Manuel and I went to Colonia yesterday. It was a 70s, clear skies day, a perfect day for a visa run. We rented a pair of rickety bikes -- Manuel's was gray because he likes things that are not so black and white, and mine was pink because I'm a girl -- and rode along the water to the old dilapidated bullfighting ring that I first visited about this time 2 years ago. The holes in the fence surrounding it that we'd climbed through then have since been patched, and we didn't go in. Across the street, there was a sign nailed to a tree that said "antiguedades," but there weren't any antiques for sale.
On the way back, we had to climb a hill. It wasn't a very big hill, but it left me winded, and I remember thinking, "How the hell did I ever make it over the Rockies?" But it was all downhill after that, which is a good thing when you're on a bicycle.
Back in town, we didn't go to the historical district, where there's a lighthouse built inside the ruins of an old convent, a tree growing out of the wall of a 17th century house, a museum with a whale skeleton. After all, there's only so many times you can look at Uruguay's oldest church without it getting old. I've been there before, and yesterday I just wasn't in the mood for time traveling or taking black and white pictures of shadows on cobblestones.
What I was in the mood for (as was Manuel) was drinking beer in a plaza, and that's what we did for the rest of the afternoon, until it was time to return the bikes and head back to Buenos Aires for another 90 days.
By the town's main plaza, there was a cart selling fried food and drinks (including very cold beer), with some plastic tables on the sidewalk. We picked a table in the sun and leaned our bikes against a nearby tree. Manuel asked an old man at another table if the bikes would be ok like that, unlocked. "No pasa nada," the old man assured us. "Esto es Colonia." He informed us that, in Colonia, people didn't bother stealing old bikes and, after a pause, added "Aca roban los bancos," which either means that they rob banks or that they steal benches. We didn't clarify.
As one beer turned into 4 beers (we could pay with Argentine pesos, but we only had a 50 and, since they couldn't give us change in Argentine pesos, we decided it was better just to spend the whole 50 on beer rather than accumulate a bunch of Uruguayan pesos), our conversation wandered all over the place. At one point, Manuel administered a makeshift IQ test to me that was meant to resemble one that he'd been using in one of his psychology classes (it was all about finding patterns, and I found a lot of patterns, but not the right ones). In another moment, we were critiquing Argentine infrastructure.
It started with me teaching Manuel what the word "gutter" meant. I don't remember how it came up. Maybe I was trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog to save it from a life in the gutter. This is a safe bet, as I am often trying to convince him that we should adopt a dog. Other arguments have included "because they're cute" and "because I want one."
"What's a gutter?" he asked.
"Like, I don't know, maybe where they find you after the mafia kills you," I said.
"I don't think we really have a mafia in Argentina," he said. "It takes too much organization. We only have disorganized crime here."
I laughed and thought about another way to explain the essence of a gutter. "Ok, then, what the water from the street goes into."
"Ah, that sounds like something else you need organization for."
Sometimes it's hard for me to believe that I've been here for 2 years. I like it here, but it can also be frustrating. Argentina, like Colonia, while charming enough, is a little backwards in certain ways. There are some things that I don't think I'll ever fully get used to, like streets that flood and cars that treat you more like targets than obstacles at intersections and inflation rates that make me think of the Weimar Republic (where, so they say, if you went to a bar planning on drinking two glasses of beer, it would behoove you to order them both at the same time because if you waited to order the second one until you'd finished the first one, the price would have already gone up).
Some things, though, have become routine, like going back to Uruguay, over and over and over again. How many times, I wonder, does one have to renew her "temporary" status in a place before she becomes permanent?
Monday, September 27, 2010
Monday, August 9, 2010
Like Toilets that Flush Backwards
My grandmother Helen is pretty well-known among a certain circle of New York and Cleveland Jews and members of our family for sending people random junk in the mail. Often it is a newspaper clipping, her perception of your interest in which is not always clear. If you are lucky, she has scribbled an explanation on the back of the envelope -- a New York Times review of a play, for example, might be accompanied with a note like this: "Tony Kushner was your Uncle Hugh's roommate at Columbia, but Tony was mean to Hughie because he wasn't a homosexual." But more often than not, there is no such note, and you are left to guess why she has sent you a page full of real estate listings in Crown Heights or an advertisement for the sociology department at the New School (the latter, you suspect, may have been instigated by that one time you mentioned sociolinguistics in passing).
