which I have had a running theory about what is the best way to go about such a change- especially now as I face yet another relocation to UGA upon my return to the states. Upon entering a new life the factor of the utmost importance is not to appear as if you need to belong because neediness is the strongest possible repellant of new friends second only to hideousness. And bad humor. While not impossible, it is incredibly strenuous to put forth the effort of getting to know anyone while maintaining the appearance of indifference as to whether or not they reciprocate interest in knowing you. For this reason, I have long theorized that there must be some way to make other people want to know you first without them knowing it wasn’t their idea originally. I have come up with various possibilities which wile practically fool-proof- such as constantly appearing wealthy and influential, never ever failing to win at anything, or mailing yourself a series of mysterious packages to be delivered by hand in public and refusing to open them where you can be seen- are not realistically plausible for the every-day new student/employee/what have you. But I had a slightly more realistic thought recently which is the basis by which I have fashioned my current experiment.

People feel close to each other when they are familiar enough to predict their actions- what they will wear, where they will be at a certain time, what they will be doing… all this, of course, takes place after having gotten to know the person themselves. But suppose you were able to make such predictions about a person before knowing anything about them personally or having spoken to them at all? Would this not, in some strange sense, make you feel connected to the stranger who frequents your days? Which would cause things to operate in reverse: you now are curious to know them personally. Based on this prediction, I have been scouting out a suitable place to eat lunch at the same time on the same day completely alone with a book (looking my best, of course) in order to become a familiar regular/mysterious foreigner (or “miss lonely-heart” if you will) which is an element that I don’t normally have on my side. The book is an important factor because it implies intelligence where as sitting alone doing nothing at all simply looks like desperation for human contact strong enough to make one go out alone which would cancel out the air of disconcern about making friends completely- which is the ingredient upon which this entire idea is most dependent for its success. Today I went to select the said book at El Biblioteca Nacional and stumbled upon the perfect place to haunt on a corner of el avenida central called “Q Café”. The workers are young and generally attractive, the food is delicious, the walls are covered in black-and-white photos of every-day people… experiment commence. Stand by for details.

As it turns out the library was its own adventure entirely. I didn’t know before getting there that you aren’t allowed to take the books outside of the building. You search for what you want in their old-fashioned computer system and then fill out the information on little slips which are taken to the desk on the opposite end of the library so the attendant can send it up the dumb-waiter. Meanwhile you wait in chairs for the unseen librarians upstairs to send your books down the dumb-waiter for them to call your name. you then take the books to an empty desk to read them before returning them to the dumb-waiter attendant. It was all very inconvenient at the time, but still fascinating as Soraya reminds me that this is how the library is in Breakfast at Tiffany’s- and, needless to say, anything which reminds one of or makes one feel like Audrey Hepburn is well worth any inconvenience. At any rate, I now have the perfect excuse to purchase my very first book in Spanish so, in all, it was a day well spent.

Stories and Introductions Part 1

2009-01-12T14:11:00.000-08:00

Alright, so my very first experience with San Jose was as follows:

I arrived in the San Jose International airport on time near one o’clock on January fourth. After about an hour of search for the white sign with my name which I was told to expect, I gathered that there had been a problem and quickly figured out that when I had packed my computer- on which I had saved all of my emergency information- I’d forgotten to turn it off and it, therefore, had died on the airplane. Conclusion: I was stranded.

What followed would be extremely complicated to explain, but the bottom line is that 2 hours, 10 secret suppressions of panic attacks and countless friendships with strangers later, I made friends with a girl who was friends with a guy who worked in information and just happened to be friends with someone who worked at Veritas University where I was headed. The man he called coincidentally works not only at the school I was looking for but in the smallest office on campus which coordinates everything for the independent students (which I am) and came to get me 25 minutes later. I’ll be honest; when he got there I couldn’t help but wonder if I was being an idiot for climbing in some strangers van in another country who spoke no English at all. It occurred to me as I sat in the front seat watching him load my suitcase in the trunk through the rear view mirror that for all I knew they were collaborating for some kind of human trafficking business and I’d crawled right into the trap saying “thank you”. But at that point there wasn’t much I could do, so after assessing my surroundings, determining that the only nearby object that could possibly be of use to me in a struggle was a pen half jammed in the seat cushions which would be most wisely implemented in the throat as I would most likely have time for only one strike and then make a run for who knows where, I resigned myself to the possibility I was making a mistake on the basis that I was absolutely sure this was the most real adventure I’d ever had. Twenty minutes later I was making broken conversation with Victor, the driver, in Spanish and feeling unbelievably guilty for having imagined stabbing him since he turned out to be an adorable little man who loves bragging about his daughters and spent half the drive on the phone correcting the details I would have had to fix by coming unexpectedly. My Host family had been expecting me the night before and assumed I had dropped out of the program when I didn’t show up so when I finally arrived at the house with Victor they weren’t home. Victor took me a block down the street to Guiselle’s house who hosts students as well to wait until they got home from church. Guiselle already had a student there named Kelsey Moore. After talking for an hour or so we figured out that since we had the same last name the school had sent our flight information to the wrong houses because she had gotten there the night before, had no one to pick her up, and learned after taking a taxi to their house that her family had expected her on Sunday afternoon. Both of us had been stressed by all the complications, but it all turned out for the better because Kelsey’s luggage had been lost and we just happened to be the exact same size in everything so I left her some clothes and razors etc. and we both had a friend to walk to school with the next day. More than that, we are both here as independents and were placed in the same exact class for intermediate one- which is actually saying something because they have about five classes for each level to keep the classes as small as possible (we have only nine in ours).

