Notes written within a new term

The student has just clicked through the last slide in one of his presentations created with Sir PowerPoint's magic software. The gramophone on the cabinet is playing a song yclept 'Schau nicht auf die Uhr, schau lieber tiefer ins Glas hinein' while the so-called student, distant from reality, is finishing a bottle of Sir Ouzo's private beverage, bought at the airport of the country that shall not be named. The student is not really sober. The student is not really drunk, at least not as drunk as often he has been before. Is the student a happy fellow who is enjoying life at this moment in time? Yes, he is. Awake he is, too. Safe from the Spiderwoman nightmares. The student feels a certain sense of creativity and wants to research on a plethora of projects, such as the quality and evaluation of international railway toilets on track and at railway stations, the new wave of prudery amongst the youth of the 21st century A.D., and many other things the student by that time has already forgotten again. The student wants to tell some jokes as well but, alas, can't think of any. The student is putting a silvery disc into a black device. The screen shows material the student has filmed when he actually wasn't a student yet, back then in the time when mobile phones still had black-and-white screens, the internet came slowly with 56k on a CRT monitor and without social networking. The student sees himself and yet it seems another person. The student opens his snuff box, puts something onto his hand and takes it to his nose. The screen shows images already forgotten but not quite. They make the student smiles. He is surrounded by myriads of scripts and books he should learn for his examinations, as well as a dissertation he should work on. It is terribly cold and rainy and grey. Does that bother the student? No, it doesn't. Is there a reason for this? No, there isn't. Maybe something in the drink or in the snuff, maybe some person, event, email, or thought made the student happy. He can't really tell what it was. He doesn't really need to know. He is meeting people he hasn't met in years and has a fantastic time. He does some studying, too. And he booked a railway journey to the land where not milk and honey, but beer and chocolate flow. He doesn't know what to blog about though, or rather doesn't want to blog about some things that come to his mind. He is writing some semi-fictional rubbish just to keep his website alive for the time being, though at the time of writing he already has got ideas for the next real entry.

What Mr Snowman couldn't hear

Snow is falling on the pavement as I make my way to the good old 7 o'clock bus service wherein a plethora of pupils is packed like sardines. Like back in the old days when I was a pupil myself. I'm grown now, Mr old. I enter the gate, follow the golden stairs and the marble arch of the building that was built like a castle but was transformed for some lower reason. There it is: The Secret Chamber of Silence. Also known as the teacher staff room. But, when you are at times very quiet and careful, you way hear some voices in it, mind you. Like Statler and Waldorf (what an appropriate simile for schools), the two old men are sitting on chairs in the corner and let out on cynicism after another. Is this really what my future job is gonna be like? Five weeks of almost silence. Mr Snowman doesn't have ears. Lucky him. If he would have ears, here's a random collection of sentences and statements he could have heard from either students or teachers during the last four weeks.

"If you really want to learn something, you have to listen to me"
"I am already a teacher. You are not."
"If you want to be stubborn, remain stubborn."
"I think I've chosen the wrong job."
"This is horrible. This doesn't make sense."
"You have a nice English accent. It's not German, like mine."
"It's not fun at all to teach."
"We need to be serious."
"We can play these tricks on our real teacher, not on him, he's only a student."
"I'm not feeling very well these days."
"I really need to go."

Jesus. So much passion in these rooms that it's needless to say that you can't find friends in there. I found an enemy though. She's teaching as if the 1940s never have passed. Same methods, same style, against all modern didactic and paedagogic theory. But does she care? No, she doesn't. Is this the life I'm gonna be leading in future?
To be fair, there are also two teacher that are quite good, and one that I really love. They never talk outside the lesson though. Why should they? That's not paid for. Good that Mr Snowman doesn't have to listen to all this rubbish. Just one more week of 7 o'clock services and little sleep during which I actually should already be back at uni. Oh well.

