a bit of past

My cousin Shannon has commissioned her family to write stories of their past experiences as sort of compendium of the family history. The aim is to enlighten her children about who we are, and who we were. This is not one of my usual cynical diatribes in which I try to be funny. Move to the next if that's your bag.

_____________________________________________________

I had this friend named George. Not talking about your grandfather, who is awesome and you’re very lucky to have, I’m talking about a very strange and wonderful person I knew some time ago.

In my late teens I had a band. I played drums, Rob played bass, Jodi played rhythm guitar and sang, Clint played lead guitar, and George just hung around. We weren’t that great, but George was a dedicated follower. Like us, he was about eighteen or nineteen. Unlike us —and this blew my mind at the time— he had two young boys. He shared the kids with his on/off girlfriend. She was crazy and violent. But with George, this perhaps can be forgiven.

He was a difficult guy to understand. Not only because he had a tendency to mumble, but because he was wracked with a terrible stutter. This combination can be deadly in terms of coherency. He was a heavy smoker and occasional hare-brained philosopher. . . when you could understand what he was saying. It must have been frustrating for him; having all these incredible thoughts and having them torpedoed by his unreliable mouth. At times, when he mumbled and stuttered, he did it enthusiastically.

Truth is, at the beginning I didn’t think much of him. People claimed he was hyper-intelligent, and there were moments when that would shine through, but for the most part I thought he was in idiot. He was easy to make fun of, and we all did. It wasn’t born of some cruelty. The fact of the matter is that he did stupid things — like use my father’s university scarf as a baby-wipe, or dive head-first into nearby lake and emerge, his head covered in feces.

The years went on, alliances in the band shifted —I started dating Jodi’s ex-girlfriend, Devon. Devon and I had been friends prior to this and she turned to me romantically, I think, out of the shear neglect she experienced from Jodi. While “the boys” ignored us due to heavy involvement in a role-playing game she and I were left to our own devices. Long eye-contact changed to soft touches. We fell utterly and hopelessly in love.

Devon is easy to love. Warm, sweet, caring, tomboy, stunning, she is gifted with wonderful attributes. For me, it was two things: I’m a sucker for red-heads — she is as beautiful a ginger as they come, and she has the voice of an angel. I have never heard something that sounded so beautiful. It’s the only voice that can move me to tears. She has a lot of other great things going on, but I suspect it’s her gregariousness that caused men to fall in love with her. I personally know quite a few of them, and I think that many still do. George did at one point. But, it never got in the way of our growing friendship.

I started to realize that George was, in fact, a kind of tortured genius. His personal life was a train-wreck; the kids, the crap jobs, the social blunders, getting kicked out of his house. It went on, and on. He was always a guy that demanded a lot from his friends because of acts of utter stupidity and weird twists of fate.

The night before I was going to move to Montreal with Devon I got desperate 3 am call from him. It turns out he had run out of gas two hours out of town, and he was in the middle of nowhere. He wanted me to fill a jerry-can and drive it out to him to refill his tank. After cursing him for several minutes I got in the car to find him. When I finally did I asked him what happened. He stuttered that he got lost after being convinced he was going in the right direction. I said, “That’s how it usually happens, you idiot.” Our relationship was filled with these kinds of moments.

And those moments continued even when I was living in Montreal and my emotionally-charged relationship with Devon started to careen out of control a couple years later. It happens, you know? I was too jealous, she was kind of an unconscious flirt. She liked attention, I didn’t give her enough. The lines of communication between us became pinched and atrophied. I can turn to ice when I want to. For someone so warm, and in need of warmth, this was difficult for her to deal with.

My few relationships tended to be very long, and very intense. My relationship with Devon was no different. This made the long drawn-out break-up incredibly difficult for both of us. We were still living together, we were emotionally immature and knew each other well enough to pick and choose fighting words with intent to destroy.

She would probably claim that it was more difficult on her. That may be so, but I can only see things from one perspective. Mine. The long terrible nights waiting to hear the door of our Montreal apartment open and close, as she came home from a night of carousing. The ignoring. The tears. Division lines between shared friends. Watching men fall for her. Picking up our relationship by the scruff of the neck to try to make it work, and then beating it senseless because it couldn’t, again, and again, and again. The same incredible energy that fuelled our fantastic love was the same energy that we used to tear it apart.

Like I said. It happens.

Sitting here now, in Denmark, looking at the inches of snow out my window it’s hard to believe that I was so wrecked about that break-up so long ago. But I was utterly mangled; negative emotions amplified by teenage testosterone running amok. A general despondency tweaked because we didn’t have the distractions then that we have today. We had a television but no cable. It’s hard to focus on a book —of which I had many— when you’re feeling that black. We had movies we’d already seen a thousand times. Not many people had Internet connections in their home. We certainly didn’t. Ironically the very thing that Devon taught me to do was the very thing that kept me moderately sane throughout that long terrible time; I chose the most complicated guitar piece I could think of, and I learned it.

I also went to Ottawa a lot to escape from the toxic atmosphere of the apartment. George, by now had been kicked out of the house he shared with his girlfriend and two kids. He was living in the basement of his mom’s place on Bronson, North of the Queensway. The band was long defunct, but I still spent a lot of time with Rob and George. George had taken up weightlifting along with “the boys” but like everything he did, it was adapted and made “Georgified”. I remember walking down the stairs to his damp dark basement and seeing him with a pillow attached firmly to his back with a belt you normally see worn with business suits. He was doing standing curls with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. I asked him about the pillow and he mumbled something about “back support”.

We got to talking, and he could see that I was dark, grim mood. I tried to explain in a fumbling way about what I was going through and that’s when he stopped me. He stammered that we should go outside. It was night as we stepped out into the parking lot between the buildings. Autumn had set in and the sky was clear.

The thing about George’s stutter, or anyone that stutters for that matter, is that you’re tempted to try to fill in the words that the person is trying to get too. Otherwise you either stop paying attention, or the stammer takes on a hypnotic quality as you’re drawn into each painfully executed word. When George speaks I learned to just listen. If he’s passionate about something his voice takes on tenor of wonderment, he gets excited and words tend to bottleneck in his mind as they scramble to get out of his mouth. When I recall what he said that night I don’t remember the stammer. I remember the kind of subdued elation that occasionally overtakes him.

