Nothing but the Start

Oddly enough, we don’t celebrate Thanksgiving over here in Europe.

Nevertheless, most of my friends from home (America) expect to see me over the holiday and ask if I am having turkey dinner on Thursday night. The answer is no. For Thanksgiving this year, I worked, went to yoga, then ate two cookies and drank a spot of tea for dinner.

And when I say no, nothing for thanksgiving, people feel really sorry for me. Honestly (mom and dad cover your eyes), I could care less. That’s right; Thanksgiving is not my favorite holiday. Neither turkey nor (American) football is all that appealing and so the dinner – while it does make a house smell amazing – is not the end all be all. Yes, there are the “sides,” but green beans and pumpkin pie won’t send you into a food coma on the couch; and there is nothing like being taunted while rummaging in the refrigerator for lettuce leftovers to make you more annoyed than thankful: eating again? How could you possibly put more in your stomach??

Not to mention, it is stressful, this Thanksgiving business. Getting the bird from the store into the home into the oven onto the table. So much running around, so much family drama, so many people and personalities and emotions smooshed into a confined space on one, single day.

Living abroad, I am thankful that I do not have to contend with Thanksgiving. But I do miss the day after. This day right now: Friday. When America is placid and no one is working until Monday. When all the newspapers are running stories about what it means to give thanks and the columnists are personal about poverty, hunger, and war.

We get a lot of holidays here in Spain. And Europe is far more advanced than the United States when it comes to vacation days, thus promoting health, production, and creativity. But this November holiday is something the United States gets right. Take a look at Facebook and you will find thoughtful updates from friends about for what and whom they are thankful, their reasons for happiness, why we should remember those less fortunate. Not a single work-related email has arrived in my inbox from America since Wednesday night, and I won’t dare lob one across the ocean until Monday.

For many, Thanksgiving is a proper holiday of relief and a legitimate excuse to do absolutely nothing but be with the ones you love. It’s the nothing that I miss about Thanksgiving.

One year – to the chagrin and some horror of people who know me well enough to not have chagrin or horror at such a thing – I stayed home on New Year’s Eve. I didn’t go to any parties, I didn’t go out to dinner, I didn’t even watch that car wreck of a ball drop. I may have even gone to bed BEFORE the clock clicked midnight.

The next morning, quite pleased with myself, I jump out of bed: It’s a new year! It snowed two feet last night! The world is for the taking! I donned my boots and set forth into this beautiful new existence that comes with the first day of a new year.

It turns out, the New Year was closed.

Not only did every house on the block belong to a bankrupt film set, but the streets were unploughed, the sidewalks yet uncovered. I walked. I drank in the solitary beauty of a world in which everyone is asleep. And then my marvel turned paranoia and I needed reassurance that I was in Massachusetts and not a twilight zone.

Luckily, Porter Square Books, a delightfully independent store with good books and good coffee and good food was actually open – and the person who took my coffee order did not seem vexed that my arrival validated her need to work so early on New Year’s day.

And finally, here’s my point. (A point to bringing up wintry New England from a Madrid-based computer in May? Yes.) The point is that New Year’s Day in Boston* is like every Sunday in Madrid.

Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still. Many of us in the United States use our weekends to get things done. “Doing errands” is a true American pastime. And so, a culture shock for an American in Madrid is the inability to do anything that resembles an errand after 2pm on Saturday and anytime at all on Sunday.

This scenario is armed with a plethora of positives. In Spain, one is forced to slow down on Sunday, those with family in the area (and that would be many) spend their afternoon together, there is plenty of time to sit at a sunny terraza with a drink and the world’s best potato chip. There is time to just be. I’d say that’s rather good for the soul, wouldn’t you?

For me, Sunday bestows the time to attempt at shaping these words into some coherent form. And yet, make no mistake that as I write this, my dry cleaning remains uncollected for the second week in a row, my refrigerator is resolutely bare, my shoes need cobbling, and there are a million odds and ends that I need to do and buy but cannot. I cannot because it is also Sunday for the people who work in those stores.

And so, Sundays in Madrid – while there is still plenty to do (lest the Spanish tourism office take offense) – are delightfully quiet. And they often remind me of that New Year’s Day in Boston when I had the world to myself. If Sunday is the cousin of New Year’s day, perhaps it’s an opportunity to set some resolutions, to look at the world and our lives with a renewed enthusiasm that flows through the next six days.

Why not? There’s nothing else to do.

*and by Boston, I mean Cambridge and Somerville.

I am scared of the telephone. No joke. The landline rings in my flat and I make myself busy. I start doing the dishes. There is no way to pick up the phone when your hands are all soapy.