When visiting her in East Hampton, my brother showed her a drawing of an anime character he had copied from a graphic novel, and a week later she sent him an invitation to the opening of an exhibition on American painting that had taken place six months earlier in California (my brother lives in Virginia). One time she sent me a used bra that was at least 4 sizes too big for me. And I'm pretty sure my cousin Rebecca once got a pair of pantyhose with a hole in them.
Sometimes she does send something useful, but often with strange ideas as to how you should use it. Not too long ago, she sent me a small rubber cosmetics bag with an assortment of sample-sized eyeshadows, lipsticks, and mascaras inside -- the kind you get sometimes as a free gift when you buy other makeup -- along with a note suggesting I use the bag as a clutch when I go out dancing at night.
Once in a while, though, a real gem arrives. Shortly before returning to Buenos Aires, I received a package from her that, along with a bunch of crap I didn't want, contained an old necklace of hers that I actually thought looked pretty cool. Now, I was a bit conflicted at first about wearing the necklace, as it just so happens that this necklace is made out of ivory, which, at least in theory, I am against. But, like, a vegan friend of mine who once reasoned that it was OK for him to wear leather as long as it was vintage (invoking a logic that was based more on fashion, I believe, than ethics), I decided that it was OK for me to wear the necklace because the poachers responsible for the necklace were probably long gone by now and, therefore, posed no threat to the lives of any current or future elephants.
Plus, this necklace has actual magical powers.
At first, I thought it was just a good luck necklace. I was, after all, wearing this necklace when I took my laptop to the Apple store in order to purchase a new battery and, instead of charging me 150 dollars, the guy working at the genius bar gave me the battery for free, presumably just to be nice (my warranty on the previous battery had run out a long time ago).
As an isolated incident, of course, this does not prove that my necklace has any magical powers. Perhaps a stranger had recently given the genius bar guy a free car and he was simply paying it forward. Maybe he was just in a good mood. Maybe it was actually my cleavage that had magical powers.
But I was also wearing this necklace when I boarded my plane back to Buenos Aires and no one was seated next to me, giving me extra room to stretch out and sleep comfortably on the overnight flight.
Clearly, this necklace of mine had magical powers. And up to this point, it seemed that these powers were exclusively good.
Unfortunately, like toilets that flush backwards, my necklace's powers appear to reverse on the other side of the equator. I was wearing the necklace when I got off the plane and Manuel's brother's car wouldn't start. I was still wearing the necklace when, after getting the car running, Martin slammed on the brakes on the way out of the airport parking lot. We didn't hit the car in front of us, but the bag with my laptop in it slid off the seat next to me and hit the floor pretty hard.
At this point, it should have become clear to me that this necklace had ceased to be the good luck charm like it had been in the northern hemisphere, but was rather proving to be somewhat of a curse. But I left the necklace on and was still wearing it when we got home and I tried to turn on my computer and it wouldn't start.
Then I wore it to the MacStation, where the tech support guy informed me that, unlike at genius bars, at MacStatons, you have to pay 150 pesos just to have them look at your computer.
And I even wore it when I went back to get the diagnosis and was informed that not only did I need a new hard drive and would probably lose most of my data (only some of which is backed up, of course -- thanks, necklace), it would also take over a month for the new hard drive to arrive.
To make matters worse, soon after I got back to Buenos Aires, the city suffered some of the coldest temperatures it has seen in years.
I took off the necklace.
When visiting her in East Hampton, my brother showed her a drawing of an anime character he had copied from a graphic novel, and a week later she sent him an invitation to the opening of an exhibition on American painting that had taken place six months earlier in California (my brother lives in Virginia). One time she sent me a used bra that was at least 4 sizes too big for me. And I'm pretty sure my cousin Rebecca once got a pair of pantyhose with a hole in them.
Sometimes she does send something useful, but often with strange ideas as to how you should use it. Not too long ago, she sent me a small rubber cosmetics bag with an assortment of sample-sized eyeshadows, lipsticks, and mascaras inside -- the kind you get sometimes as a free gift when you buy other makeup -- along with a note suggesting I use the bag as a clutch when I go out dancing at night.
Once in a while, though, a real gem arrives. Shortly before returning to Buenos Aires, I received a package from her that, along with a bunch of crap I didn't want, contained an old necklace of hers that I actually thought looked pretty cool. Now, I was a bit conflicted at first about wearing the necklace, as it just so happens that this necklace is made out of ivory, which, at least in theory, I am against. But, like, a vegan friend of mine who once reasoned that it was OK for him to wear leather as long as it was vintage (invoking a logic that was based more on fashion, I believe, than ethics), I decided that it was OK for me to wear the necklace because the poachers responsible for the necklace were probably long gone by now and, therefore, posed no threat to the lives of any current or future elephants.
