a tale of truisms

in music, silences are key to notes that play.
in dance, stillnesses shift shapes into being.
in translation, unrendered words have lots to say.
in coffee shops, empty mugs menace meaning.

and now back to translating...

puppy love (or dog daze) (or wedding balls?)

i absolutely, most definitely have too much work to be blogging right now. but, sometimes, real-life situations impose themselves in such a way that our plans -- to work, to clean, to call, to eat, to sleep, ... -- get thwarted. (like when you're already running late for a really pressing work thing and, as you bend over to pick up the keys you've just dropped on the sidewalk halfway to the office, the seam in your pant crotch splits in no uncertain terms, completely exposing your everything to the world, forcing you to head back home to change, making you embarrassingly late for the meeting, and ultimately leading to myriads of unfortunate professional consequences. oh, eff!)

today's (now abnormal) weekend adventures in coffeeshopping involve, on my not-so-distant left, a very loud, wiry, lispy, rather-desperately-in-need-of-attention, forty-something, self-proclaimed-expert, wedding planner/photographer who is telling the late-thirties prenuptialists how things'll be done. 

my ears perk up when i overhear how the couple announced their engagement (via facebook, of course), the proclamation involving posting a pic of their dog -- apparently, a purebred french bulldog (eighteen or nineteen pounds -- with not an ounce of fat on 'er, though!) -- with a sign placed in front of her: “my daddy just asked my mommy to marry him.”

i have just groaned quietly to myself (the kind of groan that would otherwise be accompanied by dragon mist shooting outta my ears and the sound of a steam train whistle). and, in my mind, i've also aggressively rolled my eyes in every which way (which, truth be told, begins to hurt after a short while). but Expert is getting paid for her interactions with the happy couple, so y'know, her response is a touch different than mine: the dog thing is SO cute! (oh, woof!)

then, things get worse. because, obviously, ThirtySomethingOne and ThirtySomethingTwo want to incorporate Lolita (yes, that's the dog's name) in the wedding day. thus begin discussions of the logistics of how to manage Lolita for the photo shoot, intermingled with every pet owner's dream -- i.e., the opportunity to describe the nitty-gritty of their pet's ever-idiosyncratic personality:

oh, if she [aka the planner's assistant] holds the ball, Lolita'll watch the ball! (TSOne and TSTwo glance over at each other, with proud, knowing, saccharine smiles that scream "honey, aren't we blessed to have such a perfect pup!') she'll just sit there for hoooours watching her ball. that ball's her nemesis. *insert chuckling over the hilariously weird ways of the dog-cum-prize-child*

shortly before wrapping up their meeting, Expert announces with great satisfaction: well, i find your ideas surprisingly cohesive! 

if "cohesive" means "dogful", i'm not sure anyone could disagree. and, y'know, a good wedding is nothing if not cohesive.

and now back to translating...

saved

steering clear of hot chocolates when it's not monday has been going well. i've been managing to save up my change as well as my cravings. but this morning calls for an exception to be made (admittedly, partly thanks to a little birthday money in my mailbox this week).

as i walk up to the counter, i see that one of my favourite baristas is prepping to take my order. there's just no topping her smile. as warm and perfect as my forthcoming drink.

and then, for the first time, i notice her name tag: Saviour. no kidding!

and now back to translating...

a case of the mondays

[monday, september 8]

when money floweth into one's bank account, so doth hot chocolate into one's tummy. and during such free-flowing times (are you picturing willowy, sixties-style, drug-enhanced, flower-power folk frolicking about a forest glade?), ye olde coffee shop represents a safe space. a welcoming haven. a cozy nook where "sufficiently social" meets "sufficiently anonymous" and where work meets comfort. *swoon*

when the purse strings are tight, on the other hand, the coffee shop betrays you. like a slap in the face. (yow!) suddenly -- before your very eyes, before your psyche, before your bursting-at-the-seams salivary glands, before your wallet (gulp!) -- it transforms into a looming, always-in-the-back(orfront)-of-your-mind threat...into the most vivid of (what's-that-across-the-street?!) mirages and the ultimate of tests: can you go the whole day without a hot chocolate? 

sound the alarm bells!

i have tried to resist before. to abstain from that exquisite frothy-topped warm beverage. to restrict the number of mugfuls ingested per week. all in the name of Financial Responsibility. and, each time, i have failed; efforts flopping left, right and centre.

