My week in 8 bullet points

Things I've been doing while I haven't been updating this blog as I promised I would:

* Completed 2000 mile road trip.
* Drove 16' Moving Van across Manhattan.
* Moved a half-full van into a 2nd story elevator apt (not so tough).
* Built supposedly-clever cheap furniture... with modifications.
* Attended several various Columbia Orientation Events.
* Setup E-mail, Internet, Utilities, Insurance, Vaccinations, Student Account.
* Got Columbia University ID card.
* Registered for classes (actually, just faked it - This place is 90% add/drop after classes start).

Obviously, with all the road time I've had to think, and all the crazy stuff I've had to keep up with, there's a lot on my mind, and I want to share it with you, but so long as I'm scraping my blog time from the remaining scraps of registration, etc. this is going to stay all-too-brief.

When I don't need to mooch internet time at the library (my apt is sans-internet for the next week), and when I don't need every second of web-time for more pressing matters, I promise, more to come.

Actually, I'm already leaning heavily toward a new blog incarnation (the "Lamb" motif still fits as almost everything in my world still maintains a sense of transition and flight, but as things settle down I'll need a new mis-quote), and let's face it, the Facebook phenomenon is probably something not even I can avoid forever.

So for now, please allow me to be a horrid blogger with jittery nerves and a ridiculously over-crowded apartment of cardboard boxes and half-assembled Ikea.

Soon enough I'll just be another grad student with a part-time job, and then I should have all the time in the world.

That is how it works, right?

Weber (on the Lamb)

Radio, the Road, and the Right

8 hours down, 25 hours to go. This is a cross-country road trip with little if any time for enjoyable sight-seeing, friend visits, or any of the other pleasantries that make such things worth doing. It's just me, Shelley, and a 16 foot long Penske moving van less than half full of almost our every possession.

Things I love about road trips are:
1) The scenery: and its parallels with local cultural identity
2) The abject freedom represented by the one-man:one-highway situation ("I can drive anywhere i want and there's nothing anyone can do to stop me")
3) Time to Think: uninterrupted and plentiful

SO in light of all that, this whole process of moving from San Antonio to New York isn't half bad - I certainly do have plenty of time to think and abundant scenery to enjoy (ok, looking forward to getting out of the empty prarie eventually), but oddly after a summer of nothing but travel, the prospect of covering 2,000+ miles in 4 days seems exhausting.

On top of everything else, there's this blog. Now don't get me wrong, I love sharing the (mis)adventures and mindless curiosities with you all, but the amount of time I have to think versus the limited (or non-existant) internet access and time to take advantage of such between 12hour drives makes for a very frustrating scenario.

While traveling I usually just pop in one of my many favorite CDs and glide down the road to a familiar tune, but recently I've become interested in radio-hopping around the FM dial to see what's happening in the areas I pass. Most common are generic rock or country music stations, followed by the rare unique music station, and then there's talk radio - NPR is a favorite and standardized nation-wide, but the real gem for me is conservative/religious talk radio. Don't jump to conclusions - life "on the road" has brought me no closer to Jesus than life "on the lamb," but I've always said that the best way to understand an adversary is to actually listen to what's influencing them. So I listen to a variety of different programs, usually named after the especially outspoken and boisterously self-righteous host. Sometimes I hear interesting, intelligent comments from people who happen to hold a different opinion than I do on major social issues, but most often I just witness (aurally) the continued propogation of lies, slander and sensationalism with little basis in any facts recorded outside a leather-bound NIV.

I take it as much as I can, but when I start to notice myself talking back at the little petulant voices, it's time for more music or the moderating voice of NPR. I know many conservatives consider this news source to be unabashedly liberal, and I'm willing to allow that the people who work at NPR, by and large, skew just a little left-of-center, as do the majority of college-educated, middle-income, city-dwelling Americans. However, I take great offense at the charge that a left-learning journalist must therefore produce left-leaning journalism, and while I do believe TV media has failed us all by making this falsity fact (Fox gets credit for first making partisan journalism profitable) I know it doesn't necessarily need to be so.