“Look up at the sky. See all those stars? There’s millions of them, and each one is a galaxy with any number of planets revolving around their own sun. This planet is a rock spinning through space, just like millions of other rocks doing the same thing. Think about how small that makes you.”

And suddenly I felt better.

Looking back I think two things happened. First, in the grand scheme of things I realized my break-up with Devon was pretty weenie when you think of the scale of the space that we occupy. And secondly, what he said didn’t shrink the significance of my existence, it shrank the significance of the problem.

George and I lost touch, and Devon and I share a special kind of bond now. It's no longer romantic, but perhaps more pure, because of it. Whatever it is I care for her deeply and wish her all the happiness she deserves. And, I still carry that night with George on me and recall it when I’m feeling low.

Everything gets better if you keep going.

monster germark

What is it Melville said?

Retards, all over the world, stand hand-in-hand, and one shock of recognition runs the whole circle round.

Something like that.

The Danes have a word which they claim figures heavily in the national mentality. The word is “Hygge” (roughly pronounced “Heeewlllgh”. The language will remains a mystery to me for fear of severely injuring my tongue). There is no really effective translation of the word, and the only reason I can glean its full meaning is because the Dutch have something similar: Gezellig. Loosely translated it means “cozy”, but with a more ambient definition and increased saliva.

Anyway, for better or worse, I feel that word right now.

When I didn’t feel it was a few days ago when I went to a monster truck rally with some classmates. Admittedly, a weird thing to do, but I looked at it two ways: I’d never been to one before, and the thought of being surrounded by Danish rednecks appealed to me in a twisted sort of way. Also, I figured there had to be story in there somewhere. I mean, it was a German monster truck rally in Denmark, in the company of people from a variety of nationalities —everywhere from Iceland to Lithuania to Brazil.

(This truly international evening would not end until I helped a blind-drunk French girl off a bus and out of pool of her own vomit, made another French girl cry, and drove a normally sweet and placid Catalonian girl screaming mad by loudly playing guitar with a Spanish guy at an awkward hour in the morning.)

Before heading to the rally a few of us were in an Icelandic classmate’s kitchen embracing manly US redneck culture by engaging every stereotype short of burning crosses.

Or trying to anyway.

Sausages were fried accompanied by homosexual innuendo (which in itself is sort of a homosexual innuendo —the medium is the message). Hamburgers were prepared in the proper American way; with buns. That is, until we ran out of buns, and I, overcome with a frenzied hunger, may have eaten a beef patty before it was properly cooked. Twice.

Bruce Springsteen was listened to on a laptop, The Boss telling the European pseudo-rednecks about being born in the U.S.A. The beer flowed freely. This was apparent, if not by the increasing presence of empty cans, then by the fact that a few of my classmates started trying to adopt a Southern Drawl.

I believe that one particular 6-foot-7 Danish guy was trying to sound like he was from South of the Mason-Dixon line. Instead he sounded like a cross between Daffy Duck and Orson Welles. The Icelandic guy, abandoning words altogether, and prattling gibberish, sounded like an Irishman on crack. The Brazilian sounded Jersey, and the German sounded like a paedophile. The two Canadians in the room, most able to generate some semblance of redneckism, remained quiet and exchanged looks across the table. Although one of them did put on a bandanna. A bright orange one.

We studiously examined youtube videos of rednecks doing stupid things — dragging each other behind tractors through mud, lighting themselves on fire, trying to speak, more mud. There is a plethora of these videos on youtube if you want to look and your opinion about humanity isn’t low enough.

In my mind a proper monster truck rally is in a massive stadium, the floor covered with undulating piles of dirt, the roar of engines, and Old Dixie displayed prominently around the place. It should reek of piss, beer, and vomit, and the bearded overweight faces of the audience should be white.

As we approached the thing in Denmark my definition gradually changed from “Monster Truck Spectacle”, to “Something Involving Cars”, to “Eastern European Circus”. That’s what it looked like to me. A section of parking-lot in front of a community centre had been cordoned off with some colourful tent vinyl and a few of those fairground trailers usually associated with shooting little wooden ducks for a stuffed animal. The whole area was open to the sky and wouldn’t have filled and NHL-sized hockey rink. . . rink, not arena.

The show itself —after paying about $35 and taking a seat on a length of two-by-four which served as the “stands”— largely involved German’s doing strange things to red BMWs. At least the first half. You could plainly see four monster trucks parked on the sidelines looking fairly menacing. They drove the BMWs around the track at crazy speeds and then they all stopped so we could meet their drivers. The drivers emerged from their cars, each one brandishing a child of about four to six years old. This, it turned out, is what made this rally different from an American one, aside from the lack of dirt, lack of beer, and lack of union jack flags —was the liberal use of small children throughout the performance. Children wandered around the track, fingers in their ears from the noise of the engines, and the music, and the guy screaming into a microphone in Danish. Children were driving ATVs through flaming boards, and motorcycles were jumped across rows of children lying prone on the concrete.

I looked around me at the audience, and indeed the faces were white. But that was no shock, Denmark is a very white place. I tried to find concern in the eyes of parents that brought their children to see other people’s children get narrowly crushed by a 600 pound pieces of machinery. The only thing I saw was polite applause from a crowd that acted like they were at a Stravinsky recital.

The music that blared throughout the show was not death-metal, hard-rock, or even folk. It was 80s music with Low Rider, the Magnum P.I. theme, and particularly the Beverly Hills Cop theme Axel F on heavy rotation. It’s to this cocaine-addled soundtrack that two red four-door BMWs were driven on two wheels, made to do donuts, passed each other at screaming high-speeds; both forward and in reverse (not that impressive if you’ve ever driven on the autobahn), they synchronized squealing and fishtailing, and drove through flaming boards with a person strapped to the hood of the car. Thankfully not a child this time. Well, there might have been, but at this point is was so dark, with so much smoke, the action was barely visible.

All I could think to myself was, finally the Germans have managed to invade Denmark and it’s in a black cloud of oily smog.

Then it was time to destroy a Toyota Corolla, presumably to show the German dominance in the auto industry.