In partenza, estate

The days grow shorter because the energy-saving lamp needs to be switched on longer. The railway replacement service gets replaced. Again real trains and the new stations are fancy (I preferred the replacement service timetable though). The trunks and short-sleeved shirts still lie there as a joke. The jumpers and jackets need to be gotten out of the wardrobe again and in its pockets I find an old train ticket of happier days that can be disposed of now. The temperature does no longer feel the need to climb the scary 20°C mark. Why should it? The rain drops down in the quantities of the sea I used to watch. Chocolate santas, oranges, tangerines, mulled wine and gingerbread are gathering in the shelves of supermarkets whilst the strawberries are bidding their last farewell. The world of English literature that I haven't looked at for half a year seems to catch my interest again, so do films and the internet. The summer is, like many other things, far away and only still present in my thought like a creepy haunting ghost that won't stop. All these pictures, mails, posts, blogs, stories, memories seem like fairy tales out of another world, another time. To be read by moonlight or a Christmas fire and to haunt the dreams and thoughts. The vacation comes to an end and the alarm clock is waiting impatiently to get ready for its 6 o'clock service. The research is waiting for its collection at the library, for its reading, its underlining, its quoting. Guinness is celebrating its 250th birthday next week. A pint would be nice now. English tea will have to do for the moment. The last bag. Everybody is somewhere else than where they used to be a year ago. The fairy tale wife is travelling through some countries, dunno which. My snuff box needs to be filled up soon. The national parliament needs to be elected. The love of my youth and teenagehood is getting married in about three weeks. The final exams need to be studied for. A girl from my school-days brings an old poem that I haven't thought about for a decade: 'Was ich nicht heiß, ist nicht mein Name. Was ich nicht kalt, bleibe ich im Bett.' It brings loads of memories with it. But it's the last line that sticks in my mind and bites and stings. I will stay in bed. Hibernation time, probably. There'll I think about it all. About the Greek thoughts that still linger in my mind, too. About much more and much less. About next summer maybe. Maybe not about Valency Dictionaries. But certainly about you.
As the romans would say: Bona nox.

Once

I'm back, again, yet another time. The pile of pathetic research creeps up on my left, the computer with all its pathetic emails in it on the right. I can't be bothered to any of these. I wanna hide myself under the quilt or bang my head against the walls. I don't wanna see, talk, smell, feel, speak. I wanna burn down all the books and libraries, I wanna write "Fuck your 'Sehr geehrter Herr...' and fuck your 'Mit freundlichen Grüßen..'" back. I'm shaking and I'm terrified. Her words linger on when she is far away. She is so right with everything she said. It hurts, of course it does. Her words ring through my mind, about hostels and time, acquaintances and friends, life here and there, and all the other things that are too bleak, too dark, too blue to blog them, to speak about them publicly, privately, or to anyone but her. She is too right. Most often things in life just happen once, and even though you don't wish to believe it or wish it to be true, they're gone, maybe a year or two before you realise it. Long ago, she told me the following: 'carry it inside you, this place you call home, for some people are never blessed with one. it's better to have seen it, to have felt it, but to have eventually lost it, than to have never known it exists. so pity all the fools around you, the ones who scorn you and laugh at you, the ones who don't care to listen, what do they know? the friends you thought would understand, the friends you thought would care, they see you in the streets and they change direction. you should never have talked to them in the first place, so wrong of you to expect even the smallest thing from them. do not consider anyone your friend. have fun with them and then go home and talk to the walls, they will be more understanding. you'll find that the people you didn't hold that close to you were after all your only friends, for a friend is not the person who likes the things you like, a friend is the person who likes you. don't worry about things you cannot control and don't let people who don't deserve it hurt you. you haven't really lost anything because aparrently there was nothing to be lost. you can't lose someone who never invested anything on you. to love is to invest, your feelings, your trust, your future. the people who leave you because you're no longer fun, because they're no longer the most important people in your life, because they have better things to do, they're not worth a dime. keep smiling, don't give them the pleasure. there will be better people, there will be better things, have a little faith.I miss this illusion of what life could have been, of whom i could have been. [...]'. She was right of course, she always is in a way. Even though she verbally stabs my heart, takes away all my pleasure, hopes and dreams, is killing me softly with her words of truth and honesty, is making me scream and cry, I like her all the more for that, in a weird way probably nobody else than me can see, let alone understand. It hurts, but it's a sweet kind of hurt. She moved on and I haven't. Again, she is sitting opposite me in a bar, not even in her worst mood, but her truest one, and she is making my world, a world that has nothing to do with the real world out there, fall apart. Long ago, she also said: 'you are a bit out of touch with reality in general and that's one of the reasons why i like you', now probably the reason why she does no longer, I dunno. It's all too scary and too real and incomprehensible. She is too right. Beauty just happens once.