Plus, this necklace has actual magical powers.
At first, I thought it was just a good luck necklace. I was, after all, wearing this necklace when I took my laptop to the Apple store in order to purchase a new battery and, instead of charging me 150 dollars, the guy working at the genius bar gave me the battery for free, presumably just to be nice (my warranty on the previous battery had run out a long time ago).
As an isolated incident, of course, this does not prove that my necklace has any magical powers. Perhaps a stranger had recently given the genius bar guy a free car and he was simply paying it forward. Maybe he was just in a good mood. Maybe it was actually my cleavage that had magical powers.
But I was also wearing this necklace when I boarded my plane back to Buenos Aires and no one was seated next to me, giving me extra room to stretch out and sleep comfortably on the overnight flight.
Clearly, this necklace of mine had magical powers. And up to this point, it seemed that these powers were exclusively good.
Unfortunately, like toilets that flush backwards, my necklace's powers appear to reverse on the other side of the equator. I was wearing the necklace when I got off the plane and Manuel's brother's car wouldn't start. I was still wearing the necklace when, after getting the car running, Martin slammed on the brakes on the way out of the airport parking lot. We didn't hit the car in front of us, but the bag with my laptop in it slid off the seat next to me and hit the floor pretty hard.
At this point, it should have become clear to me that this necklace had ceased to be the good luck charm like it had been in the northern hemisphere, but was rather proving to be somewhat of a curse. But I left the necklace on and was still wearing it when we got home and I tried to turn on my computer and it wouldn't start.
Then I wore it to the MacStation, where the tech support guy informed me that, unlike at genius bars, at MacStatons, you have to pay 150 pesos just to have them look at your computer.
And I even wore it when I went back to get the diagnosis and was informed that not only did I need a new hard drive and would probably lose most of my data (only some of which is backed up, of course -- thanks, necklace), it would also take over a month for the new hard drive to arrive.
To make matters worse, soon after I got back to Buenos Aires, the city suffered some of the coldest temperatures it has seen in years.
I took off the necklace.
Thursday, July 1, 2010
My First Essay on Pragmatics
While I've been home, one of the questions I've been getting the most from people is if Manuel and I ever experience any sort of language barrier. I answer that, generally speaking, no, we do not, and explain that Manuel grew up going to a bilingual school -- he even learned his colors in English before Spanish, for some reason.
But more than that, I think it's true, as Manuel himself once suggested, that when you live with someone for a while or are around them all the time, you end up establishing your own (inter)personal mini-language (regardless of whether or not you share the same native tongue), the components of which would not necessarily make automatic sense to the untrained ear, but which are unambiguous -- crystal clear -- to those in-the-know.
For a close group of friends of mine in college, our mini-language involved referring to objects by their colors. If I wanted Rina to hand me the blue blanket off the back of the couch, for instance, I might say, "Hey Rins, will you pass me the blue?" Someone unfamiliar with this way of speaking might respond with a, "Huh? The blue what?" but Rina would know exactly what I meant, just as I would know that if Sophie and I were making omelettes and she were to say, "I need the yellowish orange," I should scan the vicinity for the nearest yellowish orange object and then give her the bag of shredded cheddar cheese.
And so it is with Manuel and me. We've developed our own way of communicating, our own mini-language. For example, sometimes I make nouns into verbs, and he has gotten used to this. Now, it should be noted that, while among native English speakers, I've noticed, this practice is not all that uncommon (and even if I said "water me" or "beer me" to someone who didn't themself -- it should be a word, it really, really shoud -- say things like this, it would more or less make sense given the context), in Spanish (apparently), people just don't talk like that.
Nonetheless, when I ask Manuel, "me aguas?" or, "me cervezas?" he will pass me the water or beer without hesitating, albeit also without being quiet -- he will usually protest my bastardizing of his language by shouting, "Don't say that!" or, "La puta que te partio!" (roughly translated, "the whore who gave birth to you!")
Another aspect of our mini-language has to do with vocabulary. Despite Manuel's near-flawless English, his vocabulary is not without its holes -- for a long time, he didn't know the word "oven" and there are certain vegetables, like carrots and lettuce, that he either doesn't know or just doesn't bother to come up with mid-sentence. And so a lot of our conversations include sentences like this: "Baby, will you turn on the horno for the meat? I'm going to cut up the zanahorias and put them in the lechuga with the tomatoes."