I remember feeling sorry for the animals in the Eastern European Circus I saw in Prague. The poor buggers just looked so depressed. Well, for the first time in my life I felt sorry for a car. The things they did to that Corolla would have had PETA up in arms. They flipped it, rolled it, dropped it off a ramp onto its back, lit it on fire, and finally, when its engine seized up, they propped it up on its nose and smashed a BMW through it. A forklift that carried the blackened and brutalized corpse of the Toyota off stage was met with resounding applause from the audience.

It was hard to make sense of what was going on around me. It was a small operation, with the drivers doubling as motor-cycle riders, and cotton-candy salesmen. This aspect also reminded me of an Eastern European circus. But what was it that made people so emotionally involved in the whole thing? Was it a manifestation of an atavistic hatred towards machines and small children? Or was it that “Man like thing that go boom”.

In the interest of serious Journalism I spoke to the guy that ran the whole thing. I asked him how many people were involved in the operation? He said, 20. He added that they were doing 116 shows around Denmark and Sweden. I asked him how it was going? He said, “Slow.”

Maybe so, but the Icelandic guy was definitely caught up in the spectacle, or at least his sense of irony was. I cringed when he began chanting “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!”. He howled with glee when the monster trucks finally arrived and began crushing horribly injured Japanese cars —including that savagely beaten Corolla. He was elevated in the moment, or seemed to be, screaming, “No WAY! They did NOT just do that!”

How did this become popular? What kind of brain-dead buffoonery gave birth to this type of thing? I suspect all of it was the illegitimate pear-shaped child of that Southern salute to all that’s wrong with humanity: NASCAR.

The climax of the show was the arrival of the actual monster trucks; those pick-ups with obscenely large tires, the kinds of tires the people of Powell River Canada might enjoy. Air-brushed on their sides were the names “Ghost Rider”, “Ice Man”, “Dragon”, and — as promised by their marketing campaign which said, “Original Monster Trucks From USA!”— “U.S.A.”. Unfortunately “Ice Man”, for reasons beyond me, wasn’t part of the havoc. I guess even chunks of fibre-glass built around ridiculous engines, over retarded tires, need a day off. Besides, for me, it was just bigger cars driving over smaller cars.

It was when all these things were going through my head that the German to my left said, “I smell oil.”

I don’t think he was quoting Melville

marked

Okay, so I got here.

And I’ve started school. The first week was an introduction to the University –Aarhus University pronounced “oar hoose”. “University” pronounced “university”. Those first few days were a blur of information about Danish study habits and Danish culture.

Concerning Danish study habits: You may or may not show up to class. You may or may not be marked on any of the work you do. Your final exam will be Judgement Day when you will be marked, but not by the person who taught you. I’m still not sure if this is incredibly fair, or incredibly scary. Maybe both.

The lecture on Danish culture was presented by a Danish woman that had clearly never seen any living Danish people in her life. She told us that Danish people like a “a zone of personal space around them” but considering how enthusiastically they pack themselves onto busses I find this hard to believe. She explained this particular nuance by telling us about a Mexican that was talking to her too closely. She said she kept backing away, but not matter how much she backed away the Mexican —and I’m not kidding here, “continued to cross her border.”

This “personal space” thing actually raises all sorts of interesting questions about how the Danes propagate their own species. Unless they’ve found some other way, shagging does involve a certain amount of touching.

She said that Dane’s are serious about eye-contact. Which is true, unless you look them in the eye.

She did say one thing that was accurate; the Danes are extremely punctual. This has been stressed to me by so many people that I’m starting to think it’s pathological. It leaves me wondering about my classmates, many of whom come from places where it’s common to show up days late to one’s own birthday party.

The course in the Danish language was taught by way of some traditional songs. One of which was developed when the Danes won the UEFA cup in 1986. For anybody that pays attention to these types of things, the Danes, in fact, won in 1992. This error she made is pretty unforgiveable, and would normally necessitate a lynching, except fellow Danes can’t get close enough without invading her personal space. Isn’t this why we have Mexicans?

The latter half of the lesson involved a humiliating 600 person conga line with her in the lead. At this point she was the only one singing as nobody else in the room cold wrap their tongues around the peanut-butter-filled-mouth language. Also, logistically speaking, a conga line of that size cannot work in a small room without serious injury. Particularly if the leader is flapping her body around like a fish on a dock.

I fled.

The main campus itself is very nice with all the buildings surrounding a picturesque lake in which there is floating the picturesque bloated body of a dead duck. The buildings themselves are all yellow because —and this is true— Aarhus is the leading European manufacturer of yellow bricks. The effect is that of being in a massive outdoor sanatorium designed by people with a Wizard of Oz fetish.

The journalism building is a squat concrete bunker of the type that Hitler used to hide from the Allies and take cyanide. The auditoriums inside continue this theme with dim lighting, stale air, and no windows. If there is a nuclear attack it seems the post-apocalyptic world will be briefly populated by Danish journalists who won’t breed because nobody will get inside each other’s personal spaces.

I’m taking busses a lot again. I really despise the things. However, they’re all on time. The busses in Aarhus have machines on them where you can buy a ticket. Here’s the thing though —and this was pointed out to me by my flatmate— if the machine is not operating there is a sign saying that you absolutely must report this to the bus driver. Above the bus driver there is a sign that says, DO NOT TALK TO THE BUS DRIVER.

You board Danish busses in the rear and exit through front. The two busses that I can take to where I live arrive at the stops at the same time and don’t arrive again for another half-hour. This is during peak time, so riding a bus in Denmark is like trying to cram yourself into a can of tuna. I suspect that this is when the Danes conceive because their personal space issues provide no other alternative.

The busses, by the way, come more frequently at times when nobody needs them.

The town of Aarhus itself is —like the Danes— really nice. It sits on the Eastern Coast of the mainland and is the recipient of weather that could only be called “Schizoid”. I’ve heard that in New Zealand, if you go out for the day, you dress for all weather conditions. . . Including an airbag lately. In Aarhus you need to find a balance between an arctic expedition and a day at the beach. In most places of the world you look at the sky and you say, “I think it’s going to rain today.” In Aarhus you look at the sky and say, “It’s going to rain in 17 seconds.” In one day I’ve been basking in the sun, been drenched by a torrential downpour, been buffeted with the kinds of winds used to test airplanes, seen snow, and basked in the sun again. All before noon.