Greece - The true experience

"Greece has an abundance of resources that tourists with ecological and cultural interests will find attractive", so it says on the official website of the Greek tourist board. The standard tourist travelling into this Hellenic country may indeed find this and may never get to know even more. For him (or her), this blog entry shall provide some insights, thoughts, theories, information and above all, a true experience.
She texts me in the morning that she is not feeling well and has to leave her underpaid job with a plethora of working hours and a neglection of basic human bodily needs, such as sleep. So, I go out exploring, the country is all mine. I need to cross the road to the bus station which is easier said than done whilst myriads of cars are pushing towards me from all directions. I finally manage and see an old man behind me, one-legged. He does not cross the road, far from it he without a fear walks from car to car in order to beg for some money, not a second scared about death. I leave him behind and enter the bus. "επόμενη στάση , next stop", the computerised voice announces every now and then. I get of again, the central square with the central smell. I buy myself a bottle of water and it takes the salesperson about 5 minutes to translate the price into the non-hellenic tongue. I walk around town and meet people looking through all the bins, hoping to find the right material to sell at the next fair or market. I get to that market, but don't really feel like becoming a consumer. So, I go to the White Tower, which is anything but white, and where they tell me that I'm not allowed in. So, back to the square, and along my way I see a corpse lying around in the middle of the street. I take the next bus back. There is an old woman. She sits down next to me and kicks me. Brilliant. I'm finally home, but she is not. I'm biding my time and am staring at the ceiling. One hour, five, ten, eight. The bell rings. She enters exhaustedly and tells me that she doesn't want to have a conversation. She falls asleep and my thoughts walk around. The true experience - or only the beginning?

La vita è bella...

;-)

'See you next Tuesday'

Surprisingly, if you look up this phrase in any of the big dictionaries available for the English language, you can't find it anywhere (yet). Nor can it be found in any grammatical explanation or linguistic essay. For those readers who are puzzled themselves now about what I am talking about, let me briefly explain that 'See you next Tuesday' is a backronym, viz an acroynm the other way round. Backronyms are fairly rare in the English language and usually of a joke-like nature, so 'Fix it again tomorrow' has become a backronym for FIAT, for example. The Tuesday example is different since it draws also on recent developments such as mobile texting or Internet language, whereby the letters c and u metonymyically stand for entire words. Puzzled everything together from that jigsaw now? Yes, 'cunt' is what people secretly call you in England (By the by, I don't know whether this backronym is known in other English-speaking countries as well. If you happen to know, let me know.), when the say 'See you next Tuesday' to you. There is of course a hidden ambiguity in it when they actually are going to meet you again on the following Tuesday.
So far, so good. The question now arises why the word 'cunt' for instance is so much taboo in the English language and why similar sound words such as 'cent', 'can't', or 'Kent' are not? And why is it that in all the languages I know it is the same body part the word for which is also used as a taboo word, swear word, or whatever you may call it? (There is no precise term for that concept in the English language actually, Italian offers 'parolaccia'.) Or more generally, is my hypothesis, which as far as I know is not cited anywhere in academic literature yet, namely ++All parolacce refer to basic human body parts or to basic bodily functions++ indeed true?? I don't know. Let me know, if you do. It is also interesting to note that parolacce usually refer to what society considers - and that of course only for arbitrary reasons - intimate body parts. So, for instance phrases such as *'You are a nose hole.' or *'You bellybutton' would not work because the body parts are not considered intimate enough. Gender studies could raise the question why parolacce refering to female organs are perceived as more offensive than those refering to male ones? Apart from that the question also needs to be resolved why in some societies these words are used quite frequently in everyday conversation (e.g. Italy), in some countries less (i.e. England) and in some they hardly seem to be ever used at all (e.g. Germany). It also needs to be questioned wheter my theories hold true for all countries, also for those native languages far off from Western 'civilisation' which would indeed mean that the bodily grounding is basic. Lastly, a backronym is also a challange for Linguists concerned with syntax, because of course you could say 'See you next Tuesday' is VP + NP + ADV or some other pattern depending on which grammatical model you follow, but ultimately this would miss the point. All these questions might be worth further consideration (in my dissertation maybe), but now it's time for holidays first. Buona vacanza!!