Any event, after a few minutes of balanced perspective and actual news reporting (as opposed to war-mongering editorialising and evangelical political prostelitizing), I still need a few more minutes of music before I re-embark on my exploration of the Right (though technically Left) end of the radio dial. And I can't even get started on AM.

This is just me venting, and like I said, there's too much time to record all the relevant thought processes I had on an 8 hour drive so far, but some items for us to all consider (while I keep driving and suffering the conservative-goes-caustic rhetoric):

1) Boy Scouting's lingering exclusion of homosexuals may remain legal as a private organization, but how much longer can they maintain the moral argument given the increasing public face of model citizens who happen to be gay (and the obvious bigotry of the homosexual-child molester association upon which they base their defense)?

2) How can the absolutist approach to anti-abortion principles (all life is sacred) ignore this same principle in the support of foreign wars, the death penalty, etc?

3) What is it about marriage that needs protecting from homosexuals? I understand that legally most churches have the right to refuse to conduct ceremonies, but I never can understand how John and John getting married in California directly affects (and threatens) Bill and Sue getting married in Mississippi? If Bill and Sue wind up divorced 3 years later (as 50% of hetero-marriages do), aren't they doing more to damage the prestige and sanctity of marriage without the Johns' help?

4) How does an American christian maintain the illusion that they are a persecuted minority? I agree, the majority of America may not be as radical as the fringes, but at most the two sides (religious and secular) are equally matched, and to claim that being forced to compromise is equivalent to full-scale persecution is the kind of irrational rhetoric that accomplishes nothing but radicalizing otherwise moderate elements, and what's to be benefitted by that?


These are all huge issues (for conservatives) in America today, and I don't have any answers whatsoever. if you do, please post them up for our collective benefit. Remember, I'm not asking you what you think about these issues, I'm asking how (as a secular American) I can expect to have a civil discourse with a staunch conservative who holds as fact so many assumptions I believe to be largely ficticious.

Where do we find common ground, and how do you reason with someone who's core belief is that rationalism is an inadequate system of logic?

Long post, not very well-formed, but something for me to keep thinking about as I roll down I-40 on my way to Nashville.

Best wishes from the road, and hopefully once I get settled in I can think more, write (less) more often, and maybe come up with a more clever on-going blog project.

-Weber (on the lamb)

Quick Update (in a NY minute)

Just a boring logistical update here folks.

I've been in New York for three days now, and I am living at warp speed. In three days I have not only researched, visited, and laid claim to an apartment (without a broker and the enormous accompanying fees), I pushed through an apartment application, filed 3 different loan applications, got a last-minute offer of university housing, canceled my earlier apartment agreement (before signing the lease or making the downpayment) and am now in the process of collecting the necessary paperwork to sign a Columbia University lease, get the keys, and move-in by Monday.

Amidst all of that I did just a touch of swing dancing, a ton of walking, and even got to hang out with my friend Becky "Face" Mateer, who just happened to be in New York as part of her huge 10+ state end-of-summer roadtrip with her bf Michael (NYC was the overnight between Virginia Beach, VA and Boston, MA).

On top of all this, I've been shuffling paperwork, faxes, e-mails and scans back and forth between me (in NY), my mother (in Oklahoma), Shelley (in San Antonio) and Shelley's dad (in The Woodlands). It doesn't help that on top of all this, Davey is moving out of our apartment this weekend, and Shelley is conducting a garage sale of all the things we can't afford to bring to NY.

Busy times, and I'd like to say that I wouldn't have it different, but honestly this is a bit much. I'm raging all day like a 9-to-5 job, and all I want to do is start graduate school. Classes don't start until Sept 2, orientation isn't even until Aug 26, but I'm already punching in extra time, so where did my summer go?

Three more days in NYC should be more relaxed, then I'm back to San Antonio for just (barely) enough time to pack an apartment into a moving van and drive cross-country (approx 1,950 miles) up to Oklahoma, an overnight in Nashville, and then onward to the Big Apple.

Busy, busy, but that's why my blogging is lagging (in both constancy and quality).