The buildings of the city are more Prague than Delft. Curiously I think they used up all their yellow bricks to build the University. And yes, there is a concentration of the types of buildings you associate with Vikings; stucco and wood-beamed structures leaning at precarious angles.

It’s brutally expensive to go pubbing in the city. The Danes get around this by buying their booze cheaply at the 7-11 —a slightly incongruous North American import— and drinking it wherever they please.

It’s this and other things that remind me that I’m in a civilized country after three-odd years in bewildered, anxious, North America. The people are friendly and charming. A traditional history of biking has made them fit-looking. The place is clean, the produce is fresh, the smiles are warm.

I’m beginning to understand how Denmark ranked number one on the list of happiest places on earth:

http://www.forbes.com/2010/07/14/world-happiest-countries-lifestyle-realestate-gallup-table.html

Then again, with no shagging, how happy could they be?

varoom?

Yep, I’ve been here before.

Trying to learn a new language is a bitch. Especially when you have three other languages rattling around in your head. You try to come up with a simple response in the appropriate language and suddenly you have all the various words you know screaming for attention. A simple word like “because” comes out like “uh” because it’s not “parce que”, or “protože”, it’s “omdat”. This creates a verbal bottleneck when you’re trying to complete a sentence. Lobotomy patients look smarter.

Often when hanging around with locals in a foreign place one person will helpfully say, “We should speak French/Czech/Dutch because Arin needs to learn.” My first instinct is to decide that that helpful person is an asshole. But then I think, I do need to learn. So I grin like an idiot and agree while thinking vengeful thoughts about mustard and duct tape. This is because I know what happens next; the conversation begins at a normal pace – just barely understandable, then it gradually accelerates to a machine-gun-like speed, and then everybody starts talking at the same time while using a vernacular that was developed the day before. They have forgotten that, language-wise, they’re driving Ferraris while I’m driving a ’76 Pinto. On the F-1 track of dialogue this means they’ve crossed the finish line while I’m still realizing that the word “omdat” means “because”.

An aside: I have recently found a way to sugar their gas-tanks. Nothing throws of the rhythm of a nice conversation like patiently waiting for one person in the group to slowly flip through a dictionary of translation to find a word. Especially if that person doesn't quite know the chronology of the alphabet.

It seems like I’ve spent half my life listening to people rattle away in a foreign tongue while liberally sprinkling my name throughout the conversation. It’s been happening since I was a baby and has been occurring more frequently the older I get (I like living in these places, what can I say?).

I’ve seen people fly off the handle when this happens to them. And I get it, it’s frustrating when you know someone is talking about you and you don’t know what they’re saying. People being people generally assume the worst is being said about them in the most complicated way possible:

“The decrepitude of Arin’s olfactory processes creates Arin’s obliviousness to the nature of Arin’s decompisitory-like scent”.

Me, I don’t get bothered about it very much anymore. Either I’m used to it, or I just don’t give a shit what people are saying about me. Probably more the latter. I figure if it’s really important they’ll let me know. I do, however, get pretty self-conscious when the people around me burst out in loud laughter – not because I might be missing something really funny, or that the joke might be about me, it’s that I’m aware that when everybody is having a good chuckle the one stone-faced guy in the room can be a real downer.

What does bother me is when people assume that because I was in the room when the plans were made I must know what’s going on. For someone that relieves himself from planning anything that involves any more people than himself this may seem a bit pernickety, but when the end goal is suddenly interrupted with surprise occasions it’s tricky to keep your cool:

“Uh, I though we’re going to the pub. What is this?”

“Oh, we didn’t tell you? We’re taking Oma to the hospital to have her liver replaced so she can drink too.”

Also, it seems to take forever for people speaking a foreign language to express anything to each other. I can’t count the number of times I’ve asked for simple directions through a translator and the ensuing conversation between translator and direction-giver lasted long enough for me to figure it out on my own based on the relative position stars.

At this point I should probably explain that my Dutch is not as good as many people think. As a matter of fact, my Dutch is worse than even I thought.

This misunderstanding can be explained by the acrobatics my brain does to get the gist of a conversation without actually understanding anything that’s being said. I used to be able to give the impression of scholarly knowingness by watching facial cues and body language, listening to the inflection of the voice, and putting random contextual bits and pieces together. At the very least I made people extremely nervous about my actual level of understanding.

Now, like before, the more words I can understand the more confused I become about what people are talking about. It turns out the brain-power I would normally devote to sleight-of-hand comprehension is being used to translate actual words at a rate of about one per paragraph. You hear “banana” and “people” with about 50 other indecipherable words around them and you try to figure what the conversation is about:

People like bananas because of the potassium, or, healthy people eat bananas especially if they’re cyclists, or, people and bananas have existed for many years, or, some people slipped on the banana peel. As it turns out you were completely wrong. The conversation was about the people at the hospital that made way for the man with a banana stuck up his ass.

So I’ll stop being a whiny bitch and start studying Dutch as soon as I get my local social insurance number.

In the mean time people here will help me by switching to English whenever I try to speak Dutch to them, speaking louder when I ask them to slow down, or provide me with wildly different definitions about words like “because”. Because the word I’ve being using for “because” is “want” and, as it turns out, it’s actually supposed to be “omdat” even though three different people have told me it’s “want” and nobody seems to know precisely when to use either.

Yeah, “because” is “want” pronounced “vahnt”. Here is some more Dutch mindfuckery for you: “who” is “wie” pronounced “we”, “how” is “hoe” pronounced “who”, and “why” is “waarom” pronounced “varoom!” although, don’t hold me to that. Doubtless tomorrow someone will inform me that I’ve just asked them, “Tar the fat one while the pebble wears knee-socks?”

My favourite –and this happens uncannily often– is when I’m informed that a phrase I’ve been using is no longer used, and that, as a matter of fact, it hasn’t been used for three centuries. Then why the fuck did someone tell me the phrase in the first place? I’m not interested in the historical nuances of the bloody language. I’m trying to speak it without sounding like a fairground exhibit on Medieval Day.