yet, this time -- having reached into the bowels of the bowels of Self-Discipline and Free Will (those bastards!) -- i've somehow managed to skip not only last thursday's mugging but also friday's. and saturday's. and -- hold onto your hats! -- sunday's, too. and lo and behold it's monday, and it's official (well, as official as these things get): something has shifted.

while a small, glorious death will always accompany a hot chocolate, the visceral pull towards those café seats and sounds and flavours is not nearly as fierce now. (some people, i think, refer to this as...moderation?) so, today, for the first time since i can remember, i've arrived at the coffee shop as part of a plan (vs out of happy habit). yes! from now on, monday is the day: Day of the Hot Chocolate. the visit fits in before my evening class begins, kinda like another class would: a scheduled, forty-five-minute period that follows a bout of solo researching and precedes group seminaring; a time set aside for personal writing and reading, for overhearing others' (delightful, messed-up, intriguing, hilarious, etc.) conversations, for blogging...and for -- thanks be to gawd! -- enjoying the luxury that is that one weekly mugful. sssluuurp!

and now back to translating...

ode to the biggest, fattest hot chocolate out there

venti venti bo-benti,
banana-fana fo-fenti,
fee-fi-mo-menti --
venti!

and now back to translating...

no such thing as a stupid question

Customer: will there be any mango in my orange-mango smoothie?

and now back to translating...

(alarm) bell(e)s and whistles

[for sunday, july 27]

in downtown ottawa (not unlike many other communities), Summertime Saturday sees its streets, parks and canal walkways exploding with poofywhite gowns (ka-BOOM!) and parading penguin suits and a bevy of other costumes. and, regardless of whether an ornamental envelope made its way into our mailboxes months ago, we're all invited to the wedding party: just try passing the national arts centre or strolling through major's hill park without intercepting a pose or -- in the process of, say, ogling a dapper groomsman -- unwittingly striking one yourself (thereby becoming an extra in someone else's wedding album...you know: that unrecognizable person the couple's eventual offspring enquires about several years down the road: who's that, Mommy?).

yep: here come the brides!

and Summertime Sunday (the coffee shop whispers to me) can be quite similar. after all, it is -- figuratively, if not actually -- Day One in the lead-up to the coming week's saturday, as per three tables over: a beaming hetero duo and their perky wedding planner, meeting for the first time. (ps is it legal to plot others' nuptial to-dos when you're twenty-five tender years old?) the late-twenties bride-to-be has a big warm toothy smile (think Jennifer Garner, caricaturized). her sweet, gangly, concave-chested partner in crime wears a stupendously purple (think Barney the Dinosaur) tee. amid lots of giggling, the couple explains that the ceremony'll be in rockcliffe park (it'd be great if at least one photo were like [insert dream moment]!) and begins to tell Perky their story of luv -- something about CaricaJen going to med school and meeting Barney Tee there, in newfoundland. (at this point, i begin to seriously hope their wedding plans will include 1) the officiant announcing: you may now kiss the (cartoon) cod! and 2) the open bar exclusively wetting guests' whistles with screech.)

alas! Summertime Sunday is also Day Eight in last week's wedding run. it's the "wedding hangover," as per my morning mission (enveloped in the wintry chill of this über-air-conditioned starbucks): translating my forty-something friend's marriage deed into english so he can move forward with his long-awaited divorce.

cue the (fascinating) documentary "112 weddings." cue, also, the current café playlist song:

...keeps me searchin' for a heart of gold,
and i'm gettin' old.

few understand like young neil.

and now back to translating...

navel gazing

perhaps, one day, no one'll flinch when witnessing someone -- who's sitting in a coffee shop booth, alone, with nothing whatsoever going on -- strike a face-pose (outer eyes curled up + lips slightly pursed + counterfeited laissez-faire expression perfected), extend her arms straight out and up in front of her, and take a selfie.

for now, though, it's still very unsettling.

and now back to translating...

doppelgängers

seated across the way, near the doctor-your-drink station in one of the campus coffee shops, is a young man (maybe twenty-five years old) with bushy dark-brown hair, wearing a turquoise t-shirt. close by, on his right, is an older silver-haired woman.