Please forgive, please be patient, and please continue having a wonderful summer as long as you can.

Weber (on the lamb and exhausted)

Home is where the (???) is

I arrived in San Antonio, a city I've only recently come to regard unequivocably as "home," late Wednesday, August 6. by August 12 I was on a plane for New York City. After more than 2 months traveling abroad with only the barest connections to the center of my known Weber-verse, I was thrust back into the thick of things and now back out again. Some observations I had follow I'm sure a very tired pattern for those more accustomed to regular travel, but they are all new and mysterious to me, so I shall relate them:

It feels immediately, and contradictarily, exhilirating to be back in a place I recognize and feel comfortable; and at the same time I'm hit with a very serious wave of almost paralyzing depression about the boringness of returning to the same-old-same-old. I look around and
my heart really does leap at the familiarity of mundane neighborhood landmarks, while at the same time I can't quite except that my "adventures" are over. By night time i'm sitting in my apartment, bags untouched, barely distrubing anything in my house, and collapsing into the same wasteful, irrelevant habits I fled from in the first place. I watch useless, crappy television, i play mindlessly on my computer, i consume horrid, unnatural snacks. In fairness, i hadn't
gotten to do any of these things for sometime, so maybe i was entitled, right?

but what's the use in living life more deliberately, in focusing on entertainment of substance, in avoiding opulence, sloth and gluttony when i allow myself such dalliances? I know that fundamentally changing a lifestyle is no easy matter, and cold turkey is rarely the most-prescribed option, but doesn't it seem like a logical, honest, serious conviction might stand up better against not even active temptation, but merely the first potential of such temptation? In other words, i had no junk TV all summer, and I didn't miss it. Honestly, i know this is hard to believe, but if i never saw another episode of Battlestar Galactica (much less another CSI, Friends, or the biggest Loser) I would be ok with that. but no! I caved. Davey (my roommate) can't even be held responsible - i didn't come home to a turned on TV calling me with its siren song, I had to pick up the remote.

Ok, I'm not really this hard on myself. the food and TV issues will resolve themselves when I get to New York - where I won't have cable or expendable income - but it raises very interesting questions for me about why we live the way we live in the places we live. Put another way, how much control does our environment exercise over out habits, even our personality, and to what degree can we resist this after habits and patterns are formed?

First, let me say that while i am not a unique specimen on this subject, there are some special people, or special moments, who do arise out of such long-standing doldrums as if effortlessly, thus rendering a broader application of my reaction moot. Still, for me it holds true - no matter my conviction or the logic to back it, changing things in a life i've established is nigh impossible without assistance from outside factors. is this just personal weakness? maybe. then again, none of the changes i've tried to make have been all that drastic, and certainly none were motivated by anything more than an impulse (no doctor told me to stop watching bad movies or i'd
die. I don't have waterworlditis). but it doesn't bode well for the prospect of "settling down." It also loads an enormous amount of responsibility to my first few months in New York. I want to take my studies seriously, i want to watch good cinema, i want to read more books, to stay in touch with my friends, to go to the gym.... but i believe that if i don't build all of this into the habits i create in my new apartment, they may never happen. And what about the apartment
itself? i'm signing papers on monday, and while i'm happy with the place i have, what about it (size, location, etc) will play a determining role in "who i am" while in new york?

these are all questions without answers (and not very interesting questions for anyone but myself at that), because ultimately there's no way to know, and only time will tell. but i'm just...
frustrated.... by the inevitability of it all. shouldn't i have more control over at least my inner will and satisfaction? I guess i do, i mean, obviously i do because who else could, but while the scary
prospect of being an individual among 10 million other individuals in a seething hive of humanity hasn't yet caused me pause, the daunting task of re-inventing myself (in small detail, anyway) along the blueprints i set up in Europe is a heavy weight.

then again, so was finding an apartment in manhattan, and that worked out ok so far. we'll just see how it all develops, and i'll try to think of much more interesting things to share with you in the turbulent days ahead.

