Thoughts on Culture

We’re reading, or have read part of, a book about culture, Learning from the Stranger by David I. Smith. We’ve only read the prologue, “Relinquishing the Center,” and the first chapter, “How Not to Bless The Nations,” but I am a nerd and find it quite interesting, so I read the following chapter: “Culture and Bad Breath.” I love the way everything is deconstructed in this book—the notion of “culture,” the trouble with any one person addressing culture, the assumptions taken into “cultural experiences,” etc.—with a plethora of examples and excerpts for concepts, for words, for the concept of words . . . and of course, I love the words the author chooses—the underhand humor, eloquent and concise, the section titles (Behaving Yourself in Public, for example, or Talking Past One Another). 

Alrighty, enough nerdiness. What sermon is about to be unloaded? Look out . . . you’ve been warned. No, really, no sermon, just some little ah-has and hmms and ohs and os (not the reflexive of vosotros os but the difference between Oh! and O!)

Café behavior: the cafés here are like little restaurants. Anything less it is a café/bar, which most all are anyway, but point being, my mind goes into restaurant mode. I’ve known for some time that American restaurant service is, well, different. And generally speaking the message is “Hi, how are you, eat, drink, tip, (and leave so we can accommodate more revenue, er, guests).” There is not a high regard for letting people set and enjoy a meal unless there is a hefty price tag. This has always been an annoyance for me, even more so when whomever I am eating out with is impatient with the “slow service.” Take your sweet time, I think without a tint of sarcasm and refrain from kicking my dining buddy under the table. Anyway, I went to a café here to have, well, a café and found myself tense until I paid and left. I could have set there probably a full hour before they brought me the tab, but I happened to only have a quarter-hour to burn. It was exactly the type of environment I wish we had more of in the U.S. but there I was all balled up inside, bracing myself to get hurried along, nagged, hovered over by an anxious waiter. Despite how much I dislike such environments and wistfully wish for others, I subconsciously expect it . . . no wonder the world here is always telling me “tranquila.” I am a tense americana.

On that note: americanos. Eh? Yup, that is us. What does that mean? And what does one say when asked “are all Americans so _______?” Well, no, but I don’t know if we are all generally more so in that direction than the general population here . . . No we don’t all have guns at home. No I do not like ketchup, therefore, not all Americans like ketchup. I couldn’t make you a hamburger safely if you wanted it. Not all of our homes came out of a TV show. But it is shocking what one learns about oneself by hearing cultural assumptions based on personal habits. For example: “¡Annie! ¡Eres super timída!” The following question translated something to the effect of “Are all Americans so bashful/shy/timid?” It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that one is more introverted or extroverted, but that it is written all over one’s face to someone of another culture makes one think. More on that situation—this question came from a Columbiana to an Americana in España. I just love that fact.

Huevos revueltos. Food, no I cannot write without addressing food. Sorry. Last night I taught my mamá here how to make scrambled eggs. Trust me, she is a genius in the kitchen—it is as simple as scrambled eggs are not a common food here. Eggs tend to come (in my experience) steamed on spinach, in the form of a tortilla, or hard-boiled. I did not realize my not spicing food completely to my liking was a quirk. I do not put any spices in my eggs unless I am the only one eating them, and generally I like salt and pepper on top of the eggs rather than cooked in anyway. Mi mamá asked twice about putting salt in and when I mentioned pepper she asked immediately if that should be cooked in, and I shrugged and told her I generally think it’s better to let each season to his or her own liking with eggs and certain foods. I think she found it amusing—she just grinned and said “so you really do like it that way? Each person to his or her preference . . .”

What I’m doing write now: sitting in my room on my bed typing. Completely normal. For me. I’m a cave troll. I’m either in the cave (my room) or out and about (exploring the great outdoors) or hunting (playing in the kitchen) or attending cave-troll school (popping in and out of classrooms and academic buildings at Calvin). I have to remember that my cave dwelling sends bad vibes. And I think worse here than at home. At home it’s a given—look, the troll left her cave!—but here it is an unusual level of time alone. Even if I am doing homework or reading, there is a certain amount of time everyone spends together, it is an unspoken rule (of at least this house), even if that time together everyone has their face in a different screen (Jaime watching the game in his iphone, Raquel on her laptop checking facebook and tuenti, Alicia juggling her ipad, iphone, and computer, while the TV rambles on . . .) they can look up and chat because they are together. Hmmm.