Luckily, Kelsey got her luggage back after only three or four days and we know we can borrow clothes whenever we want. So here she is on her first day back in her own clothes:

I don’t think anything’s made me feel more competent than being more isolated and helpless than I’ve ever been in my life- lost in another country with no phone, no address, no familiar human anywhere within reach- and managing not only to solve the problem on my own but help someone with a worse problem along the way.
…for this and many other reasons I haven’t even had the chance to write about yet, this was absolutely worth fighting for through the last 12 months of my life.``

No Soy de Aqui...

2009-01-06T20:23:00.000-08:00

For those of you who are yet uninformed, I am presently studying in the beautiful capital city of Costa Rica, San Jose.

However brief my experience has been so far, I already am certain that this is the most glorious adventure of my life as of now- and I still have so much time left!! I'd love to recount the nightmare of arriving at the airport, but I have the feeling that story will require a separate blog of its own... and I'm just getting things going right now anyway...

This is what I’ve learned in my first 24 hours abroad in Latin America:

1) I no longer wonder where all the beautiful men on earth have been hiding out.
2) I no longer wonder where the most gloriously hospitable families in the world live
3) I’m much more comfortable with my Spanish than I expected to be, but not at all where I wish I was
4) Costa Ricans greet each other with a kiss on the cheek if the greeters include one or more female- men greet with a handshake because it is a high contact culture
5) “Tico” is used to refer to Costa Ricans, but I’m not sure if they use it for any other nationality of Latino
6) Ticos virtually never say “no” to anything… only a very unenthusiastic “yes” which must be politely interpreted as a “no”
7) Addresses in this country involve nearly no numbers. You write something like “400 meters south of the old post office” (which may or may not be a post office anymore) on a letter and- by some miracle I could never understand- it gets there. That’s how you direct the taxi drivers as well. There are very few streets with names and very few houses with numbers, but even those that have them are never used.
8) Taxi drivers are creepy
9) Costa Rican men are beautiful
10) Costa Rican men are VERY beautiful

My host family consists of my Tico mama, Mariam, and her daughter, Marcela (and son, Javier, who visits in the evenings for dinner). The only one I have a picture of right now is Mariam:

They’re the most beautiful and generous family I’ve ever met! Marcela speaks nearly no English though she understands it very well- she and Javier both speak very slowly and evenly which makes them much easier to follow than most, though I suspect it’s intentional which I appreciate very much. Mariam works to help me understand as well but has a bit thicker accent which, though slightly harder to understand, is good for me to hear for pronunciation practice. She gave me a welcome present with which I enjoy the famous Costa Rican coffee on a daily basis:

I felt terrible because I had every intention of bringing my family a thank you gift and then completely forgot. But I think it’ll be better this way because I can get to know them and what they like and then leave a good bye present they'll actually enjoy.

This is my room and I’ll get more pictures of my school and family soon.

Anyway, if you're checking in you must care about me, so I probably love and/or miss you.

Wish me luck in my adventures!

For now..... Hasta luego!

The MISH Award

2008-09-10T11:14:00.000-07:00

Dear cafeteria staff,

Congratulations! You have just been nominated the Most Inconvenient School of Human of the year! While we’re sure you would be more than proud to accept such a recognition, we suggest you don’t get your hopes up too high as you’ll be hard pressed to beat out all those construction workers who stand in 5 of the 6 lanes available on heavily travelled roads holding cans of beer and signs that don’t seem remotely applicable to the work that isn’t going on behind the haphazardly scattered cones.

But in the spirit of optimism, we would still like to extend this gesture to you who provide us with the irreplaceable services such as the solution to the problems which are inevitably caused by our rule that you are not allowed to type your ID number into the ready and willing computer system at the front desk of the cafeteria in the event that you do not have your student identification card to be scanned as proof that you already paid 1*&^00 dollars for a meal plan. Let us take a moment to celebrate the systems they have set in place to help us under such circumstances.

When you are standing in the cafeteria 20 minutes before you have to be at work and realize that you have forgotten your wallet and therefore cannot scan your ID card to get in and eat, have no fear. They have provided us with the ingenious option of going to the conference services office where you are permitted to get a temporary ID card on which your ID number will be written so that the cafeteria attendant may THEN type it into the computer. This temporary ID may be received in exchange for that $1 bill which is comfortably situated next to your ID card in your wallet which you don’t have with you and do not have the time to retrieve as that would require you to hike down the ravine to the building you live in -whose location was chosen by last year’s winner of the Most Inconvenient School of Human Award- and then all the way back up, at which point you will have approximately 35 seconds to forage through the ill-prepared meal selection composed of highly volatile materials, eat it, and get to work. What a genius way to accommodate the rushed and frenzied lifestyle of a college student! And to top it all off, no food is allowed to leave the cafeteria at any time to see that students who haven’t the time for lunch at all cannot spend their time in class or at work eating away. Genius I tell you!

We applaud you and your tireless efforts to receive this award which have not gone unnoticed!

Best of luck to you in your endeavor!