Weber (on the lamb)

Too Lazy to be Busy, or Vice Versa?

well, I'm back in The States, at Home, etc. and I'm not sure if I'm "settling in" well or not. Some bad habits have resumed almost immediately (I actually caught myself watching Transformers on HBO when I had theoretically resolved to stop watching bad, worthless crap and substitute it with good, interesting Cinema). Otherwise, my overall productivity seems to be on a rapid decline as well, but I'm willing to blame that on the heat. I'm just not sure how much can get done when it's over 100 degrees (38 to my Euro buddies).

Anyhoo, I tried to come up with a much more poetic way to say this, and perhaps I'll keep working on it, but for now just let it be known that "the lamb," as I have misappropriated the term, is not officially over, and as such I will be continuing this blog in some form or fashion for at least the immediate future.

It's an easy rouse to pull when I'm still traveling, setting off to live out of my backpack for another week in New York as I hunt down an apartment, setup loans, and confirm all my other boring pre-enrollment paperwork. The subsequent return to San Antonio, whirlwind house packing, and final 3-day road trip literally across half the continental United States should provide adequate fodder for more trials, tribulations, and fraudulent deep thoughts. We're talking 1950+ miles, which is approximately equivalent to driving from Lisbon to Warsaw.

Then the whole process of settling into the New York life style will, I'm sure, provide its own moments of hilarity and humility (though rest assured nothing too drastic - this is a city that understands the concept of public toilets).

So yes, keep checking in if you so desire, and I'll try to keep my camera handy, my eyes open, and my mind wandering down paths of interest to a greater audience than just myself.

For the record, it does feel a little good to be home, but I do wish I was still traveling. I love my friends, I love San Antonio, and I love breakfast Tacos, but I won't lie - I wasn't "ready" to come back, I wasn't tired of traveling, of nomadism, of noisy hostels or unintelligible road signs. I could have stayed in Europe much longer, in fact perhaps indefinitely. And while that's not in the cards (and truth be told, eventually I'd want to travel elsewhere - the Caucus seems quite lively all of a sudden), I'm consoling myself by trying to keep some of the attitude and mystery of being "on the lamb" with me as I further traverse the upcoming changes and adventures ahead.

This blog is one mechanism by which I keep myself on course, distant from the complacence that otherwise settles in, so by reading it you're not just keeping up on what I'm doing, you're keeping me up on my toes.

So thanks, and please stay in touch.

Weber (on the lamb)

Friendship in LCD

One of my great flaws is a serious partiality for sentimentality in media. Certain movies, songs, etc. really catch me with their sticky, saccarine melodrama. On the downside, this results in that ever-so-annoying, "this movie/song really speaks to me" reaction, but on the plus side it means that even the lamest pop drivel can serve as a catalyst for much more interesting, substantial flights of self-discovery.

Take for example the song, "all my friends," by the band LCD Soundsystem from their latest album, Sounds of Silver. (audio link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uDRLW748j68. there is a music video, but it's half as long, thus missing several good bits)

This is no pop mega-hit, but within certain circles it found national attention, and I happen to dabble in one such circle. I slapped it on my mp3 player as a last minute addition before leaving in May, and it has become one of my most-listened-to tunes (on par with Dracula, just ahead of Sufjan Stevens, and just behind the Mountain Goats).

It starts, disappointingly, with what as a jazz fan I must describe as a rather sorry piano riff, but the overall song structure continues to build from this in a slow progression so that the song is one long, continuous, uphill journey toward something more and more... defiant, resolved, upbeat, but also melancholy. It's a song about traveling, maybe, leaving, time and the ruin it brings on the things we value in the present. It's about friends, as the title suggests, and I won't ascribe much more brilliance to the song than I do to most other chart-toppers, but in my repeatedly listenings I found many triggers, quick lyrics together with the music that kept setting my mind in motion. I don't pretend to know what the song is actually "about," but here are a few excerpts and the reactions they prompted while I was somewhere over the frigid North Atlantic.