This is the sort of misinformation could make someone paranoid. Almost like there is a national interest in fucking with me for humorous effect: Let’s get him to say, “There’s some chilli on my toe”, when he’s asking for the bill. . . He-he-heee, he actually said it!

Another problem is that the Dutch, like the Czechs, are simply not used to hearing someone speak their language with a foreign accent. Trying to do so can rapidly degenerate into a dialogue with the extreme elderly:

“Would you like some tea?”

“Pardon me?”

“I said, would you like some tea?”

“Huh? You have a shaky knee?”

Now acting out the universal tea-drinking motion, “No. Would y-o-u like some t-e-a?”

“What? You want to what with me?”

“Can I OFFER you some TEA?”

“Your office is very clean? Ah. . . That’s nice.”

“Look, do you want some goddamned tea in your goddamned cup?”

“Ah! No thank you.”

“Okay then.” I start pouring myself a cup.

“Oh, you’re offering me tea. I’d love some.”

With translation issues there is also turnaround; like when someone with weaker English is trying to explain the context of the idea they are about to convey. This usually takes the form of –without me having any knowledge of what they're about to say– asking me which word they should use: “Is it participate, or particular?” Jesus, I’m not Sherlock Holmes, you’ll have to give me a few more clues than that to figure out which word you should use.

One of the first phrases I’ve perfected my Opa taught me. It’s “Ik gaan spraak Nederlands.” Or, “I don’t speak Dutch”. Being able to say you don't speak the language is incredibly important. Mostly because it’s fun to watch someone go cross-eyed as they try to figure out how someone can say they can’t speak Dutch in perfect Dutch.

More recently I learned, “Ik weet dat wel.” Which literally means, “I know it well.” This is the least useful thing you can learn this early on in the game. Not only because it’s not something you can really say when you don’t understand anything else the person said, but also because when they say it all you know is that they know something and they know it well.

In the past I’ve extolled the virtues of not understanding a language simply because it’s nice to not hear what people at the next table are talking about. Often it’s about nothing at the least, or totally aggravating at the most – like that person on public transportation loudly blathering into their mobile phone. In light of this, and all the other frustrations, one would ask why I even bother trying to learn it. Well, one reason is that I feel really Dutch, and the only piece that’s missing is my ability to speak the language.

So I’ll chip away at this monster, fully aware that it’s going to get a lot more difficult before it get’s better. Already I’m seeing little flickers of light in the deaf darkness of day-to-day conversation. Maybe I’ll get to the point where when I hear “honden fokken” I won’t even grin to myself.

Note:

Honden = Dogs

Fokken = Breed

banalysis

Live real-time game analysis

Montreal vs. Philly, Game 4, Eastern Conference final

Pre-game: the highlight reel – glorious music.

Why do Habs fans have to do the gay football “olé” thing? It’s gay. And footbally.

Righteous CBC opening music.

Scenes of people partying in Montreal streets.

Elliott Friedman needs to be punched in his upper lip to even it out with his lower.

Glen Healy looks like someone taller bonked him directly on the top of the head…He said “competing” three times, “Guys, guys, guys.”.

“Right into the slot area”? What exactly does that mean? It’s not really a slot if it has an area.

Goddamn Elliott. Maybe his chin is his lower lip. This has totally changed my perception of his stupid face. . . I think Ron may be the only reasonable dude in the whole of sports broadcasting.

Okay, here comes the light show. Actually kind of cool. Little kid setting the rink on fire. Bloody awesome, but the kid looks terrified.

I like PK Subban, not just because he’s black. He’s a smart kid. Looks like a nice kid too, except he turns into a royal douche on the ice…Which is good.

“PK and the Habs”, sounds like a Motown singing group.

I hate you Elliott Friedman.

Don Cherry keeps calling Yupi, the Montreal Expos mascot, “Loopy”. Does he do that shit on purpose?

Some kind of sincere Canadiana music to bring the Habs onto the ice.

Spacek says hi to the two flag wielding kids…Nice.

Here comes the National anthems by that cute Yanofsky girl. Giggity.

Lapierre looks perplexed by this French version of the anthem. Odd.

Montreal fans are hotter. No doubt about it.

Halakitty, Halak, Halakathon.

PERIOD 1.

Pronger is a funny name. Although I wouldn’t say it to his face. Wonder what the etymology on that is?

Bouncy puck. Fuck. Doesn’t look good.

“Somebody touched it.”? You’re the announcer fuckwit. It’s your job to tell us who touched it.

Halak really wants to be a forward.

Jesus Habs, your team is wearing red, their team is wearing orange.

Whatever you were doing game three, it’s important you do it again.

Hamrlick, also a funny name. I probably would say it to his face.

Awe, “Crazy Hop”.

Laperriere (Philly) likes to hug other men on the ground. Why does Hamrlick go to the box? He can’t help it if Laperriere wants to hug on the ground.

“Coburn took a dump” Where? Where?

Philly intimidates the Habs, they keep getting scared back into their own zone.

Colour Commentator is a retard.

Gomez is a puck thief. Well done Kareem-looking mo-fo.

“Montreal is like a bunch of waterbugs” Colour Commentator is a retard.

Halak man, You can’t crawl across the crease dude.

Penalty: against the Habs of course. This is probably when Philly scores.

I wonder if Leino knows Royksopp wrote a song about him?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aJjhagh8dk4&feature=related

Plekanec should keep his helmet on.

HALAK! “Has chosen the 12th minute to get a standing O”. If you put the pieces together you realize “O", means “ovation”.

Wow, the whole team saved the puck. All 5 Habs in the Montreal net. I can’t believe they all fit in there. Christ they are small.

HALAK!

Halak totally shoved Carter. Carter looked like a he got whiplash, his head did the whole backward-wobble thing.

“Could have been dangerous, turned out to be rather calm.”

I like Maxim Lapierre, he’s the funniest guy on the ice. The more lippy he gets the better the Habs do. Unfortunately he’s not being very lippy tonight.

“Habs want to change.” Yeah, into a more aggressive team.

Hartnell looks like a hippy. I wonder if he brushes his hair in the morning…32 even strokes every morning.

“Lapierre: aggravating and awesome as well”. Colour Commentator a little less retarded.

I wonder if Cammaleri is still having fun.