The MISH Award Foundation

The Tally (AKA a true story about my most recent airport nightmare)

2008-08-16T13:25:00.000-07:00

It had been a very long morning. No, a very long day. You could say it began around midnight when she’d finally finished packing 2 weeks worth of essentials- which, apparently, weighs 35 lbs.- and was now ending as she sat buckling her seatbelt on flight 745 thinking caustically to herself what a joke it is to wear seatbelts on a vehicle 5000 miles in the air which is carrying 900 lbs. of very explosive fuel and 150 very flammable passengers. What a comfort that in the even of a crash you are guaranteed to keep track of your seat. Exhausted as she was from her 2-3 hours of restless sleep, she was not too tired to smile quietly to herself upon remembering the sort of mental roulette she had played during the few hours between these points.

Upon arriving at the airport in the pitch black of 5:30 AM, she had happened upon an impeccable opportunity to really weigh out the comparative intelligence of man and machine as she battled and lost to three separate machines four times each before going to a desk to check in and see why her reservation had seemingly evaporated. 12 points to machines. Fifteen minutes later the very sweet southern lady at the desk finally wrapped her mind around the problem being presented to her. 1 point to man. 45 minutes, 3 phone calls, 12 re-explanations of the problem, 7 corrections of misunderstandings of the problem, 3 computers, and 4 employees later they had reached a conclusion: this was a very complicated problem. 1 point to each of the four employees for stating the obvious = 4 points to man. 1 point to every five minutes the desk clock proved more reliable than anyone using it = 12 points to machines. 15 points to machines for the 3 phones which all operated correctly, 3 points to man for those on the other line who answered them, and 7 points to machines for the conveyor belt which faithfully carried luggage past with out hesitating the whole time. All things considered, the count was at: man-8 machine-46.

Caught in the perplexing state of both being unable to board her airplane and knowing the presently threateningly high score of machine intelligence, she frantically took matters into her own hands. Looking down just long enough to channel all unsettled emotions into whatever cavity of the brain controls sadness, she then raised her head allowing 2 solitary tears to run from 2 hopeless eyes and said woefully, “But my only sister is getting married tonight.” Gaping mouths were the pitiful response and suddenly 3 more authority figures became accessible to solve the problem. 5 points to man for human sympathy. 10 points to machines for the 2 high-powered computers used to solve everything. 15 minutes and 6 more helpless dabs of dewy eyes later, she was holding a new boarding pass. 100 points to man for sheer theatrical brilliance. And now, sitting in her window seat after having been specifically promised one on the aisle, she looks over the final tally scrawled out on a complimentary Delta napkin and realizes that she has just rescued humanity.

Man: 113
Machine: 56

It was all worth it.

Sometimes "Can't"s are better than "Can"s

2008-07-15T08:20:00.000-07:00

There is a time in everyone’s life at which point they must accept that there are certain things for which they simply were not made to do. In fact, I believe there are several of these moments beginning with obvious realizations such as “I am five feet tall, therefore, I shall never be a basket ball player or be cast as the giant in “Jack and the Bean Stock” unless all of the other actors are under seven.” But later one is led to make less obvious but still not so difficult realizations about their own incapacities such as, “I don’t enjoy mathematics in the least, therefore, I should never be able to support myself in professions such as accounting because I should be far too miserable to continue showing up to the office.’ I think these levels of self assessment are nearly always reached, however, there is a next step which we are not all lucky enough to remember because it requires a much more intentional approach than mere natural observations.

I have been meditating lately on the innumerable things I want. Over the years I’ve acquired an interest in so many different things that it has been very complicated to decide what to do. Each of the things I’m interested in require focused attention to become skilled at them but since I have never been able to narrow this long list of interests down, I have found myself dabbling in any one or several of them at a time without ever really learning one of them well. And so I have arrived at that far more difficult third stage of assessing ones own inabilities and such and so far the result of this period of meditation has been three lists. One list of the things I can do well but do not enjoy at all which can be immediately eliminated from my future, a second list of things I enjoy immensely but simply don’t have enough natural aptitude for, and a third- which is by far the shortest- that lists the handful of things which I both enjoy profoundly and have a sort of intrinsic capability for. (I once knew a friend who called this the “x-factor” referring to a natural gifting or capability). In my mind it makes the most sense to focus my endeavors for the future on these things because I still have boundless room to grow in those few areas.

Strange as it may sound, I have never been so relieved to discover that I am not good enough at so many things at once. It is a good feeling to know one’s own capabilities and limitations even when the limitations are by far the greater majority. And with these limitations in mind, I can at last rule out some options for my future. So the world will be pleased to know that I have officially resigned my hopes of becoming a murderer, scavenger, or taxidermist.

(…just seeing if you would finish reading this… ;)

"So much for that..."

2008-06-27T09:06:00.000-07:00

There is a common occurrence in the life of a casual writer which I like to call a “so much for that” moment. At such times aspiring authors begin with a fresh idea having all the enthusiasm in the world only to discover that this idea was not meant to be seen through to completion.

This is one of those times.

As somewhat of an amateur writer I was riveted with the initial idea for this short story, though I quickly discovered that it really couldn’t go anywhere. For that reason, I suspect I shall never finish it and have been forced to respond by simply sitting back from my keyboard and sighing, “Well, so much for that.”

But because I like the idea I began with and have access to the internet I can at least give myself credit here for having though of something clever in the first place even though I lack the creative energy to complete it.