"It comes apart, the way it does in bad films."
A big theme in this song (for me) is the disintegration of social groups. The diaspora of friends and loved ones that occurs over time, but most noticeably in the post-college years. Our closest associates move hundreds, thousands of miles away, and while Facebook and Skype have made this easier to deal with, the absence is still unavoidable and we drift apart, emotionally as well as geographically. We're still friends, close friends, but paradoxically we only act like it when we're thrust back into proximity. Like a bad film, the irrationality of these "plot holes" is unavoidable, but we ignore it to enjoy the greater whole, the picture for its message, not the gritty celuloid details. It's a hard thing for me to deal with. I had some good friends when I was younger, and I'm quite pleased to say that I still think fondly of them all, look them up when I'm in the same state, and bore my girlfriend with tales of our adolescent adventures and manifold nicknames. But college. I really came out of my shell in college, and I was blessed to do so surrounded by (or because of) an especially wonderful cluster of individuals. After college a few stayed in San Antonio, about half went to Austin, and just a few ventured further out. With each successive year, one or two more has continued thier outbound trajectory, and now it's my turn to blast off. The excitement of New York (and the close friends I have there) cannot temper the utter remorse I have in leaving behind my friends.

"Where are your friends tonight?"
This effectively serves as the chorus, and picks up where the earlier verse left off. It's such a profoundly sad question. If you're friends were near at hand, this question would be unnecessary. But they aren't. It's a challenge, a rhetorical insult. Where are your friends tonight? Do you even know? The answer is that they're not here, they aren't with you (possibly even when you need them). I have friends who move and I don't know about it. On more than one occasion I've e-mailed someone to see if they wanted to hang out, only to discover they moved out of state, even out of country. I dial phone numbers that are disconnected. How many numbers in my phone give me the false sense that I could reach someone if I wanted to? How many friends could I have lost completely without even knowing it? I just changed e-mail addresses, which is not helping me feel secure about finding even people I consider very close.
You're reading this, my very personal blog, and I have no idea where you are tonight. I might not even know when the last time was we spoke, and that makes it hard for me to pretend that I'm still being the type of friend I want to be; that we're as close as I remember.

"To Tell the Truth, this could be the last time... So here we go, Like a Sales Force Into the Night"
the first part just re-hashes the earlier sentiments of loss and finality. But what about that closing image? A sales force (business, capitalism) rallying forth courageously into the black abyss of night. Salesmen have a lot of bad stereotypes, most of them deserved, but can we consider what might be good about them? Tenacious, persistent, patient, cunning? I like the image of a dozen, maybe even a hundred, plaid-suited mid-40s career salesmen with winning smiles and widening bald spots charging out of the office; their cell phones and sales charts thrust nobly forward and their briefcases and sample bags clutched to their side as shields. They pour out of the elevator like huns, they wash through the lobby as a deluge and out into the vacant parking lot where even the pale street lights and vast emptiness don't dilute their passioned, single-minded charge into the unknown future, the challenge laid before them. Is this an attitude we can apply? Can we look at the obstacles ahead in our lives and the casualties of lost friends we'll suffer with such determination? I don't know if I can, but I guess I'm going to find out, and that scares me.

"It's the Memory of our Betters that is Keeping us on our Feet"
Friendship is a very dangerous prospect. The people we get to know, the people we get close to, care about, admire and respect. These people have more influence on us than perhaps anyone else in our entire lives. They aren't sages, they aren't licensed counselors or even amateur social strategists. They're just our buddies, and odds are they're as confused and messed up as we are. At its worst, this can lead us into all manner of debacles and pitfalls. How do we recognize a bad action when it's presented to us by someone we consider a good friend? On the upside, the opposite can occur as well. In the very best of times, our friends drive us to be someone better than perhaps we would have been otherwise. I know on many occasions I've worked harder, been more patient, more open-minded, more positive because I recognized that my friends needed that of me. If left to my own devices, I spiral down into petulance, lassitude, sloth. It's the responsibility I have to my friends that often keeps me going.