it's lunch time. so they're eating. but, unlike others here, they're not eating food from the starbucks. instead -- hosting a kind of indoor picnic -- they have before them an array of tupperware containers, full of food that had been prepared at home. they have laid out piles of napkins on the tabletop. they have brought along their own metal cutlery. and as the man sits quietly in the black wheelchair, with its rounded cushioned headrest, the woman lifts forkfuls of food gently into his mouth.

these are the moments, after loved ones have left, that you ache for. the moments when you get to see ghosts. Graham and Mom used to sit together just like this. wielding metal forks and tupperware, from within their own sacred space. a sacred space that's now all mine to share in once again. from up close. from very far away.

and now back to translating...

schooling

kids go to school to fatten their spongy minds, and adults attend professional development seminars to hone their expertise in a given field. but the coffee shop, too, has all sorts of lessons for us!

today's lesson comes to us (indirectly) from Hans and Franz, the two thirtysomething guys over there to my left, sporting pinheads and authoritative pre-pubescent voices.

what we learn just from witnessing H&F is that, when you've worked out at the gym so much that you'll have to add "neck" to your next xmas wishlist (dear Santa...), you are indeed over-pumping.

and now back to translating...

so this guy walks into a bar(ista)...

some wisecracks should be banned. not because they're racist or homophobic or begin with "knock-knock" (though, generally speaking, these also deserve the axe). but because they're so tired that they're just not funny anymore. case in point: in ottawa, there are two seasons: winter and construction. yuk yuk yu(c)k...

same goes for certain songs. or, rather, certain appropriations of certain songs. personal remixes whose formulas are so tired that the "clever" spin-off renditions drive everyone crazy in the moment, not to mention for hours afterwards. case in point: earlier today, one of the baristas is singing la bamba. typically among the worst earworms. however, since the guy (being colombian) knows the spanish lyrics, it's actually delightful to overhear him launch into para bailar la bamba, instead of pa la ba la ba la bamba (the way most of us -- myself included -- usually gringo-garble our way through it). the trouble begins shortly after this. when the second barista (the one who, last week, hadn't been clear on nova scotia's elusive whereabouts) jumps on board and -- like a sprinter in a relay race, taking the (inadvertent) baton pass from Colombia -- just runs with it: pa la ba la ba la bamba, i need s'more es-pres-so...

¡ay caramba!

and now back to pa la ba la ba la translating...

machu picchu. (gesundheit!)

there's not much point in pretending otherwise: i'm a language snob. and there's no point in apologizing for it either. for better or for worse, i genuinely love seeing words spelled properly, and poor grammar turns me off -- though mostly when it's lurking in published goods. on the flip side, i'm a practical goon when it comes to science. (oh, Bob McDonald, you make it seem so easy...) but strengths and weaknesses and personal preferences aside, you figure people who've at least completed grade eight share a base of common knowledge. like knowing what a hypotenuse is (or at least knowing it's not an african animal), or that yellow and blue make green (not to mention some pretty gruesome thigh/ass bruises), or that machu picchu isn't located in ontario, or that Madonna is(n't) necessarily a virgin, or that mixing vinegar and baking soda makes for a reasonably satisfying papier maché volcano eruption (and has been popular at grade school science fairs the world over since the dawn of time).

but this logic doesn't always hold...

Barista One, chatting with Barista Two: a consonant is the same thing as an antonym.

(fortunately, Barista Two swoops in to offer an alternative point of view.)

Barista 1: so, where is nova scotia? (B2 swoop: take two.) *explosion of laughter* (that's B1 laughing at herself, by the way.) i guess i need to study geography more.

holy hypotenuse.

and now back to translating...

castrated

[friday, april 25: castres, france]

as anyone who's crossed national borders knows, international travel -- particularly when an extended stay is involved and the geographical distance between Departure and Destination is significant -- is full of cultural awakenings: an onslaught of epiphanies about how objects look, how language is used, how people tend to think and behave. immediately, you begin to assess your new and unfamiliar surroundings: sacré bleu, these french public washrooms are sketchy (not to mention hard to come by)! holy Hollande, having chocolatebreadcheeseandwine at every meal is genius! and then, slowly but surely, you begin to re-consider various aspects of the surroundings you'd been immersed in before your trip: much of what used to strike you as "normal" back home now registers either as just one of many ways of doing/making/thinking about something -- like measuring flour and sugar in cups and teaspoons instead of by weight -- or as "normal" only in relation to the place you're from -- like having squirrels scurry past you every day (and wondering why a tourist would think to take a photo of such rodents).