The idea is that i- or, rather, the narrator- am describing having not been born. By this I don’t mean being in the womb but actually not existing yet. You might like to call it the “twinkle-in-the-eye” stage of humanity. As something of a draft title I’ve been calling this permanently incomplete story “Before I Was”. Anyway, this is the introductory paragraph:

“Caught in that inconceivable space between “unthought-of” and “I am”, I watched or rather seemed to know, the happenings of the family which would soon be my own. How soon I could not know, but the very vapor of my awareness was cause enough to tell that my coming was certain. There was no anxiousness, no discomfort, no impatience in that immeasurable time when time itself went unknown and unmeasured, but I was sure that I should love to be. All was peaceful patience for me as I considered the comings and goings I would one day take part in, but regardless, I could not help but dread my own gestation. There was no telling what it would be like before having experienced it oneself, but it sounded frightfully drawn out. Although, I reconsidered in my immaterial self, to experience anything must be lovely."

As I’m sure you’ve already guessed, the problem here is that not much can happen in this “twinkle-in-the-eye” stage of life (or maybe “pre-life”?) but I had some vague ideas such as the first impression of ones mother…?:

“In my indistinct self I could distinctly make out her lips all full of smiles saved up for me. I discerned her eyes- they were bright with shimmers and wondered if one of them might be myself. And in some way yet unknown to me I overheard her voice. I supposed you would call such a voice “warm” -for though I couldn’t say with any certainty that I understood the idea of warmth (or, for that matter, “say” anything at all), some sensation of thought affirmed to me that anything which sounded so comfortable must be warm.
“You know,” mother was saying, “I don’t think we’ll ever stop hoping for a little boy.”
Boy? I considered. A boy did she say? I hadn’t any idea what “boy” was but it certainly didn’t sound like me. It seemed unlikely however, that I should know better than my own mother. Or perhaps there had been some mistake and this mother was supposed to have a boy and belong to someone else. Oh my, they must be mistaken! But could such a mistake be corrected?”

Anyway, I’m obviously never going to take this anywhere so I’m posting it in full expectation that if anyone even makes it to the end of this blog they will respond by promptly switching off their computer and saying, “Well, so much for that.”

And I give you full permission to do so….

Here's to hearts

2008-06-22T19:34:00.000-07:00

Curse you, anxiety.

It is so inconvenient that every bodily response to stress is exactly what will be least helpful under the circumstances. What about the human biology is convinced that an unbelievable rise in blood pressure will be useful when your mind is full to capacity?

Useless, useless, useless….

The last thing I need when trying to clear my head of chaos is the deafening sound of my own accelerated heart rate. Though it wouldn’t be surprising that my heart purposefully takes advantage of any small reason to test itself since this is likely the most exercise it gets all year. …sad but true… and, despite such frustrations, our hearts really don’t ever get the recognition they deserve.

Dear heart,
My sincerest apologies for overlooking you. I really am most grateful for the mechanism that you are and would be frightfully disappointed if you were to seek employment elsewhere. All the same, I find it most thoughtless of you to race out of control when I most need to concentrate or am pressed for time to escape something fearful or unable to find the words to impress someone by whom I am most impressed. Consequently, I am formally appealing to you to take greater caution in doing what you do best.
Yours ect.
Ashley

Welcome... my REAL first blog.

2008-05-13T19:35:00.000-07:00

Welcome.
This, I am proud to announce, is the very first of many actual blogs to be recorded in this space which bears my name as author and it is a great relief. My interpersonal communications class- and, consequently, my entire freshman year of college- has now been completed and I am free to use this region of virtual existence as I please.

I have considered before the possibility of creating a blog, but never pursued it. I suppose I felt it a little conceited to assume that anyone would want to read anything I think and say just because I said it in the form of a blog, but as it was required to use one for that class I think I won’t let this opportunity go to waste now that I’ve got it all set up.

I’m home for the summer. And I’ve never earned a break more in my life. But, as everyone here’s still in work or school all day and I haven’t found a job yet, the amount of time left to my disposal is overwhelming. My art box which, after an entire school year in hibernation, was probably considering writing a will when I finally opened it 5 days ago and I don’t think I’ve ever sharpened pencils so many times in one week. It’s a good feeling and one I’ve been missing to have no place to walk in my bedroom because of the unending heaps of paper and erasers and various tools that would destroy the carpet if accidentally stepped on. I even broke out my guitar (Cedric) and old sheet music to brush up. I’m not getting far yet, but I’ve got time, that’s for sure.

Today I drew, played, sang, cooked, read and slept. That’s about all. I certainly believe I’ve earned the relaxation, but I don’t know how anyone could live their whole life that way. Especially not by themselves. I really can’t wait to start working and doing things that have purpose beyond filling up my day. Such as writing a blog that I already know no one will read. But then, I don’t think I’m really writing this for anyone else. I think it’s me that needs to project my thoughts into something else. Like a pensive. Just to relieve the growing tension in my mind. And so, in that respect, I suppose I’ve served my purpose here.
Good night.

The Red Herring: our favorite fallacy

2008-04-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

I believe that of all the logical fallacies this is the one with which I am most familiar. I spent a period of time last year studying them because I was curious and I had a class that wasn’t teaching me much for a period of time so I would read about it. The reason this particular fallacy is so distinguished to me is that it is more common in our universe than any of the others. Alright, that wasn’t in the book I read, but if I ever were to write a book about logic (which I am seriously considering- the world needs it!) I would mention that I am convinced of this fact.