"I wouldn't trade one stupid decision for another 5 years of life"
Now this is interesting. I see what he's going for, the whole youthful no-regrets, live-life-to-the-fullest-and-never-look-back vibe. But I don't agree, and more to the point I'm not sure the lyricist even believes this. Don't get me wrong - I Love stupid decisions. I think stupid decisions are one of the primary motivators for us to keep growing as people, but I also know a lot of my stupid decisions have been just that - stupid, wasteful, uneventful, uninspiring. I wouldn't mind trade many of them for a used toothbrush, much less 5 whole years. 5 years to make more stupid decisions, or even to make better choices.
What bugs me is that the song writer isn't some starry-eyed punk 16 year old who's convinced life ends at 30 so who cares about 5 more years. He's an adult and he knows better, but stuck this lyric in to appeal to his fan base, to seem cool, or maybe just to fit the rhyme scheme. The audacity of it, the bold-faced lie of his counter-wisdom assertion, just drives me crazy. Maybe there are a few stupid decisions I wouldn't trade for anything, but those are the exception, not the rule.

"If I could see all my friends tonight."
This is the counter-point to the chorus, injected as a rebuttal near the end of the song. It's an incomplete conditional phrase. If _____ then... what? There is no answer, there isn't something that seeing all his friends tonight would actually solve, but we're talking about the impression here - the impression that if he could just see all his friends again, somehow everything would be better. But he can't. It's impossible. It will never be possible again.
Over time it becomes more and more difficult to gather our friends together. Maybe we travel to see them, but still we get one or two nights, spent with one or two friends, and then poof, we're back into the isolation, patting ourselves on the back for "staying in touch" with someone we formerly shared our life with for hours every day. That's life, we grow apart and we lose some of the naive grandeur of our earlier friendships. Best-Friends-Forever is not a concept that translates well into college, and maybe college friendships don't translate into the real world. I'm no culture warrior - I'm not trying to start a revolution here - but I can still say, for the record, that this unavoidable and unreconcilable distancing of time, like icebergs sheered off of glaciers, sucks. It just sucks.


As a quick testament to all those people who have helped me become a better person, kept me sane, or put up with my oddities, I'd like to offer this minor tribute: a list of the people I call friend, new and old, close and distant. It's not complete, and for that I must apologize, please don't take offense.

Davey, Shelley, Mom & Dad, Brad and Duff, Lani, Lenneville, Keeler, Face, Livia, Danielle, Kristin, K-Lee, Ragnar, Em, Jordan, Kimi, Laura, Mike, Paul, Galen, Lyz, Manny, Prado-Fleeger and all the KRTU crew, Jordan and Jayme, Willy and Cam, Radu, Walker, Jules, Tiffany, Jo, Holly, Chapa, Thrasher, Jarny, Jeremy, Jerm La-Z, Kate, Alisha, Reavis, Critter, Stolio, BenG, Veronica, Sarah, Kinniborough, Jay and Micah, Mary T and Rev Tev, Dr's. Christ, Burton, and Huesca, Patty McMillan, Marcus, Amy, Dan, Larissa, Palandri, George, Mr's. Henzel and Meyers, Jacob Andrew Armstrong and Doug Young, Ben, Tao, Ruth, Brandi, Quentin, Marta, Andrew, Matt Murphy, Cody Cundiff, and an innumerable cast of family, acquaintances, instructors and even a few strangers.

thanks.
Weber (on the Lamb)

Cool as a Cucumber

Why does it seem that the 9th year of our life was so much more important than our 23rd?  

I don't know that this is always true - in fact an original purpose of my current trip was to disprove it, to show that you can teach an old(er) dog new tricks - but it certainly does seem that we learn so much when we're young, but by the time we reach adulthood (whenever we feel comfortable adopting the terminology, from 18 to 45) we suddenly have so much left to learn, and a great difficulty assimilating and internalizing these lessons.

We learn a lot as kids, but despite the wealth of our worldly ignorance, we think we know everything.  As we get older, we begin to understand how much we don't know, and simultaneously it becomes more difficult for us to make headway against the immense abyss of everything that's left to learn.

Take for example Cucumbers and Zuccini.

or Zuccini and Cucumbers.

Either is the same to me, for until 5 days ago I never actually knew the difference.