The phone is the devil to a person learning another language. If I pick up a ringing phone there will be some fast talking Spaniard on the other end – and they are just as difficult to interrupt as they are to understand. Once I do manage to slip in and ask them to speak more slowly, they just start the entire conversation over again at the same speed… because, let’s be realistic here, I am picking up a ringing phone in Spain. Where they speak Spanish.

Watching dubbed television is equally ridiculous. When the mouths form shapes that do not match the sounds coming from the TV, it’s impossible to follow. But so much is dubbed here in Spain that I should get over it — just like my fear of the telephone. Spain is going to keep on dubbing American TV shows and the phone is going to keep on ringing.

Sometimes I bump into my Madrileña roommate in the hallway and we will have a conversation while I am not wearing contacts or glasses. I can’t see her lips moving, so I must concentrate. I unconsciously move closer and closer to her in an effort to see her face. Now, Americans find this lack of space between two people horrifying, but the Spanish would probably prefer to converse when I can’t see, because it means I am an appropriate two inches away from them.

Getting out of one’s comfort zone is always a good thing and clearly my zone exists as far away from the telephone as possible. But today I got over one of those ridiculous hurdles and actually, willingly (well, okay not entirely willingly) picked up the phone to make a call in Spanish. Ironically, for an eye doctor’s appointment.

We’ll see if it was a success when I go to the given destination at 9pm next Tuesday.

Wait…9pm doesn’t seem like an appropriate time for an eye doctor’s appointment, does it?

The first thing you notice is that her movements are tidy, businesslike, and efficient. In fact, the only thing you really see are her hands. And when the two people at the front of the audience simultaneously move their eyes from her to the slides, she stops moving altogether.

I, on the other hand, cannot keep my eyes off her. Nor can I stop watching her replacement – a younger girl who tires after ten minutes because, my guess is, she uses her entire body. She even employs her face to relay the verbal place-holders (uhhhh) and grimaces Christopher Poole uses when he cannot find the words to describe his ridiculously popular image board website. And when the words do come, they are obscure packages like “Internet meme” and “online handles.” Even the commonplace “servers and bandwidth” seems daunting in the land of signage. As someone who, just the other week, accidentally said “mesa” instead of “mes” I cannot fathom finding the words to translate a presentation about the origin of 4chan and Canvas…with my hands.

The New York Times says that Poole is a successful public speaker, but that is being kind. Surely, in a year’s time he will be a star but on this day he stands in one place, he flops his hands around, he suffers from dry mouth. It’s the content that sells. the content underneath the delivery. (coupled with the draw of getting a look at this 23 year old who created, from his boyhood bedroom, the Internet’s next big thing.)

As luck would have it, the third signer is a mix of the previous two: she is not as calm as the first, nor is she as passionate or desperate as the last.

I am at the front for these things (particularly in a large crowd such as this) because it is common knowledge that sitting at the front of the class helps you hear, see, and understand the content. And clearly I get distracted; because this whole sign language thing begets the contemplation of how we access and digest meaning.

Not only do our words create a thin veil over the value we attempt to communicate, but these signers demonstrate (for how else can they do it?) that our bodies likewise get in the way. Here were three examples – ranging from cold to moderate to effusive and I’m hard pressed to claim that one surpasses the other.

I would have loved to have asked the two deaf audience goers their opinion. Do you prefer a translator who is over the top or muted? How about somewhere in between? At what point is personality necessary and when does it get distracting?

Perhaps it is simply a matter of taste. We choose people to be part of our lives based on what works for us. Because, surely we are all translators for one another in this world. And the trick is to find others who render what they see, hear, touch, taste, and know in a way we can understand. On a limb, it is arguable that “meaning” in the world is one singular thing cut into pieces, dispersed, then multiplied in its various moving parts. Everything headed in separate directions.

Of course, if we all understood each other perfectly, the world would be a simple, uncomplicated place. Misunderstandings keep the world from being boring, keep our lives beautiful and interesting and new because we must forever endeavor to find ways to understand.

I can do without the straightforward translation. On the other hand, I want a fighting chance to know my own meaning of the world.

But, that’s just me.

A friend from Boston came to visit some months ago, and I was hesitant about whether she’d fit into my new Madrid apartment. My US condo was spacious and comfortable — perfectly laid out to reflect “me” and respond to my needs. I loved it. Visitors tended to fall asleep on my couch with the afternoon light streaming through the windows, but I took this as a compliment to the space’s calming influence rather than a sense of boredom.

So, needless to say, I was dubious about my friend’s reaction to my Spanish quarters of 50 sq meters. Now, she’s a kind girl as well as a small girl, so I wasn’t expecting her to drop her bags and look around aghast.

But I wasn’t expecting her to love it either. To my surprise, she thought the apartment perfectly reflected me. She would have been able to easily pick this poor, small, shabby apartment that tried to sneak by without a kitchen, right out of a lineup. (It did boast floor to ceiling windows and a central location.) Granted, I had brought a rug and some small but prized frames with me to Madrid, and there were some books present. But I was surprised.