The red herring fallacy may take many forms, but the goal is the same: distract the other person from the actual problem at hand. This fallacy got its name from the historical use of red herring fish (or maybe it was just a part of the fish? I don’t remember the details) in shark hunting. Fishermen would employ the fish to distract and lead sharks away from noticing the trap/net/whatever they used to catch and kill them so that they wouldn’t see it coming and could be caught. Now in the context of arguments, the person applying this fallacy usually doesn’t actually trap the other because they are already working against a logical resolution, but the main idea is to inhibit the progress of the other person’s argument by throwing out something completely unrelated to the issue at hand.

The interesting thing is that in order to use this fallacy one must nearly always employ another fallacy because the other person will only be drawn off their point if given a reason to. For example, I’ve noticed that the absolute most commonly used fallacy in this case (as far as my experience proves) is the “appeal to pity” or more specifically, “appeal to emotion”. For instance, if I accuse my friend of lying to me and want to work it out so we know what actually happened and they respond by accusing me of being unreliable, they are trying to make me upset by the attack (appeal to emotion) to distract me from the original problem of mistrust (red herring), that is a red herring fallacy by means of appeal to emotion. I think that spells it out pretty obviously.

The point is that this happens to me and everyone I know multiple times a day. It irritates me to no end that no one realizes how irrational it all is that they can’t just take care of one problem at a time. Because most of the time the accusation being used to distract is entirely valid and should be addressed, but not in that context. No one will ever get anywhere by throwing accusations back and forth like some kind of senseless, angry game of blame-tennis.
That’s all.

Class Connections

2008-04-06T13:31:00.000-07:00

Something I’ve noticed since the start of this course is that a great deal of my analyzing
of literature and film consists of interpersonal principles that I had no names for until we studied them. I’ve been picking away at two literary-critique-type writing assignments and it seems to me that every good literature paper must contain some form or element of philosophy and interpersonal communication principles; philosophy to sort out aspects of truth and ethics, and interpersonal communication principles to discern behavior patterns caused by good and bad communication methods. Because that’s what literature’s for isn’t it? I mean, it is for entertainment in part, but to such a great degree we use stories as a scope through which to view the world or ideas or questions we cannot answer without a controlled example. I suppose it does a great deal of other things too, but for the sake of argument… the point is that I like having my classes connect to each other. Not terribly philosophical, but there you have it.

Movie Project

2008-04-02T16:53:00.000-07:00

I’ve really enjoyed watching our class give these presentations. It is so interesting to demonstrate the communicational principles we’ve been learning through film. I was really curious what everyone was going to use because I don’t think anybody remembered to post their decisions in their blogs like we were supposed to. It seemed to me that in the course of watching the presentations we are learning a lot about what each other has learned in the past few months because everyone chooses something that they understand well to teach about. There are a lot of things I totally forgot about discussing earlier in the semester that people have talked about and it is working like the most painless review method I’ve ever used. I think this will be really helpful.

Demand-Withdraw Pattern

2008-03-26T19:05:00.000-07:00

Over this last weekend my sister and I watched a whole season of a random tv show we found on the internet. You may be surprised to hear that, as uninteresting as that sounds, we actually had a blast. One of our favorite things to do together is watch things and make fun of them. we often spend the entire time we watch a movie tearing it apart in every area from the cast to the story to the script and then leave the theatre having a serious conversation about how much it impacted us. People who don’t know us well are often confused by this- which we don’t blame them for. But we can’t help mocking things. It’s just a part of how our relationship/family operates. I’m sure I could center an entire communicational study on that dynamic alone- and I suspect I’ll devote an entire blog to it before long- but that isn’t the purpose of this one.

The point is that we were making fun, as usual, of a certain episode about a journalist who was writing a column on an author of multiple “how to pick up women” sorts of books. Needless to say the interviews were already hilarious without our supplementary commentary, but I began to notice as we were jeering at the author’s method of insulting women to make them want you I had heard this principle before. Our text book called it the “demand-withdraw pattern” which we saw demonstrated in “The Tao of Steven.” I found it interesting to look at the differences in these two pop culture applications of it. In the movie we watched in class Steven says to appear disinterested, be excellent in the woman’s presence, and then retreat. This fictional writer demonstrated his technique by telling a girl walking by with a pastry, “You know, that is so awesome that you’re not at all concerned about what that doughnut’s gonna do to your hips,” and then ignoring her until she’d practically thrown herself in his arms. Obviously both of these examples are extremely exaggerated and unrealistic, but I did find it funny that the common element was the “retreat” or “withdraw” which causes greater demand.

A Picture Worth at Least 2 Paragraphs...

2008-03-16T20:25:00.000-07:00

I stumbled across this picture on the internet on accident and I really had to think about it. I was reminded of our recent class discussions about non-verbal communication. So much is said and understood by our visual perceptions. Things like paralanguage which can be distinguished by inflection are largely reinforced by facial expressions and posture. The same thing may be said by two people but if one of them rolls their eyes it takes on a whole different meaning.

I suppose, in this sense, this picture doesn’t really sum up non-verbal communication quite right, as much more is taken in by the eyes than spoken by them. Perhaps it would be more appropriate for the eyes to be replaced by ears than lips. But if the Bible was correct in saying (and I would like to believe it always is) that our eyes are the windows to our souls, it follows that they can communicate a great deal about the very core of our being. I could go on, but if a picture is really worth a thousand words I don’t have the energy to arrange them all just now, so here is the picture available for your own reflections.