Strange isn't it?  Staggering, even?  I took honors courses in school, scored well on my entrance exams, got a degree Cum Laude, and was accepted into an acclaimed graduate school, and yet I never learned the difference between two simple items of produce.

Ignorance could be explained by inexperience - for example I do not to this day know the difference between a Guava and a Passion Fruit.  Perhaps I should, but I've never eaten either of these (in their natural form), so voila: inexperience excuses all.

And it's not mental dyslexia either.  Whenever I try to descibe a woman's open bottom-half garment, I call it a dress, and whenever referring to a full-body version, I call it a skirt.  I know the difference, but my brain just switches them.

Not so with Zuccini and Cucumbers!  I'm not a big fan of either, but I have been eating them (grudgingly) all my life in various salads and casseroles, without any idea what I was munching upon or how to tell the difference.  

I was in Amberg, having a bizarre German steak dish served to me on a tree stump (no joke) and I made a comment about the Cucumbers.  This is an on-going joke with Shelley and I, who often asks me to name the little green circles in my food.  I always just pick one, and say it in such a way that it sounds like I'm hamming it up.  This works excellently (and I recommend it to others) for if you are correct it sounds like you know how obvious the answer is, and if incorrect, it sounds like you're having a lark by giving the (obviously) wrong answer intentionally.  Use it wisely.

I guessed wrong (50/50 odds) but rather than let it slide, I revisited the situation with her later when we were alone.  "Shel, what is the difference between a Zuccini and a Cucumber?"

she didn't look at me like I'm an idiot - we've been dating too long for this sort of thing to surprise her - but instead she started giving me the same answer she would if asked the same question in her 2nd grade classroom.

"A Zuccini is a green vegetable from the same family as the squash, so it's thicker on one end, with a very thick stalk at the top.  A Cucumber is long and the same thickness with rounded ends and a little stem like pickles, which are made from them."

She then confessed some embarrassment about having to explain such a thing (and in such a way) to her 27 year old boyfriend.

And this got me really thinking.  First, it got me thinking about solving this green-veggie virtigo of mine once and for all.  I asked her to list off the foods each was commonly served in.  Cucumbers in salad, with yogurt, tahini, etc.  Zuccini in casseroles, pasta, whatever.  I brilliantly surmised that Cucumbers are almost always served raw, while Zuccini seem to always need cooking, and I triumphantly proclaimed, "Cool as a Cucumber, Zap the Zuccini."

this earned me a 'no duh' look, but my brain was already onto my second thought process, "who chooses what we learn when we're young, and how do we go about correcting the things we learned wrong, or never learned at all?"

The answers could lead to all manner of interesting analysis about generational racism, cultist society, and the awesome power of parents/educational institutions.  For me, I was stuck on the simplest of issues: vocabulary.

I'll bet 99% of everything we learn is from observation.  Probably more.  Probably 99.9999% of things we learn not by someone telling us, reading in a book, or even figuring out through trial and error.  We just listen, watch, and slowly assemble the vocabulary and mechanism of our world around us.

There are obvious exceptions:

"Don't touch that, it's hot."  (I touched it - lesson learned)

"the Word of the Day is 'Ubiquitous'...."  (6th grade english - quiz every friday)

"Thou Shalt Not Kill."  (rather old book - divine justice implied)

But when was I 'supposed' to learn the difference between Zuccini and Cucumbers?  That wasn't in 4th grade math, 12th grade economics, or even 8th grade sex ex.  And don't ask a university professor for the basics; they're great people, but half of them can't tie their shoelaces any better than a 10 year old (here only used to demonstrate that great minds are not always the best source of support for abjectly simple issues).

And if I wasn't supposed to learn it at school, or sunday school, or boy scouts, or youth group, or... soccer practice, then what?  Is it the parents' burden to supply us with words for every random item, concept, ideal, feeling, situation, synonym, antonym and pseudonym which we can experience as we traverse our lives?  How much does the human vocabulary grow after the age of 18, and how useful are the nuanced terminologies we pick up to impress our friends (and blog readers) anyway?