For the most part, we get by just fine like this -- conversations primarily in English with Spanish words thrown in from here to there. Still, there are times when things do get lost in translation and communication does temporarily break down. For example, one night not too long ago, we had just finished a late (though not so late by Argentine standards) dinner and Manuel said that he was going to make some black tea, and did I want him to make me some, as well? I said no thank you, that I was going to go to bed soon and didn't want to have anything with caffeine in it.
To which he responded, "No, I asked if you wanted some tea."
"No, I don't want anything with caffeine in it," I said, not sure why I was having to repeat myself.
"No, no, no," he came back with. "I said, 'Do you want some TEA?'"
At this point, I began to suspect that something was amiss, but, like the toddler who foolishly reaches for the hot stove a second time, not expecting to get burned, I repeated yet again, more slowly and louder (because sometimes it seems like just raising the volume is enough to get your point across), "I. DON'T. WANT. CAFFEINE."
"But tea doesn't have caffeine in it," he said.
"Black tea sure as hell does," I said and thought, have you been living under a rock your whole life?
"No it doesn't," he said. "It has te-eine."
"What the fuck is te-eine?"
"Coffee has cafeina, and tea has teina." And this is how I learned that in Spanish there's a different word for the caffeine in coffee and the caffeine in tea.
"Well, not in English, it doesn't," I said.
In the end, it was relieving to know that it was just Argentina where my boyfriend had been living his whole life, not under a rock, but, as I confirmed with you, Candy, when I went to visit you in Princeton, regardless of the language in which you are speaking, the substances in question in coffee and tea are molecularly identical, so it's not a good idea to drink either one of them right before you go to bed.
In other words, what's in a name? That which we call caffeine by any other name would keep you up all night.
But more than that, I think it's true, as Manuel himself once suggested, that when you live with someone for a while or are around them all the time, you end up establishing your own (inter)personal mini-language (regardless of whether or not you share the same native tongue), the components of which would not necessarily make automatic sense to the untrained ear, but which are unambiguous -- crystal clear -- to those in-the-know.
For a close group of friends of mine in college, our mini-language involved referring to objects by their colors. If I wanted Rina to hand me the blue blanket off the back of the couch, for instance, I might say, "Hey Rins, will you pass me the blue?" Someone unfamiliar with this way of speaking might respond with a, "Huh? The blue what?" but Rina would know exactly what I meant, just as I would know that if Sophie and I were making omelettes and she were to say, "I need the yellowish orange," I should scan the vicinity for the nearest yellowish orange object and then give her the bag of shredded cheddar cheese.
And so it is with Manuel and me. We've developed our own way of communicating, our own mini-language. For example, sometimes I make nouns into verbs, and he has gotten used to this. Now, it should be noted that, while among native English speakers, I've noticed, this practice is not all that uncommon (and even if I said "water me" or "beer me" to someone who didn't themself -- it should be a word, it really, really shoud -- say things like this, it would more or less make sense given the context), in Spanish (apparently), people just don't talk like that.
Nonetheless, when I ask Manuel, "me aguas?" or, "me cervezas?" he will pass me the water or beer without hesitating, albeit also without being quiet -- he will usually protest my bastardizing of his language by shouting, "Don't say that!" or, "La puta que te partio!" (roughly translated, "the whore who gave birth to you!")
Another aspect of our mini-language has to do with vocabulary. Despite Manuel's near-flawless English, his vocabulary is not without its holes -- for a long time, he didn't know the word "oven" and there are certain vegetables, like carrots and lettuce, that he either doesn't know or just doesn't bother to come up with mid-sentence. And so a lot of our conversations include sentences like this: "Baby, will you turn on the horno for the meat? I'm going to cut up the zanahorias and put them in the lechuga with the tomatoes."
For the most part, we get by just fine like this -- conversations primarily in English with Spanish words thrown in from here to there. Still, there are times when things do get lost in translation and communication does temporarily break down. For example, one night not too long ago, we had just finished a late (though not so late by Argentine standards) dinner and Manuel said that he was going to make some black tea, and did I want him to make me some, as well? I said no thank you, that I was going to go to bed soon and didn't want to have anything with caffeine in it.
To which he responded, "No, I asked if you wanted some tea."
"No, I don't want anything with caffeine in it," I said, not sure why I was having to repeat myself.
"No, no, no," he came back with. "I said, 'Do you want some TEA?'"