but, in all likelihood, you won't be reflecting on your home country all by your lonesome. several people you encounter abroad will help you out, by sharing a thing or two about you. typically, it'll be something "hilarious" that you've heard a billion times. if you're colombian, there'll be a crack about cocaine (crack? cocaine? did you get that?). if you're from the states, you will probably hear about obesity and georgedubya. if you're canadian, you hear about lumberjacks, caribou, maple syrup, snow, céline dion, and (alas!) rofo.

other times, however, what you hear is completely new. like this afternoon. my friends are at work, and so i've solo-settled into Thé ou Café tendance, in jean-jaurès square, in the centre of castres (a town whose name is, incidentally, a conjugated form of the verb "to castrate." yowch!) i've been here for no more than five minutes when, over a steaming chocolat chaud cannelle (yee-um!), i overhear the following from one of the two sixty-something women at the nearby table:

tu sais, quatre-vingt pourcent des canadiennes sont des femmes battues!

[translation: you know, eighty-five percent of canadian women are beaten!]

it's definitely surprising, as a canadian, to be in france (or almost any other country, really) and happen upon a conversation about canadians. (let's be honest: recent rofo-ing aside, canada's hardly at the forefront of The World's mind.) even more surprising, however, is discovering that, all this time, you'd been so in the dark about your own people! the woman has shared this news with her friend in a hush-hush, gossip-hound tone, but the remaining authority in her voice says it all: i mean, the cited stats simply must be true. (particularly in light of her sophisticated general knowledge, as later evidenced by her insights into UFOs.) thankfully, now armed with this data, i can spread the news upon my return home (phew!). i only wish i'd caught the tail end of her canadian lecture -- the part that began with: soixante-quinze pourcent des enfants canadiens sont [seventy-five percent of canadian children are]. d'oh! now we'll never know.

and now back to translating...

ce qui est tout petit / little things

me voilà, avec deux amis, à table aux saveurs de Mehun -- petit resto modeste mais élégant où l'on privilégie les ingrédients locaux (les lentilles du berry, par exemple) et où le menu change au quotidien. le restaurant, qui fait face à la statue (plutôt affreuse) en faïence (oh là là !), est situé au centre de Mehun-sur-Yèvre. village dont le nom n'est -- pour une simple canadienne d'origine anglophone -- pas du tout facile à prononcer* (qui est-ce qui a eu l'idée de placer une 'h' entre deux voyelles ?) ; village qui se trouve dans le département de Cher, pas loin de Bourges, ni de Vierzon ; village qui est à dix minutes, en voiture, de Quincy, où mes amis m'hébergent pendant une semaine.

nous venions de dévorer notre dessert (un gazpacho aux fraises et au melon accompagné de trois petites éponges carrées au cacao) lorsque le serveur (homme très sympa) nous propose un petit café. il faut savoir qu'en france, presque tout est 'petit' : j'y serai dans une petite minute...auriez-vous une petite serviette à me passer ?...je prendrai bien un petit café. mais attention : même en format 'petit,' le café ne m'intéresse point. donc heureusement j'aie pu arrêter ce gentil monsieur avant qu'il ne quitte notre table pour revenir et y déposer trois cafés : auriez-vous un chocolat chaud ? lui ai-je vite demandé.

sa réponse -- soit une brève période de silence suivie d'un léger sourire témoignant du grand effort qu'il semble devoir mettre pour ne pas éclater de rire -- se fait l'écho des expressions figurant (à moitié cachées) aux visages de mes camarades, et me fait comprendre que ma question est plutôt atypique. néanmoins : je me renseigne auprès de la chef, me dit-il. et de retour quelques instants plus tard : madame, on pourra vous préparer un chocolat chaud mais il sera fait avec du chocolat de cuisine...donc du chocolat amer. (il n'est nullement convaincu.) parfait ! j'accepte.

jusqu'à maintenant, j'ai découvert lors de mes aventures en chaudchocolaterie® un seul chocolat chaud me plaisant plus que celui offert chez starbucks. (c'est plutôt triste, je l'avoue.) donc, même si les lentilles et le parmentier aux poissons que je viens de manger étaient délicieux et même si ce 'meilleur' chocolat chaud est d'origine française (ce n'est peut-être pas le hasard...?), je ne garde pas beaucoup d'espoir pour l'amertume que m'offrira bientôt M. Sympa.