Enough un-profundity for one night. Buenas,

Annie

The Persuasion of Lyme

[Working on an essay for The British Novel and reached a point regarding possibly one of my favorite paragraphs in Persuasion. Thought I'd share just for kicks.]
“. . . with the very beautiful line of cliffs stretching out to the east of town . . . [the] scenes in its neighbourhood, Charmouth, with its high grounds and extensive sweeps of country, and still more its sweet retired bay, backed by dark cliffs, where fragments of low rock among sands make it the happiest spot for watching the flow of the tide, for sitting in unwearied contemplation . . .” (89)
[My thoughts]: Lyme presents novelty to almost all involved, and it is a striking novelty, as evidenced by Austen’s attention to its description. The assertion that “a very strange stranger it must be, who does not see the charms in the immediate environs of Lyme, to make him wish to know it better” (89) is enough to suggest that the scenery persuades one to forget and lose oneself in the greater surrounding picture. Anne is persuaded.
[If anyone actually reads this and has read the book, favorite descriptions?]

What does Annie do? Read :)

Well, I have read Cold Mountain. And it wasn’t half as bad as multiple people made it out to be. I liked Ruby, and Inman too. Ada was a bit annoying but not wretched. The language was not riveting . . . what made it worthwhile? The philosophical musings perhaps. The attentiveness to nature, to the individual aspects of the terrain of home. Those are probably the very things that have turned folks off to Charles Frazier’s novel, but it is where I was able to connect, even though initially the descriptions seemed wanting of eloquence, they did bring back the wee romantic’s desire to go play in the Appalachian Mountains and reminded me of the expansiveness of my own playground, but taken down to Cold Mountain level: The color, the feel, the emotion of one stream/river/creek in one place. Inman has vivid, almost developed beyond reality, memory of the land of Black Cove and Cold Mountain, of detail. It is easy enough to be enamored of a place as a vague whole, but it takes and is so much more to pay attention to the individual brush strokes and how they make up the whole. The aspects of the land become poetical fragments; all together the poem is complete, but each separate line, word group, is captivating in its own right. In a nutshell: it is about a woman, Ada, left to tend a large amount of land with no knowledge of the how and a soldier’s journey to this woman through the south and up into the mountains; it is about the people who transform Ada and the people transformed by Inman, with the Civil War and lack of trust permeating their lives.

The Dream Life of Sukhanov by Olga Grushin. Read it. It is not a fast read, if read quickly, the book is lost. But it is hard to put down. Grushin has a way with word and description that paints portraits of the Russian landscape and life with incredible potency. The language is genius; it flows and swirls and stumbles with Sukhanov and the life that seems to be taking place around him, behind him, within him, and apart from him, as the surreal present collides with the neglected past. The words color and leap from the page, enrapturing the senses to feel and experience, yet releasing long enough to chastise Sukhanov, but before one can flounce off in disgust of his outbursts, his insensitivity, his seeming stupidity even, there is pull to pity, to relate, and again, one is lost weaving in and out of that potent dream life with Sukhanov, as Sukhanov. 

Initial Musings--what on Earth am I doing?

I’m thinking about starting a blog . . . it could have been started over Spring break, but I would have needed to have remembered my camera (food, yello). It would have served the same purpose as the e-mails (namely, entertainment and expression of sorts, the joy of writing), but it would give me something to do now. The dealio is that I am here, in the place with the people to whom the emails were sent. Who would read it? Does it matter? What would I write about? Books? Adventures beyond the literary scope . . . ha, uhh, really, lacking in that department. I did head out to downtown on Monday to discover . . . no more free parking?! Nope. Not in the immediate downtown vicinity, so I parked two streets over from Pacific, which is no big deal, I’m just sick of gimping around in a boot. Whine whine whine. Pues. Results perhaps on Thursday. But what happened downtown?

Well :) I went to . . . Logos! and Bookshop Santa Cruz! Shush, reading is a good thing. And bought: MacBeth, The Merchant of Venice, and Love’s Labour’s Lost. Cringe. Yes, I do have The Complete Works of Shakespeare and The Necessary Works of Shakespeare. But the latter is what I have at home and it does not have Love’s Labour’s which is what Shakespeare Santa Cruz is performing, along with Othello, which I am super excited about and have full intentions of attending. The other two are in the Necessary volume (what a preposterous idea), but it is quite cumbersome. If I go off to gimp around the harbor or whatever, I would prefer to have a book-sized book, not a text size book to read.

Cooking adventures? Hmm. I made pugliese bread. It turned out fabulous.

Shucks, it looks as though I did do the blog thing. I exist online. What a scary thought. But why a blog? Hmm . . . because, selfishly, I like to write, but I can be very reclusive and as a result unintentionally exclusive. It is not an excuse not to chat with folks in person or on the phone; although I do ignore phone calls sometimes. It is just an experiment—writing semi-publically. Pues. Es todo. Yes, I’ll use Spanish de vez en cuando. Jejeje. Tis fun. Maybe I’ll even write alliterative blogs (oh, it is so much fun, alliteration . . . I carried on a hypothetical conversation in my mind for the endurance of a ten mile run—all of my hypothetical responses were expressed alliteratively).