At this point, I began to suspect that something was amiss, but, like the toddler who foolishly reaches for the hot stove a second time, not expecting to get burned, I repeated yet again, more slowly and louder (because sometimes it seems like just raising the volume is enough to get your point across), "I. DON'T. WANT. CAFFEINE."
"But tea doesn't have caffeine in it," he said.
"Black tea sure as hell does," I said and thought, have you been living under a rock your whole life?
"No it doesn't," he said. "It has te-eine."
"What the fuck is te-eine?"
"Coffee has cafeina, and tea has teina." And this is how I learned that in Spanish there's a different word for the caffeine in coffee and the caffeine in tea.
"Well, not in English, it doesn't," I said.
In the end, it was relieving to know that it was just Argentina where my boyfriend had been living his whole life, not under a rock, but, as I confirmed with you, Candy, when I went to visit you in Princeton, regardless of the language in which you are speaking, the substances in question in coffee and tea are molecularly identical, so it's not a good idea to drink either one of them right before you go to bed.
In other words, what's in a name? That which we call caffeine by any other name would keep you up all night.
Groggy Thoughts Upon Returning to America
The flight from Buenos Aires to Houston got in around 5 a.m., and I went directly to the gate of my connecting flight to take a nap on the floor. I slept for a while, before being awakened by the voice of a woman nearby who was loudly telling her young child to stop crying (if I'd been in Argentina, I would have perhaps not understood her and have been able to tune it out, but -- sigh -- welcome back to the land of overheard conversations).
Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.
As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.
Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.
Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?
The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?
Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?
All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.
That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.
P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...
Sitting up and looking around, I noticed that the waiting area had filled up significantly in the time I'd been asleep, and I suddenly felt too self-conscious about being sprawled out on the floor in front of a bunch of people to go back to sleep. I decided to go buy a doughnut and a cup of coffee. This cost me less than three dollars, which didn't strike me as very much -- especially for an airport. Despite the small sum, I was allowed to pay with a credit card, which was a good thing, I realized as I fetched it from my wallet, since the only cash I had was pesos.
As I sat in the food court eating my doughnut, the feelings that came to me were mixed: comfort and convenience (the ease of my small talk with the immigration officer, paying with a credit card!), along with something akin to queasiness. The latter(est) perhaps had something to do with my lack of a good night's sleep, or the fact that my stomach had grown unaccustomed to dougnuts in its South American sabbatical, but it brought to mind the way I feel sometimes returning home from work when all the windows in the apartment have been shut all day. There's a closed -- cerrado -- quality, if not a smell, to the air.
Airports, I suppose, do physically have something in common with a shut-up apartment, but I had a feeling this feeling was more related to the announcement I'd heard as I was coming through security reminding all travelers that the current security warning level was "orange." For this reason, it was very important that everyone do their part by reporting any suspicious activity or behavior.
Perhaps I've been out of the country too long -- maybe it's all the Spanglish I've been speaking -- but I found it hard upon hearing this to get a clear idea of just how dangerous orange danger really was. Isn't it always a good idea -- common sense, even -- to report suspicious activity or behavior?
The only thing orange made me think of was how someone once told me that the most popular color for decorating doctor's office waiting rooms was orange because orange was a "neutral" color, that in general people have neither strongly positive nor strongly negative feelings toward the color. If this was true, did that make the current security warning level "indifferent"?
Was there some sort of color wheel involved in this system, I wondered, in which orange was more dangerous than yellow (and much more dangerous than purple), but less dangerous than red?
All ROY-G-BIVing aside, it ocurred to me that perhaps a good ole' fashioned numerical scale of 1-10 might provide a clearer reference point and leave less room for confusion. Case in point: While I was walking through the airport, a guy with a bunch of explosives strapped to his body passed me, but I was so caught up in my thoughts about doctors' offices and rainbows that I wasn't able to alert the proper authorities in time before he blew up the whole airport.
That didn't really happen, and I'm not writing to you from beyond the grave. It was just a joke. But as I was putting my shoes back on after going through security, I heard another announcement informing all passengers that any inappropriate jokes would not be taken lightly. And this is why, I think, the Houston aiport evoked my stinky cerrado apartment in the evenings -- though, who knows? Maybe the same kind of announcements are made in the Buenos Aires airport, where it's just easier for me to tune things out.
P.S. You know you've been out of the States too long when you get back and find yourself peeling apart two-ply toilet paper before using it. Because to not do so just seems wasteful...
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