au bout de deux minutes, mon chocolat chaud arrive. petit, en effet. il nous faudrait au moins quatre de ces mugs pour remplir un Grande (trois pour un Tall ; cinq pour un Venti). la mignonne soucoupe tient également trois cubes de sucre. puis un (autre merveilleux) gâteau, celui-ci genre madeleine au chocolat. après avoir goûté au liquide chaud, je plonge un cube dans mon tout petit mug, remuant avec tendresse l'elixir. et hop ! c'est tout ce qu'il lui a fallu (elle a raison, cette géniale Mary Poppins) : c'est le meilleur des meilleurs choc-chauds que j'ai dégustés de ma vie. quel plaisir énorme !

et maintenant retournous à la traduction...

*prononciation de "Mehun" (plutôt pour le locuteur canadien): meuh-an.

***

two of my friends and i are tucked into a table at aux saveurs de Mehun -- a modest-but-elegant little restaurant that lusts after local ingredients (du berry lentils, for example) and where the menu changes on the daily. the establishment, which faces a (rather horrific) porcelain statue (oh là là !), is located in the middle of Mehun-sur-Yèvre. a village whose name is -- for a mere anglo-born canadian -- practically impossible to pronounce (who okayed smackdabbing an 'h' between two vowels anyway?); a village located in the Cher (not the singer) département, not far from Bourges or from Vierzon; a village just ten minutes, by car, from Quincy, where my friends are putting me up for a week.

we've just finished devouring our desserts (strawberry-melon gazpacho, accompanied by three wee cocoa sponge squares) when the server (friendly dude) offers us un petit café. this is a good time to mention that, in france, almost everything is 'petit': j'y serai dans une petite minute [i'll be there in just a sec]...auriez-vous une petite serviette à me passer ? [would you have a napkin, please?]...je prendrai bien un petit café [i'd love a coffee]. but not so fast! even in 'petit' form, coffee is a very unwelcome addition to my day. it's a good thing i can stop the nice man before he's left our table, otherwise returning with three coffees: auriez-vous un chocolat chaud ? [do you have any hot chocolate?] i quickly interject.

his response -- a brief pause, followed by a partial smile betraying the significant effort apparently required to stifle his urge to laugh -- mirrors the (half-masked) expressions on my friends' faces and makes me realize my request is rather atypical. nonetheless: i'll check with the chef, he explains. and moments later: Madame, we can make you a hot chocolate, but it will be made with baking chocolate...so, it will be bitter. (he's hardly convinced.) perfect! I accept.

in my adventures in Hotchocolating® thus far, only one hot chocolate has proven better than what's served up at starbucks. (sad, i know.) so, despite the deliciousness of the lentils and the parmentier aux poissons (a kind of gourmet fish hash) that i've just eaten, and despite the fact that this 'better' hot chocolate has french roots (maybe that's not a coincidence...?), i don't have much hope for the bitterness Mr. Friendly's about to deliver.

within two minutes, my hot chocolate arrives. little. indeed. it would take at least four of these mugfulls to fill a Grande (three for a Tall; five for a Venti). the tiny saucer also holds three sugar cubes. and (another glorious) cake: some kind of chocolate madeleine. after tasting the hot liquid, i drop one cube into the little mug, stirring the elixir affectionately. and ta-da! that's all it takes (right you are, yet again, Mary Poppins): this is the bestest of the best hot chocolates i've ever had. what a enormous pleasure!

and now back to (self-)translating...

the verdict is in

three twentysomething teachers-in-training, chewing the early morning pedagogical fat:

guy: i'm more of a cat person myself. you know what's great about cats? (he asks this in a tone so sincere -- *cough* condescending -- that, for a brief moment, i wonder if he actually believes that his fellow educators might not have already encountered a cat at some point in their lives. or thought about what a cat is. or developed an awareness of how cats behave.) they're independent. they clean themselves. (one of the girls, with a little giggle: oooh, self-cleaning!) they do everything they need to "do" in a little box. basically, they're the perfect animal. this last statement is practically punctuated with a gavel hitting its sounding block.

given my admitted pet bias (aka my personal disdain for felines, on account of allergies to dander and impertinence -- atchoo!), i find myself thinking many things. but mostly: 1) i'm not sure how i feel about the fact that it's just a matter of time before this guy's educating a litter of young'uns (or maybe i am, for better or for worse, very sure about how i feel about that); and 2) he's surely single...maybe i should set him up with Little Miss Memo?

and now back to translating...