Gorges, is there more than one of him?

Don Cherry is going to say something.

“WHARRRGARBL!”

ESPN America keeps airing a commercial about O’Ree, the first black hockey player in the NHL. Okay.

PERIOD 2

“Here we go for number two.” More fiber Announcer-Man?

I like that things always get weird around the net after a gloved-in save.

Philly has it: Booo, booo. Yeah, we get it audience, Philly is Bad. Montreal is Good.

Habs appear to have taken a narcotic between periods.

Now everybody is dumping. Must piss-off the environmentalists.

“Net-minder.” Is that what a goalie was called in the 20’s? “Jeeves, if you would be so kind as to leave La Rondelle with the Net-Minder.”

“Yep, Philly wins another face-off.” Not very Announcer-like, Announcer-Man.

Christ, these guys are tougher than shit.

Philly scored. Crap.

Lapierre is mouthing off again. He’d make a good actor, very animated face.

Hey Habs, are things not adverse enough for you? Clear the puck.

Penalty: Montreal, go figure. Ah PK, PK. Not good buddy.

“The nice sweet hands of Claude Giroux as he finishes it off.” A bit of a crush there, retarded Colour Commentator?

Timonin’s name rhymes with cinnamon. Lapierre should let him know.

Halakitty-Hack!

Is Montreal the only team that passes the puck back to their goalie in tense situations? Makes me nervous.

"Gionta, slow to get up." Slow to do a lot of shit this evening. Very Kareem-bender-y

Guys, you can’t just stand there. Trouve la friggen rondelle!

All the Habs have left the building.

“Montreal needs to get on the “O”.” I’m guessing he means “Offense” instead of “Ovation” this time.

Philly scores again on a breakaway. Fuck.

Subban turned it over, Hamrlick was somewhere else. Possibly taking another hit of anti-depressants.

Damnit, Philly is the better team. But then again, so was Washington and Pittsburgh.

Just don’t let it be a shut-out… Yes, I’ve lost hope.

Nice hit Habitant! First proper one I’ve seen.

Shots in this period 12-1 philly. To quote Freakazoid Cherry, "You might as well throw a blanket over them, cause they've gone to bed."

Halak wants to leave. I don’t blame him.

All I hear is “…And the Habs give it away.” My advise: DON’T GIVE IT AWAY. Do the opposite of the Chilli Pepper’s song.

End of the second: 13-1 shots on net for Philly. Wow, that doesn’t bode well.

Mark Messier seems kind of cool.

PERIOD 3

One shot on goal in the last period. I KNOW.

Okay, a little better start. . . Spoke to soon: Bergeron doesn’t like pucks suddenly.

“Canadiens are changing.” No shit, their underwear. So yeah, shit.

“It has been tough for the Montreal Canadiens to score goals in this series.” Thank you retard Colour-Commentator for that astounding analysis.

Some hockey players have loose plastic bits hanging off their skates. Isn’t that a problem?

The Habs need to go as a group to the net. It can’t be one dude all the time. Plekanec looks lonely.

Interesting: no team has yet been able to get in that nice cycling position: Dudes on the point etc.

“Canadiens need to start skating again.”

“Canadiens need to start closing off their pinches.” What?

Laperriere is wearing a girly-mask.

Finally the Flyer’s get a penalty. Wanton displays of joy from the audience.

PK keeps fucking it up. Not good kid.

The net is off and nobody stopped the play. This arbitraryness in the reffing is bloopy.

“Canadiens can’t keep it in.” Uh-huh.

I can’t understand what the Habs are doing. It doesn’t look like Hockey though. The force is not strong with them tonight. A little more Dark-Side, a little less Jar-Jar.

Christ, even the Announcer is getting sarcastic “Montreal is trying individual plays which aren’t working. What else is new?”

I haven’t seen these guys make a single good play. What is the reason for this? Early game? That must be it. When in Montreal they party. Early game is rough with a hangover. . . In Philly they’re just depressed.

The Colour Commentator just said a bunch of stuff. What else is new?

“And where is the puck? Caught up in the paraphernalia of a Flyer.” Nice use of “paraphernalia” Announcer-Man.

I feel that the crowd will boo the Habs this evening.

Granted, Leighton is a big motherfucker. He barely has to move. He could just sit Yogi-style between the posts and he’d be fine.

Yup, looks like another shut-out.

HALAK!

“Canadiens keep coughing up the puck.” Nothing funny about that, except the imagery.

Almost. This time the Habs were all trying to fit into the Flyer net. Not easy with a ridonculously huge goalie already in it.

It’s quite easy to lip-read “Fack!”.

Wow. Bergeron sweeping the puck from the empty net.

Typical Habs, kicking ass in the final two mintues. Hangover has cleared-up I guess.

FACK. Empty-netter. 3-zip flyers.

“It’s always harder on the moms as she makes every save in the crowd.” Shut up Elliott, you jack-ass.

Lapierre get’s a penalty. Use your mouth buddy, not your slashy-slashy.

So endeth the game, 3-0 Flyers. Montreal fans will no doubt loot the Aldo on St. Chatherines again tonight.



I don’t think I’ll be doing this again.

big wheels of cheese, revisited

Is it bad etiquette to say that a funeral was a raving success?

Probably, but the 300-odd attendees to my Opa’s funeral had positive things to say about it. Well, as positive as you can be about funeral quality. It was truly a ‘de Hoog event’ though, complete with music performed by family, speeches, a highly organised procession, and a slide-show of my Opa’s life to music. I wrote and presented a Eulogy that addressed the impact his false-teeth had on me throughout my life. . . Even directly after his life:

When my family and I were leaving his deathbed at the hospital they started searching through his various bags and belongings for something. I was extremely overtired having had not much sleep, plus the jet-lag of arriving from Ottawa the day before. This is why it took me several long moments before I realized that the thing they were searching for were his teeth.

This may seem a questionable theme for a speech at a funeral, but amongst my Dutch family it was quite normal. Maybe even appropriate. I think Opa would have enjoyed it.

My Dad and I raced to Holland after the call from his youngest brother saying that their father was very ill. 10 hours after the phone-call we were in an entirely different country. That’s two weeks after I arrived in Ottawa from Vancouver, where I had been for a month. Before that, Powell River as a short lived stint as a Radio guy. My reality had suddenly shifted again.