Sugar-Coated

2008-03-08T11:06:00.000-08:00

Honesty is a curious thing. If lying by omission is still a lie then nearly every conversation could be considered dishonest. It is impossible to relate every single individual detail of every day to anyone in order to avoid lying by excluding truths, which is why I believe that in most cases when someone says, “I just want you to be honest with me,” what they really want is for you to be direct.

Lately I’ve found and unexpected virtue in directness. Being an extremely non-confrontational person, I avoid conflict at almost any and all costs. I hate being the one to call people out on things and it has gotten me in to trouble more than once. Because I value maintaining the relationship above being assertive about a problem, I often end up making all sorts of excuses for other people’s behavior in order not to sound condescending or angry. The problem is that no relationship can realistically be maintained without addressing conflicts or saying what we think at some point. Getting too caught up in sugar-coating your opinions or the facts about a situation forces you to do a lot of back-peddling when you finally decide to be direct. I’ve been increasingly reassured that as I approach things directly it never seems to produce the disastrous effects I imagined. Thus far it hasn’t resulted in the destruction of friendships but rather the swiftest resolves I’ve ever experienced. It is hard to explain how difficult it is for me to be direct or why, but I’m beginning to see it as one of the most valuable interpersonal skills I’ve ever intentionally developed. Because speaking the truth absolutely is an acquired skill. Well, maybe not for some people. But speaking the truth in love, I am certain is not a mechanism that anyone was born skilled with. Employing the cold hardness of truth and the warm attentiveness of love seems so difficult and conflicting. So are these two factors mutually exclusive? I would say not. But there is great difficulty balancing them all the same. There are those who find no trouble telling the truth about their thoughts, but they are far from doing so with love. I find, as may be guessed from how I’ve described myself above, that my difficulty lies in the opposite that I know only how to apply love and not truth. The reality is that we cannot depend upon sweet and encouraging words to make corrections. I find my few reproaches I have the nerve to give are shockingly ineffective because I vaguely refer to the problem at hand then lather it all up with gentile encouragements and compliments and the purpose is never served. We must train our lips to be just and kind.

Minor Conflicts

2008-03-06T13:26:00.000-08:00

So much a bout a conversation can be destroyed by differences in how we expect people to communicate. I have this friend that I get along extremely well with, but we are still getting to know each other. The other day we had our first really extended conversation and I realized afterwards that I must have done nearly 80% of the talking. As I considered why, it occurred to me that almost every thing he had said to me was a question. It made me start to think and I believe that perhaps the way he is used to getting to know someone is by asking each other questions- which would make sense. Except that I am used to the less direct approach which is a sort of system of turn-taking-self-disclosure. As one person tells about themselves, the other, in response, tells about their related experiences. I don’t think that either method is necessarily superior. They are both different and effective when both parties are using the same one, but in this case it probably appeared as if I was only interested in hearing the sound of my own voice. He continued to ask me questions- more than likely expecting me to ask him questions back- but instead I kept answering them expecting him to respond with his own opinion on the question. This hasn’t resulted in any kind of fight or anything like that(at least not yet) but it does make me wonder if I just sounded like I was dominating the conversation because I didn’t care to hear his thoughts. It’s crazy to think that even such a small conflict in conversational styles as that can cause a communicational problem.

Saving Face

2008-02-18T13:58:00.000-08:00

When first introduced to the principle of “saving face”, I believe nearly everyone realized that they had somehow understood it all along but never knew it had a name. It is a very familiar situation for people to find themselves in. Until we discussed it in class, however, it had never occurred to me that saving face for someone else is often equally as motivated by an often unacknowledged need to save face for yourself. Just the other day a friend of mine was moaning over her ankle which she had jammed earlier that day. (I haven’t asked anyone’s permission to tell stories about them so I’m avoiding the use of names) Another friend of mine heard that she was upset about it and came to help by elevating it saying this is often something that helps. My first friend agreed, but when the second friend left a little while later and my injured friend’s boyfriend offered to keep holing her leg up for her she immediately said, “Oh, no don’t! That made it ten times worse I was just saying it felt better so she wouldn’t feel bad.” At this point I considered that because she is such a sweet girl, she not only wanted to save face for our friend by making her think she had helped, but she was also saving face for herself because she is always so sweet to everyone that she wouldn’t want to appear unconcerned with other’s feelings by not saving face for them. Even in our American culture which places such great emphasis on the individual, it is frowned upon for you not to spare another person some embarrassment. But where the difference is between our culture’s approach to saving face and another culture that is less individualistic (at least in my personal theory), is that we seem to think it’s alright to tell others about a person’s mistake when they are no longer there. For instance, my friend spared another girl the embarrassment of knowing she was making matters worse while she was still in the room, but after she left she told us what had really happened. This makes me wonder if collectivist cultures would be more likely to continue saving face for that person even in their absence. That is something I would like to find out.

Communication: Indirect and Imperfect

2008-02-14T08:10:00.001-08:00

There are reasons why we cannot ever say exactly what we mean. We all want people to say what they mean and we want others to know exactly what we mean when we speak to them. I believe it can be agreed that this is a universal desire- to understand and be understood. But in all the centuries of humanity we have never perfected the craft and there are a lot of causes. For starters, language is comprised of words which are only symbols to represent other things- they are not the actual thoughts or feelings we are trying to express. Therefore, as symbols are not interpreted the same by all individuals, there is nearly no way to be sure our thoughts are getting across.

