Cabinet

Another year

About this time last year, I stepped out of Fiumicino airport into the mild winter of Rome. The ride home was lined with statues, buildings, and piazzas straight out of an art history book. It was dreamy, foreign, like my first time listening to Sigur Rós. In the coming months, I began to note the differences and similarities in my lifestyle here and at home. Eventually, I came to the conclusion that everything is more or less the same, wherever you go. You eat, sleep, and shit. Work on weekdays, go out on the weekends. Eat a little healthier, maybe get some more exercise. Read more. Care more. Try more. And don’t drink so much. The unavoidable rituals, motherly advice, and half-hearted goals that make up the bulk of a life—the constant, I guess.

Not knowing the language, leaving friends and family at home, and adapting to a new culture turned out to be surprisingly painless. I found that all you really need to communicate is a permanent smile and furious hand gestures. Newfound friends taught me this, and a substitute family is easy to find in a hospitable country like Italy. In the end, the most significant differences are the little ones. The variables. Not finding ginger ale. “Please, please, take my order.” The bus ticket that is never checked, but always paid for. Damn, it’s hot (no central a/c) and damn, it’s cold (no central heating). Eating more pasta than I did in college. Birds that cropdust the streets, and everything on it. Shops being closed Sunday, including the Tabacchi…

And, of course, the good things. Discovering there was no microwave at home, or need for one. Pizza, really good pizza—and gelato. Churches that actually move you. Looking up to find the dome of St. Peter’s Basilica guide you home. Orange and teal. Italian. Touching a Brancusi, sitting on a Bernini, and talking smack on Berlusconi. Beautiful people. Wandering into the places that never made it into history books. Pounding cheap beer under the gaze of priceless statues, looming facades, and sparkling fountains. Really old cars. City blocks that turn with the street. Orange and teal. I imagine most of my memories from this time will be tinged with these colors. Philly’s got its brick-reds, New York has its greys and metals, and Seoul—flashing neon.

When people ask what living in Rome is like, I don’t really know what to say. It’s just the little things I mentioned before that make life interesting, and the rest is the same. I don’t mean to suggest that it’s not worth visiting, because it definitely is. But visiting a place, is different from living there. This is why when you say, “but Italian food is so delicious…” I want to smack you in your mouth. Because after we have our delicious pasta dinner, you can take your little flight back home to a cheesesteak, burrito, or even take-out Chinese. I’m eating pasta. If everything is awesome, nothing is awesome.

So, I’ve got high hopes for 2010. Knowing that I’ve put in a year, somehow makes the next one seem manageable. I think 2009 was generally overwhelming. I’m shooting for consistency in ‘10. By the way, how does everyone say ‘10? I just murmur a little before saying ‘ten.’ Is this acceptable?

And just for merde e risatine, I leave you with this. Best purchase of 2009: Bicycle. Worst purchase of 2009: Cycling shorts.

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A blessing and a curse

I work in an institution sponsored by the Vatican, so a lot of my correspondence end with some sort of blessing. There’s a lot of “God bless you,” and “May the Lord be with you,” which are the typical ones I guess. Personally I go with, “Peace & love.” I like to keep it rock and roll. Anyway, I’ve noticed a lot of variety in my international encounters. More or less, it all means the same thing, but the delivery is interesting, especially in face to face conversations. There’s a French priest that likes to tell me simply, “God loves you.” I’m particularly fond of a traditional Irish blessing, which goes something like this:

May the road rise to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face.
And rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the hollow of His hand.

It’s one of the longer ones, and definitely works better written than spoken, but it’s quite beautiful in a simple way. Blessings given by non-Americans make me think for a split second longer than the usual, “that’s nice.” They just seem more creative and personal, and I’ve been trying to incorporate this into my own language, though I just don’t seem to be quick enough. My automatic response to a sneeze is obviously, “God bless you,” but I really want to say something like, “God bless your nasal passage and face,” or something a little more specific, though I’m still working on it.

For those that don’t get blessed too often, another way to notice these cultural differences is to listen carefully when you act like an American in another country (listen to the insults). A short car ride with an Italian would make an English speaking sailor blush. Sometimes I concentrate and try to translate the obscenities literally, and it’s amazing how much thought goes into them. There’s even a term for that one guy who honks as soon as the stoplight turns green. When you’re riding shotgun, you can hear my friend mutter, “asshole of the light, take your wheel and put it in the hole in your ass, you pig of a whore with the head of a dick.” There may be some grammatical errors but the literal translation is more or less on point. I still believe that if I can hold my own in a heated argument, I’d consider myself fluent in Italian.