Mat(ters of the heart)

[march 19, 2014]

one of the baristas, who isn't working tonight, has just waltzed in -- excited -- with news for her colleagues: so, i'm on this date! (as in, at that very moment.) it's this guy i met at the lieutenant's pump the other day. wanna come join? (is that how first dates work now? y'bring your co-workers along for the ride?! *takes detailed notes*) i went into the date with zero expectations...but he's coooool!  to which one of the working baristas responds (subsequently receiving an affirmative reply): oh, this is the guy named Matt, right? but Matt's nowhere to be seen. (he's apparently next door at a pub, waiting for his date to reappear.)

this promptly reminds me of the first guy i fell in love with. i was fourteen. too young, i suppose, to know what love really is. and, as is often the case in the Department of Romantic Affairs (perhaps particularly when you're "too young [...] to know what love really is"), the feeling was not reciprocated. wa wa waaah. but i made a friend. and, while we were hardly best friends, a long-standing acquaintanceship emerged, involving regular razzing-and-banter and, on rarer occasions, the kinds of conversations that feel (and therefore end up being) "profoundly important." you know the ones: a mushroom cloud of adolescent epiphanies -- the stuff you'd be truly mortified (though surely also curious) to hear played back to you verbatim but that you now still thoroughly enjoy through the delightful fog of your selective memory, where the feelings associated with raw and riveting conversational communion remain fully intact. his name was also Mat (no second "t" in this case). well-liked, sincere, and sufficiently cheeky, he had a big laugh, tended to underestimate himself and, throughout our friendship, did wonders for my self-confidence. in other words: he, too, was coooool.

suddenly, a crash test dummies song begins to play. "afternoons and coffeespoons." i'd loathed this single when it was released in high school. (probably a knee-jerk reaction to my younger sister being such a fan.) in any case, that was long before i knew about the song's links to T.S. Eliot's 1920 poem -- which i (not unlike gadzillions of other people) quickly grew fond of:

[...]

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a dying fall

Beneath the music from a farther room.

So how should I presume?

[...]

that was also long before the song was retroactively inserted (without my permission; possibly by my sister...) into an as-yet-unreleased musical tribute to my high school years and all the people in it. like Mat. who celebrates his birthday today. and who, a few years after graduation, just as he was glimpsing adulthood, was involved in a very bad car crash and, weeks later, died. now nowhere to be seen. 

then again...how should i presume? perhaps he's waiting next door, at the pub. or maybe he's right here, calmly tucked beneath the music from a farther room. 

and now back to translating...

[this entry is (also) dedicated to another Matt: the friend who wrapped up and mailed me a chuckle, a hot chocolate and a hug. all of which arrived this afternoon.]

when the cat hasn't got your tongue

the other day in the coffee shop, one member of a forty-to-fifty-something female trio gleefully shares: oh, you can never have too many cats!

(uh-oh. somebody didn't get the memo...)

and now back to translating...

haiku

i can feel it kick!

womb-deep intoxication.

hot liquid cocoa.

and now back to translating...

even if he says it to everyone

when the tall, sweet, leanly bicepped barista (who's also blessed with a touch of 'rugged' and a smidge of 'dim') pauses after taking your order so he can -- almost under his breath and through a coy smile -- say happy valentine's, blushing is not only inevitable; it is imperative.

and now back to translating...

like nails on a...

a coffee shop is a great place for many things:

• a first date
• a little work
• perusing the newspaper
• crossword puzzling
• people watching
• catching up with a small gaggle of friends
• pitstopping in the middle of a long road trip
• looking for a new job
• drafting a letter explaining why you're leaving your current job
• googling, for no particular reason
• writing the great canadian novel (or just pipedreaming about doing it)
• enjoying some outside-the-house time with your eighteen-month-old
• blogging
• a fiftieth date
• etc.