The idea was that my dad could be at his father’s side before he passed. And he was. There was a meeting of his brothers and sisters in the hall outside of Opa’s room a day (Or was it 12 hours? Two days? I can’t remember.) after we arrived in the Netherlands. It was decided that treatment would be stopped. It had been Opa’s request, and – showing a surprising amount of fortitude – my Oma’s.

So it was that my Dutch relatives and I embraced around the bed of the only Grandfather I knew as he slipped peacefully away. Within all the turmoil of flying, lack of sleep, a traffic-jam the entire two-hour length of the way between the airport and the hospital, and generally just being in a hospital, this was an amazingly tender and genuine moment. We were all truly occupying that space. We were all truly who we were. And who we are is a very funny bunch of people.

Here’s the thing; my Uncles and Aunts – my father’s sisters and brothers, four of them by blood, all younger – are hilarious. They all have a dark and acerbic wit that would shake the foundations of North American morality. Where else can you loudly wonder if your child is retarded, to their face, in a room full of people, and no one bats an eye?

People deal with grief in their own way. We dealt with it with merciless humour. Moments after my Opa died I was overcome with an incredible exhaustion so I started to lie down on the empty hospital bed beside him. That’s when I heard my Uncle Peter say, “You’ve better not do that, we may decide to stop your treatment.”

The evening before, as we held vigil in the tiny hospital room, an orderly came in and said something to my Aunt Leoneke. A strange look crossed her face and she laughed, “Do you know what she just said to me? ‘Have a nice evening’”.

At the funeral itself all the grandchildren were obliged to take a candle, light it, and place it around the coffin. I dropped mine. The fumble was quickly dealt with and I moved on. However, when mentioning this to my Uncle Mattijs he said, “That would have saved us a lot on cremation fees.” Then, gesturing with his hands, “Woosh!”

This is the same uncle - a renowned pediatrician - who requested that if a certain undesireable showed up at the funeral my large cousin Ted and I were to take him in the back and beat him up as quietly as possible so as not to disrupt the service.

The wake was an open casket. It was a sad affair, but for me I had already said goodbye to Opa. Although, I often still find myself saying goodbye to him. It was like a trip to the wax museum with my Grandfather as the leading exhibit. I suppose it was this emotional distance that caused me to offer taking a picture of everyone gathered around his body. Like a family holiday photograph around the Rodin statue – smiling and waving.

I have my Opa to thank for my sense of humour and my music. I have him to thank for suddenly bringing me back to this place I love so much.

Nick Cave, in an interview, said that everything in Holland works. And it’s true. Everything does. The day-to-day types of things - like buying stamps, or groceries, or simply commuting when the train system is shut down - happens smoothly and efficiently. I could watch every Canadian Olympic hockey game – albeit, often alone, and at 4am. I can even watch the Stanley cup playoffs. Single lane streets are used in both directions and nobody crashes. Calls to various entities to find out about student loans, or production jobs, are met with people who want to help. Emails of enquiry are replied to swiftly and informatively. As a matter of fact, the only snag has been myself picking my way around social nuances. Oh, and the Algonquin College Registrars Office based in Ottawa (Which is not Holland's problem anymore, if you know your history). When I called to ask if they had received my faxed request for official school transcripts this is what I got:

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I’m not sure if the fax went thr-“

“Look, we get over 200 faxes a day, How am I supposed to know? You want me to check through them all?”

“Surely there is somebody there who takes care of these requests.”

“Yes, but I don’t know who it is.”

“So, you’re telling me the only way to know if you received my fax is if and when the schools I’m applying to receive the transcripts?”

“Yup.”

“Wow.” click, bzzzzz

There are certain things that still confuses me here. For example, the Dutch LOVE of speed-skating. When Speed-Skater Sven Kramer (Holland’s golden-boy. Picture Sidney Crosby, but lanky, and dressed like an orange ninja) got in the wrong lane on the advice of his coach at the men’s finals in Vancouver the whole country started wailing like Bedouin women seeing their men off to battle.

(This caused me to not trust my relatives when they were directing me from the passenger seat of cars I was driving. My thinking is that if Dutch people don’t know the correct lane in the Olympics there's no way they know it in real life.)

They also like field-hockey. Not only are there many field-hockey fields around the country, and a sizeable league, but when I mention hockey I have to clarify that it’s ice hockey I’m talking about. You would think, easy; you combine field hockey and speed skating and you get hockey hockey. But no, like many European countries hockey doesn’t interest them. Maybe the problem is, as my uncle said, “The puck is moving too fast.” Still, I find it strange that a country with the dexterity to parallel-park two inches from a canal edge needs to collectively train their eyeballs to move faster.

The Dutch also love raw fish. Herring, and mackerel are the two major ones, but they love tuna too. Yet - and this blows my mind - you can’t find a sushi restaurant to save your life. You can, however, frequently find a vile candy named Dropjes (pronounced "drop-yus") which every Dutch person keeps handy. It looks and tastes like a rabbit turd. Morons may argue that the whole country is on pot. I would argue they're all on Dropjes, and that's far more unsettling.

And, do you like looking at yourself when you’re taking a piss? How about a crap? The Dutch do. Well not you specifically (that’s more the sporadic practice of their occasionally conquering neighbours). I’ve been to a few bathrooms here and there in Holland. More than once a full-length mirror has been placed right behind the urinal. This is strategically awkward because if someone is beside you using their’s you’re forced to make direct eye contact with yourself or risk seeing their unlevened tulip gun. Also, in some homes I’ve found myself staring into my own bloodshot veiny face because someone has positioned a mirror exactly level with my head when I'm sitting on the toilet.

Not to delve too deep into the topic, but are women used to applying make-up when they’re taking a dump? Personally, I can barely hold a book, let alone try to apply eyeliner. I can’t fathom any other reason for the mirror being there unless you’re afraid of someone sneaking up behind you.