And so, months later, I think of this surprise as I lay on a new bed in my new bedroom in a new barrio of Madrid. Supposedly, my whole living situation has changed. I’m sharing with roommates after a long stint of choosing to do otherwise. This is quite different. This is a change.

But my room looks quite familiar — and will undoubtedly look familiar to this friend when she pays another visit. And it makes me wonder — based on these very physical indications — is change really possible? We may change our surroundings. We may change our appearance. We may change our job and even our daily routine. Our tastes evolve. We can choose to change how we spend our time, and we can choose to take our past history into consideration and change how we react to people, places, things.

And yet, we keep dragging our selves with us wherever we go.

An adapter is a connector for joining parts or devices having different sizes, designs, etc., enabling them to be fitted or to work together. (Random House)

In the taxi on the way to Barajas airport, I closed my eyes.  Simply leaned my head back and rested, even though the scene out the window was beautiful – the sort of thing for which an American should keep her eyes open.

But one gets used to things.

Madrid is flat but there are always mountains and hills in the distance.  And the color is this auburn orange dotted with Cyprus, olive, and dusty pine – colors that sit well under clouds that can’t decide which hue of grey to be.

It’s not something I’d ever think would become ordinary to me.  But I’ve plugged my American self into a Spanish adapter, and such is the day to day – just like the more mundane things over the past year: Spanish keyboard, hanging laundry to dry, lunch after 2pm.

Acclimation cannot simply be a bad thing.  We grow accustomed not only to the wondrous of life but also to the not so pleasant.  This is particularly helpful in circumstances that we cannot change.  For example, my grandmother, a painter, is losing her sight – an irreversible situation that calls for adjustment and acclimation.  Useful adaptation.

Nevertheless, I’d like to choose when to adapt.  I’d like to choose not to become blasé about the highlight reel.  What does it mean that we, as human beings, are such good adapters that we steer our existence to the middle ground by making the beautiful ordinary and the ugly palatable?

These days, my life is filled with adapters.  I’m talking now about those little electrical devices that I am always leaving behind – at the office, in hotels, on airplanes.  My hairdryer is from Spain, my laptop from the US, and my phone from the UK.  And, yes, I also live in constant anticipation that my appliances are going to explode at any given moment.

So, here’s a tip – to keep your computer and your self from browning out: Don’t leave items plugged in and unattended.

Ever try speed dating?  I’m fascinated by it but will likely never do it.  (Although I  wholeheartedly support your decision to give it a go.)  In fact, I have a New York (female) friend or two who’ve found it thoroughly enjoyable.

I bring up speed dating because that’s what it felt like being in Boston the other week.  I hadn’t been back in a while (I wait so long because it doesn’t feel so long until I land in Logan.)  I was speed dating my friends and former colleagues.  Many of my phone conversations/emails went like this: I have an hour here… do you have an hour here?  Luckily though, I didn’t need to do any thin slicing (Gladwell) since I adore these people, but packing them into two or three hour time slots is difficult. And exhausting. And not good enough.

It was a handful of days to see everyone I could (not a dent) while claiming to be more available in December (highly unlikely), and driving to favorite locations (ahem, being driven) to eat anything that wasn’t a tapa, and ordering all the holiday coffee drinks at starbucks.  Spain’s starbucks does not believe – perhaps to their benefit – in pumpkin spice, peppermint mocha, or gingerbread lattes.  (I admit to drinking Starbucks in both America and Spain.  Kill me.)

And in the whirlwind, I noticed that my old haunt did not disappear while I had turned my back:

• The front yard of my condo still insists on re-blooming flowers in November.
• The weather is still cold and mists at you; umbrellas are useless.
• The sidewalks are still lethal with heels.
• Harvard Square’s Pho Pasteur still makes excellent tofu vegetable soup, just under a different name.
• Union Square’s Bloc 11 still makes the best sandwiches and lets you swap or add any ingredient.  (Don’t try that in Spain.)
• Any coffee shop in Somerville or Cambridge still makes me feel at home.
• The girls at the table next to you are still beautiful and bookish and talking about bottom of the pyramid and microfinancing.  The boys are still reading Sartre.
• There still isn’t any real need to go across the river into Boston.

And all that is a relief because I still really like it there.

Of course, there were some developments (hello completed road construction on Somerville Ave).  In fact, being away for a year allowed me to see how much my friends have changed during that time.  Many of them will be surprised to read that sentence; they probably think they are just going along their life, one day after the next, going to work, going to dinner, going to sleep.  But the friend speeding made clear how different they all are from one another, how their paths have forked into unique lives.

In the past year, one or more of my friends has: gotten married, become a mother or a father (again), moved apartments, gone into therapy, found a new job, been promoted, become a vegetarian, fixed a relationship, ended a relationship, shown their work in a gallery, taken one step closer to knowing what they want.