But there are other more delicate reasons why we cannot to say what we mean. This entire blog is the result of a train of thought set off by a conversation I observed between my friend and her boyfriend last night. It was her birthday and we were all going out to dinner to celebrate. On the way her boyfriend called and said he didn’t think he was coming. In a matter of minutes they were in a full fledged fight and she yelled, “Fine! Just stay at home! I don’t want you to come so don’t!” but we all knew it was of vital importance to her that he showed up. After several phone calls of varying levels of frustration, he ended up at dinner. Everything had blown over and we were having a laugh about the whole thing when he asked in exasperation, “Why don’t girls ever just say what they mean?! Why do you say you don’t want me to come when you do?” to which my friend answered, “I told you that I always mean the opposite of what I say.” But that isn’t what she meant either. “Why can’t you just tell me what you want?” he asked again. It occurred to me just then that in such situations it is impossible to say what you want because what she actually wanted was for him to decide on his own that he wanted to be with her- not because she or any other outside force had made him feel obligated to. By telling him, that would have made it impossible for him to do so.

It is an interesting thing to me how many situations there must be like this in which we don’t realize the real problem. Communicational errors in many cases can be corrected but what can we do about the delicate ones like this? I’m not sure there is much to be done about them.

Identity Scripts

2008-02-09T12:09:00.000-08:00

In our discussions of scripts I’ve been trying for some time to identify what activities have been “scripted” to me and my siblings by our parents. I was sure that we must have had something like that growing up but I could never think of anything until I realized that I was only searching for affirmative commands- for instance, “this family respects tradition”. I was looking for things that they told us we are to do, but as I considered further, I realized that most of my family’s scripts are in the form of things that we do not do. My parents most often taught us these things indirectly, but they are all things like “We do not tell lies” or “this family never mistreats other people” and other such motherly “don’ts” that children hear all the time but not necessarily delivered with the same fervor as that of my mom and dad. To be honest, the only real script I can think of that wasn’t in the “we don’t do this” form is “We are Christians” –which it seems was the one from which all other scripts stemmed. That is the real reason that we don’t skip church or lie or break the law or treat adults disrespectfully or hurt our siblings or do any of those other untouchable things. “We are to be a good reflection of the God who saved us.” So I suppose it all really boils down to that. Poor things would have saved themselves a lot of breath if they’d just said that all along… ;)

Cultural Context

2008-02-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

As I continue through this course I’ve been noticing more and more how often I confuse the notes I’ve taken in anthropology class with the notes I’ve taken in interpersonal communications. It is so interesting to me how incredibly interwoven these two subjects are. Anthropology is a shockingly broad field of study and so, for the sake of simplicity, is broken into four major categories- one of which is entirely dedicated to anthropological linguistics. I thought at first that someone must have over-estimated the influence of culture on language and vice versa until I thought harder about the fact that every culture in the entire world uses some means of communication which is not only effected but molded and structured by its cultural context.

In studying this section on perception I began to think about how every other factor aside from culture was also affected by culture. The culture of your social class often effects how developed your cognitive abilities are based on the level and quality of education you’ve received. This also affects what roles we play in society or as a member of a family because a much lower class family may depend more upon the income of the children than an upper or middle class family. Also the culture affects how people in your social class are treated which is a form of the generalized other that changes our views of ourselves. Therefore, all other elements are formed by culture.

Learning things like this is a great deal of why I want so badly to go into anthropology.

Hiden Fingerprints

2008-02-05T12:22:00.000-08:00

The section on attribution was of particular interest to me. After reading about the self-serving bias the term seemed to linger in my mind as I went about my business with friends throughout the evening and I began to notice that people seem always to think or at least profess themselves to be a great deal more humble than they are. This is not necessarily a problem of pride in most cases. But out of what I would expect must be fulfillment of the expectation of society (which is to speak more lowly of yourself than you might otherwise) we nearly never say anything too positive about ourselves. However, as I remember it, of all the conversations I’ve had with fellow students about having failed classes or tests- and there have been many- I can hardly recall one in which the person confessed the blame for it to be their own. I myself almost without exception avoid attributing my failures on my own irresponsibility or inadequacy. It seems to me that in many senses this shows a much healthier self-image than is usually expressed.

It is an interesting thing to me that if we all seem to have this built-in sense of self-worth we feel the need to counter-act it. It is understandable that an over-developed version of this would be seen as a threat because every form of evil seems ultimately to stem back to selfishness (for what truly ungodly act was ever motivated by anything but self-gratification?) which is the inevitable byproduct of an overgrown self-esteem. In fact, you might call selfishness self-adoration in its full grown form. So this, we may understand is worth preventing. But we know that the opposite, self-distain, when full grown is only pride as well because you are still preoccupied with yourself just in a negative light. This can be equally as destructive but in entirely different ways.

So where is the balance? Lord knows we’re nowhere near understanding that. But we can be sure that He also is the only one who can set our hearts right. On that, at least, we can rely. But , in the meantime, I suppose that if we are of such great value to Him, it is not so unbelievable that he should place in our hearts some sort of mechanism which tells us we are worth more than what a few failures may say about us- for whether we know God’s love or not, we bear his finger prints.