All men in Holland are metrosexual. This always throws me for a loop. For a people that are so, well. . . Practical, the amount of time-consuming preening and slick-clothe-wearing makes me think I’ve wandered onto an MTV video. The colours are 80s, the pants are tubular and straight, and the shoes are pointy and polished – shoes that are frequently worn indoors and sometimes to bed. Their hair, to quote Warren Zevon, was perfect. If these people were North American I would be describing your average douchebag. Sadly, from my scruffy, unshaven point of view many of the qualities are there; the propensity to wear gold and have orange skin is rampant. . . Which, come to think of it, is kind of patriotic.

The Dutch even get dressed-up to walk the boardwalk at the beach. When I met my cousin at the seaside her fiancé was dressed like a Ralph Lauren model from the Autumn Collection Catalogue. The idea was clearly not about enjoying the fresh air of a brand new spring day. The idea was to have a battle of fashion with anybody you exchanged eye-contact with. I imagined them going to home and being asked, “So how was the beach?”

“Yeah, it was great. I looked really good.”

I must say that I have not remained unaffected by this militant fashionism. After intense pressure from three fronts, all of them female, I caved and bought a pink shirt. A colour, I maintain, that should never be worn by men. Unless they’re really into canal.

You probably know about the bicycle thing in Holland. Every street has a bike lane. As a matter of fact, it’s a lot easier to get around locally on a bike than a car. Everyone is bike-riding regardless of age or physical capacity. It’s all done without a helmet while family members are teetering on the handle-bar, and a week’s supply of groceries fills the saddle bags on the back. Environmentalists admire this kind of behaviour. Anal-retentive personal safety outfits do not. The Dutch themselves admire the Chinese who manage to balance several goats and chickens – and the food to feed them, and the barn they keep them in – on a single bicycle.

The Neo-cons can screech about the liberal drug laws, prostitution, and euthanasia in the Netherlands but they can’t escape the fact that their whinings are directed at an extremely advanced society. Holland is what the West is inexorably moving towards legally, socially , and politically. They’ve put deep thought into everything, unhindered by religious dogma and close-minded ignorance. They ironed out the glitches long before Canada legalized gay-marriage and abortion.

They are so advanced, in fact, you need to time-travel to understand basic things they take for granted. You need a PhD in Engineering to operate the average shower faucet. They have a cooking contraption from Star Trek. I have no idea what to call it. Regardless, it operates both as a stove and as microwave. It will bake a cake, and it will defrost your chicken. This technological marvel has two dials, three buttons, and not a single actual word. It’s so futuristic that I spent 20 minutes squinting at the meaningless symbols on its dashboard like they were Egyptian hieroglyphics – trying to discern their functionality. This was to defrost bread.

* * *

So now I’d like to introduce you to my cousin Liselotte (pronounced “lee-ZA-lawt). The reason she get’s kind of a starring role in this blog is to illustrate that teenage girls are the same the world over. Also, because she’s probably the person (I use “person” in the loosest meaning of the word) I’ve spent the most time with while I’ve been staying at my Uncle’s.

Liselotte is 15. She’s tall, skinny, and gawky (only a few inches shorter than me). She doesn’t have full control of her limbs. Often they betray her – her feet ignoring some steps, her hands refusing to grip objects. She is very, very, cute with stylish glasses and the obligatory braces that cause her to have to slurp saliva every time she laughs.

She seems to have more bones than the average person. They are sharp bones, and they are located in places like her elbows, shins, and feet. I’m learning this the hard way. In one sense I’m happy that she feels comfortable in physically abusing me, on the other hand my pain threshold is only so high, and she has no concept of her lanky strength.

It used to be she would just pile verbal abuse on me – picking words from her surprisingly extensive English vocabulary like: “stupid”, “wimp”, “idiot”, “dumb”, "loser" and the classic, and most often used, “weirdo”. Other times she threatens my life: “I will KILL you, you know it?”, “You are dead, man.”, “You better watch out, I will beat you to DEATH.” Sometimes these comments are made in passing, like she’s asking me the time, other times she’s nose-to-nose with me, eyeballs bulging.

Lately I’ve come to dread hearing, “What are you doing weirdo?” even though it’s plain I’m either looking for work, surfing the web, or cooking. Usually this question is followed by a flurry of punches, kicks, and growling. I have to defend myself with any available nearby object, or keep her at bay by snapping a twisted dish-rag.

I may have set the tone for this behaviour because I often find myself in hysterics laughing at her. Whether it be the instant and shocking turnaround in mood, her adorable Dutch accent, or the fact that she’s plain awkward, I find her endlessly amusing.

I once was sitting having breakfast when she started coming down the stairs from her bedroom. She was bleary-eyed and morning-grumpy with hair pointed in every direction. I started humming the Imperial March theme from Star Wars. She snarled at me, poured herself a large bowl of chocolate pudding (called vla, which to me sounds like only part of a word), covered that in chocolate sprinkles, and filled a mug with chocolate milk. She had created the most hilarious breakfast I have ever seen. There is probably a genealogical impetus behind this breakfast as the Dutch love sweet stuff (Yet there’s low incidents of diabetes, and obesity is very rare. Hmmm.)

In a flash she can go from dancing in circles in the kitchen to snarling like a rabid animal (probably from the frequent sugar-rushes and subsequent withdrawls). Most things don’t matter, and everything else is boring. She loves Justin Bieber and other ready-made plastic constructs. She like horses, sleep-overs, and instant-messaging with her friends. But hates vegetables. The house becomes incredibly quiet when she leaves it.

In short, your average nuanced teenager.

Here’s the thing though. She took one look at Fox News and was able to identify that, “These are stupid people.” She speaks English better than most people her age in North America. She is involved in fundraising, sports, and trying to learn the piano and German. She’s already studying theology and has discarded the dumb ones. She rarely watches television and takes constant trips to the library. It’s not that she’s extraordinarily driven, it’s just the way society is set up here.

One example is the lack of collegiate or academic sports, which means that kids her age find themselves doing other things to broaden their experience. It also means they won’t be excluded from sports because they’re not good enough. Sports are available outside of the school system, and anyone and everyone can play. If you suck, there is a league for you. The added self-confidence this lends you is free of charge.

Anyway, Liselotte is your average Dutch teen. Well not average, she’s my cousin so she’s awesome.

She’s part of the reason the Netherlands is where it is. She’s part of the reason I love this place so much.

Her, and Opa.

Danke Opa.