Most of them look like the best version of themselves: shiny and sleek and happy.  And I wouldn’t have noticed that if I had spent the year with them.  Funny how that step back really helps things (like taking a long, non-America style vacation.)  So, I resolve to think of them – my “old” friends – if ever I feel that I’m just going through the motions.  Because things are happening even when we feel we are standing still (I dare you to quote Lennon) and we just need to be reminded to step back and take a good look.

And that’s what friends are for, isn’t it?

For the most part, Americans are really friendly.  It’s true.  We will talk to you if you sidle up to the bar and sit down by yourself.  By the end of the evening you will feel you’ve made a friend.  We’re fairly open, engaging, and ready to hear the other side of things.  (But be prepared, many Americans will also be ready to tell you the other side of things.)

Bars in Madrid are not quite like that.  From what I can tell thus far, people tend to go to the bar with their friends and stick to that group for the evening.  Makes sense in its way, just as the American bar scene makes sense.  Good and bad.

But before this becomes a post about alcohol, let me get back to friendliness.  Where does it cross into politeness?  What does it share with simple openness and comfort in one’s own existence?  (internal editor sighing, fingertips reeling it back in.)

The Spanish have this wonderful custom of saying buenos dias every time they walk into a room or pass someone on the street.  And saying hasta luego when they leave a room full of people.

It’s baffling for an American.  For a while there, I thought everyone knew everyone in the world.

When I figured out that this was just a custom, I was still at a loss as to when it was appropriate to greet people in the street and when I could feign exhaustion from greeting everyone in the street.

But you know, it’s really nice, this Spanish thing.  If you are eating in a restaurant and the table next to you gets up to leave, someone in that group will undoubtedly bid you a good day.  It’s only natural isn’t it?  I mean, you were neighbors for a meal, you partook of the same air and added to the atmosphere.

I cannot say that the Spanish custom of acknowledgement is better or not as good or equal to American openness.  Neither gives me all that I want.  Americans still pretend the people on the sidewalk do not exist and the Spanish still don’t seem to care about getting to know the person next to them. (Forgive me these unseemly generalizations.)

But both lean towards the common idea that we are all in this world together.  And that’s easy to understand.

Today, I wrote an out of office automated email and it included this sentence: “I am currently out of the office with limited access to email and will get back to you during the week of August 30^th.”

It seemed crazy.  I thought they might take me away, so I changed the reply email to include no return date.  Because that August 30th just seems so incredible.  As I am typing this, the month still goes by the name of JULY.

This is where some European countries, like Spain, have it so absolutely right.  Compared to the United States, where one takes little spits of long weekends while remaining fully connected to the office, Spaniards seem to forgo choose-your-own-vacation days for a full month in the summer to do as they please.  And, since most everyone takes the exact four weeks of vacation, not much happens at the office.  Projects are not getting pushed along, true, but neither are you putting your workload on the shoulders of some other poor soul who doesn’t happen to be on vacation.

The aptly named “Vacation Deprivation Survey” from Expedia, shows that while Spain enjoys ample vacation time, the United States is at the bottom of the list (France is at the top with 38 days).  Not much of surprise, though, is it?

But it’s not just about the number of days off.  How many vacation days have you taken consecutively without checking in with the office?  My record in the United States was a full two weeks, and let me tell you, I felt like a rebel.  Coworkers were shocked! (And then they asked for time off.)

It’s the consecutive days when you detangle yourself from the everyday.  You have the time to learn something new, experience something more fully, accomplish a personal goal.  As lovely as it is, the everyday can numb us.  And so, taking a long break – many studies show – promotes health and happiness.  It boosts creativity.  All of these things, by the way, increase productivity.

A long enough break from the everyday can give us perspective, can remind us why we’ve chosen to make that everyday our life.

A UK reporter recently in Madrid for a piece on Spain’s economy mentioned that he had interviewed the debt collecting company called “El Cobrador del Frac.”  Intrigued, I had to learn more.   Now, this is no ordinary company.  Apparently, the debt collectors dress in a tuxedo and top hat, carry a briefcase, and follow “victims” around until they pay what is due.  If the tuxedo-ed  collector is knocking on your door or sitting at the table next to you in a restaurant, everyone knows why.  Apparently its not a bad business these days, given the state of the economy.

Upon further investigation, I found another (sister?) company, “El Cobrador del Track,” which seems to be for musicians going after unpaid royalties.  That collector  dresses up like, you guessed it, a (clean) musician and carries the tell-all briefcase but replaces the top hat with a guitar.  Appropriately, there’s a Facebook fan page.

The tactic is a bit old school, but it also patient and visible enough to get results.

What kind of success could this idea have in the United States?  I’m thinking there would be restraining orders.