something unfolding behind me right now, however, reminds me that there are also things that a coffee shop is not well-suited for: clipping your finger nails. guh-ross. the repeated, piercing *SNAP* is...unpleasant, to put it gently. worse, though (particularly as i attempt to continue enjoying my hot chocolate), is thinking about where exactly the discarded nail bits are landing. pretty sure they're ending up in the basket-like hood of my sweatshirt. *sigh*

and now back to translating...

shocks

last sunday night, a 6.4-magnitude earthquake struck the waters some fifty kilometres off the more westerly side of the north coast of puerto rico. from the condo in san juan (located on the more easterly side of the island), we could feel it. right around midnight. the condo, perched way up on the 25th floor, swayed dramatically back and forth for many minutes, sending the thick vertical blinds -- hung like ginormous al dente linguine from the ceiling -- clashing against one another, despite the almost absent breeze. in that moment, my friend and i suddenly wished we were back home -- um, like, as soon as humanly or technologically possible: to the portal! -- in icy-cold canada, where, bearly (yeah, that's gonna warrant a chuckle soon) a week beforehand, a woman had sat in the coffee shop wearing an i'm-a-bear-or-a-cat-or-a-bearcat hat (*insert prescribed chuckle here*) to stay warm indoors. (actually, it was more of a cranial costume: a furry headpiece covering her forehead, hair, neck and upper back, and definitely flaunting animal ears.) in short: it was weird, but it was also that cold.

quakes aside, however, things here are more or less the same as back home.

i mean, sure, sure, the coffee shop on condado village's ashford avenue looks out on palm trees, is littered with FLAHrida-style accents (not to mention the associated lax attitude toward sun protection: leather-skins unite!) and bubbling with spanish, and sports significantly more bikinis than bear headwear. and sure, here, that cheese-infused delectable (over there, by the muffins) has a label in front of it that reads "local favorite," which admittedly makes my commonwealthed, let's-add-a-"u"-to-every-word eyes nearly bug out of my head: boyyoiiiingg!

but it's the same ole starbucks. the same (albeit pricier -- yeesh!) ole hot chocolate. the same ole perfect workspace for thesising. even some of the same ole tunes, including paris or amsterdam, mushaboom and (from the archives) hideout.

this musical blast of canadiana is a small example of how the most familiar things can double as the most shocking: who knew puerto rico was equally enamoured of Sarah Harmer! another such example was on monday, when a woman walked in through the door and, almost immediately (as in, before even lining up for her beverage), was hovering over one of my books, "multiculturalism within a bilingual framework." i instantly got a sneaky feeling that i somehow knew her. testing the waters, i soon piped up: feel free to look at it if you like. she was practically giddy: scooped up the book and started investigating its innards. a-ha! i thought (not unlike Sherlock Holmes might), and then asked (not unlike a phd student might): are you a student? (but, at this point, my question was largely rhetorical -- merely a way of sparking conversation with someone i knew i had some kind of affinity with.) sure enough, the truth emerged: not only is she also thesising (at the tail end of a phd in philosophy at syracuse) but she's also studying multiculturalism. something or other about the mingling of afro-carribean cultures (let's be honest: we never fully grasp someone else's research the first -- or tenth -- time we hear it explained). who knew that, on my self-directed writing retreat (deliberately intended to take me away from the office, away from colleagues, away from familiarity), san juan's tourist hub would serve up a new colleague, an academic conversation, and a business card!

and, now, glancing out the window, another surprise: the dog of the (seemingly) homeless man, who sits across from the marriott each day, is wearing fluorescent-pink nailpolish. well...it is and it isn't a surprise, since sometimes the most shocking things can also double as the most familiar: Fashion Pooch, She-Grizzly; tuh-MAY-toh, tuh-MAH-toh.

and now back to translating...

when it's -39˚c with the windchill...

...and this poor little coffee shop seems barely able to maintain a mere 15˚c, and that lady -- whose hood seems to be lined with a live ferret (!) -- is holding the main door wide open while she stands outside yammering on her phone and letting the impossibly cccold air seep insidiously into the room...well, when all of that happens, it is definitely ok to (at least temporarily) send any remnants of your christmas spirit soaring riiight out the window (or open door, in this case) in order to march over to Little Miss Ferret and accidentallyonpurpose nudge her jibber-jabber tongue smack dab onto the nearest available metal post.

and now back to translating...