This thought process starts to amble its way into my months-long confrontation with language and being an english speaker in a diverse world forced to adapt to english limitations.  I have no conclusions, only sympathy, confusion, and a touch of guilt-by-association, but I'll save that for another time.  At least being back in London affords me the chance to not be constantly (and unintentionally) reminded of my own mono-lingual inadequacies.

Language is something best learned young, and while it's not the whole of what I'm trying to say, it is at the heart of it:  communication.  How do we communicate to another person what we think, or how we feel, if somewhere in our past, perhaps somewhere in everyone's past, the perfect concept got skipped.  How does a color-blind person describe "green" to a blind man?  Or, to be less dramatic, what is love to someone who knew abuse?  What is the point of talking these things out when, ultimately, we're using a different language.  Not french or even flemish, but we all use the words associated with the concepts we know, but these are not absolute.  You say Tomato, as the story goes, Egg Plant to Aubergine, Ciao, Nyet, and Goooooooal.  International concepts, some understood internationally, but for each of us a unique personal definition which we can only assume holds true for others, but which in point of fact may not.

the Irony of you reading all these scribblings as I try to vomit my thoughts out onto the world wide web, as a method of staying in communication, is not lost on me one bit.  For this is the language that binds us, not the words we have in common, but the assumptions we must all make in the spaces between letters.  "He said 'vomit' so that must imply he feels ______ about his writing."  "why 'flemish,' did he want to go to Belgium and not have time?"

And you are correct to do so, to read the unwritten text just as we do with body language, voice intonation, and everything else.  But these are all communications as well, and at some point we learned them, or didn't learn them, and so we must admit that even these we read through the lens of assumption.  I giggle when I get embarrassed, and I get excited when faced with fiascos, both of which are easy to misread.

And I'm nothing special.  You can all tell me stories, hundreds of them, and I hope you do, about the times when someone misunderstood you to hilarious effect.  Simple word slips to Romantic misdirections, the genre of comedy seems to be all about the breakdown of communication, with Tragedy not far behind.  

So I just learned how to identify a cucumber, and if I'm lucky tomorrow I'll learn something else I should have figured out years ago.  maybe it will be practical and useful (the conversion of lbs to kilograms), or perhaps metaphysical (I will visit Tate Modern).  But probably not.  For the same obstacle haunts me now that did 20 years ago when I never learned about the big Z and C issue:  I wasn't really paying attention.  Because it's hard, and I already know so much, and who cares anyway, right?

who cares, it's just vegetables, and feelings, and life and people.  And it's all too much to ask, and we keep trying half-heartedly, and we don't understand each other but we pretend that we do.  We live in such a way that others won't know we don't understand, and we're all willing to give each other the benefit of the doubt even though we know better, because who wants to live in a world where nobody understands you?

I've said my piece, and it means very little, but I appreciate you taking the journey with me.

Weber (on the Lamb)

(Another) Quick Update

Traveling with a partner as many, many upsides, but one downside of being in the romantic town of gay Paris with someone who you are romantically attached to is that it doesn't afford a whole lot of time for sitting in some dark little internet cafe and wasting away the hours in a hunched over position.

So anyway, Shelley and I spent 3 days in Paris after traveling from Amberg and it was great.  We knew there wouldn't be enough time to do "everything" (there never is) so we drew up a list of the must-dos and accomplished plus a couple late editions.  The one thing we didn't do was relax, but in this we were probably more traditionally touristy than we've been otherwise.

So our recommended 3-day Paris tour (for people who like architecture and exercise) includes:

The Louvre, the Eiffel Tower, Champs Elysee, Arc de Triumph, Notre Dame, Sacre Coeur, the Pantheon, Institute du Monde Arabe, The Catacombs, and various gardens and memorials along the way. 

We saw a lot, we talked a bit, and I have several new blogs to post... but where's the time to write them all?  

I'll be getting them up as time warrants as we now close out our time on the Lamb in London with my brother and sister (in law) Duff and Larissa.  A little sight-seeing, a lot more relaxing, and several pints.  Good times.

see you all again soon, and stay tuned for more posts to come, as well as updated picasa photos, google maps, yadda yadda, you know how this works.

Weber (on the lamb)