Personality Test

2008-01-31T08:20:00.001-08:00

I have no idea how many versions of personality and temperament tests there are in circulation these days, but apparently the one most recently declared to be current and reliable is the “NEO 5-factor inventory profile”. After having completed it as a class assignment we interpreted the results and I found my scores to be as follows:

Neuroticism (or rather, “emotionality”): Average
Extroversion: Average
Openness to Experience: Very High
Agreeableness: Very High
Conscientiousness (organization/drivenness): Very Low

At first I was surprised at some of these, but the longer I looked at them and began to understand the meanings of the actual character traits in question, the more I felt like this was perhaps the most precise analysis I’ve ever found. One of the most important things we discussed about the results was that you have got to keep in mind that you are not defined by one specific characteristic, but each of them interacts with the others to create your individual personality. For instance, I could look at these and see myself as someone extremely open to new experiences. If that was all I looked at though, I would expect myself to be extremely rash and spontaneous and constantly trying anything just for the sake of saying I did. However, I only scored average on extroversion which is the highest I’ve ever scored in that area. I already know I am introverted and need to consistently have time by myself in order to mentally recharge. I also scored high in agreeableness and am, therefore, very careful of other people’s feelings and opinions. Having combined these, it makes a lot more sense to me that my introversion and need for harmony doesn’t cancel out my love for new experiences or vice versa.

A small problem

2008-01-28T07:04:00.000-08:00

I have this problem that whenever I am telling a story or explaining something I want everyone to know exactly what I mean. To a large degree, I think this is because I tend view everything that happens through the scope of what it feels like. The English language is not the most accommodating to explain less-than-concrete things, so I find it takes a great deal more words for me to tell a story than it does for a lot of other people. The problem here is that most people don’t feel it necessary to know every miniscule detail of the situation before they can catch the weight of what it meant to me. Very small pieces of background information, to me, are necessary particulars which set the stage for my frame of mind at the time of the actual occurrence I am explaining. However, the majority of people in the world see this as an unnecessary information overload. For this reason, it seems that by trying to communicate perfectly I over-communicate and cause people to feel talked down to by re-explaining things five different ways. Over time, I have become conscious of this problem and now make great efforts to correct it. Whenever I write a story or a letter I now find myself in this endless mind-battle trying to decide which elements are needed to get my thoughts across and which are useful only to me. It is an exhausting struggle, but the truth is it is equally as exhausting when I do write or say anything in the all-elements-included sort of way I feel so drawn to. In that light, it is to my own benefit as well for me to learn how to abbreviate, but it is a difficult process when I genuinely feel that every word is important. It’s a funny thing to think about because by attempting to achieve perfect communication I often cause miscommunication. I am trying to say “this is exactly what happened” but am being perceived as saying “you’re too thick to understand this unless I’m extremely clear and specific” or “I am incapable of brevity”.
...This is only one of many reminders to me that flawless communication is impossible.

Works of Intricacy

2008-01-21T14:31:00.000-08:00

I once read a description by an ancient philosopher of the delicate balance of needs that is created in human interaction. He said that it is like a colony of porcupines living in the arctic. They need to stay huddled close together to keep warm enough to survive, but if they move too close, they wound each other with their spines. I found this idea in a book by a linguist named Deborah Tannen about conversational styles. It was being used as a depiction of the dichotomy of two conflicting but irrevocable human needs which are the need for involvement, and the need for independence. We were created to function as members of families and societies and cultures, and yet we are equally as intended by God to be individuals (this book was not written from a Christian perspective, but the work of God is apparent in any such principle). Ever since my discovery of it, I have been enthralled by observing the tension created by this conflict at work within us -because every accommodation that is made for either of these needs necessarily breaches the comfort of the other need. Dr. Tannen describes this tension to be the cause of the majority of miscommunications in the perception of what is “polite” because you may be polite to someone by showing involvement with them, or by respecting their independence. Based off of which type of politeness is expected, you may be perceived as rude. I hear this principle proving itself in ordinary stories from myself or others multiple times every single day. It is such a delicate balance and, therefore, is nearly impossible to find. The more I notice it the more I begin to remember how incredibly intricate is the work of our impossibly wondrous God. Why in heavens name would he put so much detail into the minute interchanges of words and glances which do not effect his over-all plan? I believe that creation could have got along just fine without all the details of unimportant things like this. But we were made in the image of God. The God. The I am. Could we possibly have expected our design to be simple with such a model? It would be absurd.

An introduction...

2008-01-16T13:45:00.000-08:00

I am a small person. Not shockingly so, like Thumbelina, or to such an extreme that demands attention wherever I go. It does not have a crippling effect on my life as it might on others who are by far smaller than is accommodated for by modern society (though I rarely if ever remove objects from my top shelves or cabinets as that necessitates the use of 12 inch salad tongs to reach them). But a curious fact about being five feet tall is how unusually familiar one becomes with the shape of the underside of the chins of people over 5’9”. I have spent a great deal of conversations with such people merely puzzling over whether there is a name for this particular region of the human head. I would invent a title for it myself, however my thought process never quite makes it to that point before I am reminded by the silence of the nearly-six-feet-tall speaker before me that I am in a conversation and am now expected to respond. These moments nearly always result in a cacophony of guilty and frenzied thoughts trying to settle upon a reply which would not entirely give away the fact that I have not been listening. I honestly do feel guilty for ignoring people solely out of the distraction created by differences in size. You know, it never quite feels right to blame my inattentiveness on my height, but I can think of no better explanation.