While I’m on the topic, I also want to share my thoughts on profanity. The word ‘fuck’ is uninteresting and I don’t think it deserves the shock factor associated with it in the media and to little children. The only reason it’s still offensive is because it’s restricted. It doesn’t really mean anything in the majority of the contexts it’s used in, and it’s something people say when they’re too lazy to really describe how they actually feel. This is the only real reason that compels me not to use it. It’s a lazy word. It’s not really funny, except maybe when it’s used ironically. That little flutter in your heart when you hear the word “fuck” should be saved for all the times you hear the word “love.” Did you know that the word ‘profane’ means “outside the temple” in Latin? I didn’t, and it blew my sexual-intercourse-having mind.

So, as we continue to use our profanities, I challenge everyone to get more creative with your insults, and be more accurate in describing your shitty day. It just makes for better conversation, I’m not really thinking of the children.

note: There’s a book by Steven Pinker that I’ve been trying to get a hold of, and it’s supposed to be a very interesting (and fun) read on language. Check it out at after the link.

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On action

I have a lot of respect for artists that do things. Wow, deep, I know. What I mean is, I don’t care if the work is good or bad, but just the fact that it has been created, is enough to justify its existence, for me. So I don’t know why it’s so hard for me to feel the same way about my own work. Anything I do, I immediately think about the big picture. Who does this affect? How will it be received? Am I proud of this? I think it cripples me with fear and I end up either trashing and starting over, or anxiously wringing my hands as it is exposed. It’s not even that that I think that my work is precious. Because I know, that whatever I do, I will have a different opinion of it in one week.

I realized in a conversation I had with Nelson that this is something that sets us apart. I have all these preconceived notions of how something should be done. We were discussing the making of a book, and I began thinking out loud. Within five minutes I had gone from the simple question of, should we, or not, to suggesting changes to a website. This is a huge weakness. I am my own corporate red tape. After hearing me out, Nelson will usually respond with, “why?” And it usually pisses me off. What do you mean why? Everyone knows you need a business model. Or, everyone knows you need a target audience. Everyone knows that. And that is when I realize, I am wrong. Or, maybe I’m not necessarily wrong, but why am I not even questioning that maybe I am? I don’t know where or when I picked these things up, but I’m desperately trying to get rid of this prejudice that is turning me into the person I have been trying to avoid. I don’t want to be ‘the Man,’ but I am. And not like “yo you’re the man” but in a “stick it to the man” kind of way. It sucks.

So, this is my personal ‘call to action.’ To act first, discover, then think later. Because it’s harder the other way around, and because that’s how I’ve been doing it this whole time, except in the work I’m actually pleased with.

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Mamihlapinatapai

Mamihlapinatapai (sometimes spelled mamihlapinatapei) is a word from the Yaghan language of Tierra del Fuego, listed in The Guinness Book of World Records as the “most succinct word”, and is considered one of the hardest words to translate. It describes “a look shared by two people with each wishing that the other will initiate something that both desire but which neither one wants to start.”

For anyone that speaks more than one language or has even attempted to speak a second, accurately translating between the two is a common problem. I know that as someone who speaks Korean more or less fluently, I invent words, or use them out of context all the time. On my last visit, I was told I had great pronunciation and a very convincing accent, but my grammar and vocabulary shifted between that of an uneducated village boy and an elementary school student. I don’t really mind, and it has rarely put me in a difficult position. It’s amusing to watch the expressions of the person I’m speaking to change from confusion to understanding to amusement within a few milliseconds.

When you look at the word mamihlapinatapai, it kind of leaves something to be desired from the English language. I’ve realized that it’s pretty straightforward to translate a word from English into another language, but to do the opposite requires a lot more work. I think by having a single word to describe something like mamihlapinatapai, you are more prone to recognizing it when it happens. There are a lot of Korean words that I wouldn’t know how to being to explain, and I feel like this is why ancient Chinese proverbs sound so ridiculous in English.

Still, there are some good times to be had in broken translations. I was once given a suggestion and told it was just “a fruit of [her] mind”—meaning it came from her imagination. Something poetic about that isn’t there? And then there was that one time I was asked to be raped.

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