I once had a very nice boyfriend. He used to sing me songs, come home with gifts of orchids or bonsais, cook lovely mussels. And because I was a nervous teenager with a very busy imagination, he used to put me to sleep with stories. 'Tell me nice things...' was my nightly catchcry when the darkness descended and the monsters started to shuffle. 'Tell me nice things' I would implore, and he would fill the room with narrative sunshine. He would recount his travels as a child, having the mixed blessing of an ex-pat father and a life on the road. Tales of swimming with coral in the Red Sea, preparing the Easter feast in Denmark, his grandpa shooting zebras in Kwa-Zulu Natal, school in Jakarta. He would conjure the smell of Swedish Christmas trees, the taste of lobster in Maine, the thrill of entering a Saudi home with his mother to see the women behind the burqas, dripping in gold and gossip.
So for our second anniversary as a gift and a thankyou for the years of lullabies, I made him a little book entitled Tell Me Nice Things. In it, I lovingly catalogued our favourite words and characters, not just from the stories, but from our story. It was basically a dictionary of us, a collection of our private jokes and invented lexicon. It was illustrated and in alphabetical order.
It is almost a decade later and my husband (who is not in fact the boyfriend) tells me nice things. Only this time, it's not just me in the bed, but also our two year-old. The stories feature our travels, our jokes, our heroes and villains, and of course, our invented words. And the three of us cling to our invented language as though it were a security blanket, lying in the dark with foreign sirens and sambas blaring down below, the silhouttes of travel spirits swirling above us. Our langauge is what developmental psychologists call a 'transitional object'.
My husband and I have an old love of words and their capacity to do, well, pretty much anything. Three weeks after our first date we invented a name for our car, crafted several nicknames for each other and fashioned an imaginary contraption called The Louge which linked our neighbouring houses via a magic superfast tunnel. We went on to invent alternative names for things in our life: Lady Deathtrap was the ute we sometimes drove, The Crypt was our tiny apartment and of course The Goose, Stinky Pingu, Nusus, Bruno and The Tyrant -- our son.
Travelling to so many countries where the language is not our own, we seem to have developed an even greater need for this meta-langauge. Not just because it helps to pass the time, or even because it provides a continuous, protective barrier between our little family and the ever-changing environs. But because in a confusing and sometimes terrifying world it helps us to embrace the chaos.
It helps us to connect to each other and it helps us to connect the dots.
For instance, when we are hungry, tired and generally agitated, a fight may be provoked. There is nothing to actually fight about, but steam must be let off. This is called a Gilbert and we use it as a kind of 'safe word' to bring the provocateur back down to earth. (As in 'hey man, you do not need to pack your bags and take the next plane home. This is just a Gilbert. Have a samosa, you'll see...').
We have long been travelling with a puppy called Labradog who takes possession of our bodies when we meet someone exciting and wonderful. It is not uncommon for us to cross-reference with each other after meeting someone really cool 'did I totally Labradog that French couple?'; in other words, 'was I too keen? Did I get too friendly too soon? Was the offer of our couch premature? The promise of eternal friendship too hasty?' (The irony is that while we are insecure about this, we love Labradogs ourselves and welcome them!)
As a side hobby, we collect beautiful and intriguing words. Brazilian Portuguese is awash with them, just as Brazil itself is awash with beauty and intrigue. First there are the names of fruit -- maracuja, mamão, morango, amora, avela, abacaxi, melancia. Then there are the exclamations, of which our favourite is 'nossa!', short for Nossa Senhora, or Our Lady. Our current obsession is with beijaflor, which means hummingbird, because the creature obtains food from a 'beijo' (kiss) with a 'flor'(flower). Yum.
Below is a small extract from our Fictionary. I can not reveal too much more, as much of the language is private. Not because it's lude or offensive, or even that personal. But because it is emotional and idiosyncratic in that way that Family Things are. And while we are ready to call this world our family for the purposes of travel, we are not quite ready to take it bed and switch off the lights.
With love, a few of our words:
Johnny: verb; to Johnny something is to allow a person to complete most of a task (usually a chore) and then to come in at the last minute with advice and suggestions on how it might be done better. Abbreviation of Johnny Come Lately.
Ariel Purchase: noun; a hasty purchase of a large and expensive good or service (such as a car or an airline ticket), usually done with no research or preparation and resulting in a disasterous loss of money, and motivated solely by the desire to just 'get it done' .
Harden the Fuck Up: verb, imperative form. This delicate phrase actually belongs to Chopper Read. It is an instruction to stop deliberating, prevaricating, whingeing and generally not doing what you should.
Polly: adjective. Used to describe a person or way of behaving that is passive agressive, sometimes manipulative or just plain solitary and loving it. Derives from Pagliacci, the Italian opera about a sociopathic clown who is crying on the inside. Credits to our dear Barnaby, who hopefully still uses it as much as we do.
Taking Out the Meat: verb; refusing to go out because you have already settled in for a night at home. Credit to our dear Eliot Goldstone who is pathologically incapable of leaving the house once he has taken out a piece of meat to defrost for dinner.
Spiritual Vertigo: noun; the zoom you feel as your body slowly climbs the steps to a holy edifice and your spirit calls a quick retreat to get some perspective on life.
Big thanks to the gorgeous and wordy Londi Gamedze who introduced us to the word Fictionary.
And finally, we would love y'all to write to us with your invented words so that we can add them to this page.
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
Moments in Movement
Hold on to the kite string
Let the bubble slowly gain momentum
As balloons pop gold confetti
This right here's Moments in Movement
- Macromantics
What are we still doing in the city?
And the child sleeps.
What are we still dragging our feet, lugging, slogging...how big is this whole that we're digging? they ask.
And the child sleeps on his mother's chest, sprawled and stuck. Lullabyed by the wheels on the bus going round and round. It's a cold and frosty morning, but he sleeps.
As the father, mother and baby roll along, alseep but not resting, their tired minds wonder: how much more city can we take? Their nostrils full of dust, their hair smoky, ears unable to tune down the white/blakc/mixed noise. They are weary from the weight of their bags and they wonder: where is the Nature?
As they roll along they dream of what has passed. The mother remembers sitting in Eric and Londi's student garden, drinking rooibos from a tin cup. 'It's not rooibos till you've had it in South Africa' sings Londi, all eyes and dreads and lifeforce. The baby sucks on a rusk -- the other South African staple.
The father is embroiled in an action dream. He is in an unfamiliar city. (Is Montevideo familiar to many outside its own borders?). It's late, and the encroaching darkness pushes him to find shelter for his family. 'But we made a reservation!' 'No señor, disculpe. No esta nada a qui.' He covertly fondles his credit card in his pocket; the urban man's weapon of choice. He wonders how far he will go with using it tonight...
Back in the mother's dream the scene shifts to a hot Cape Town afternoon. It is seriously hot. It's Christmas Eve day and The Mountain shows no sign of bringing wet and cooling relief. Mother, father and baby are out on their arse, looking for shelter. This stresses them all, each in his or her own way. They eat a kebab from a disenchanted Turkish-German who fell in love with Cape Town and returned to build a life. 'This city seduces you at first glance. It's magic. But living here is a different story.'
Then in a swirl of Beatle-esque psychodelia it starts to shift and happen.
The mother, exhausted and nervous, runs down Long street, clutching the list of useless hotel numbers, all dead-ends, all rooms full. She speeds into the Mexican cantina where the father and baby are relaxing with milkshakes and nachos. And when the soft, melancholy owner reaches out to ask how the househunt is going she bursts into tears of exasperation. He calls his contacts. Nothing. They go back to the phone and try others. Occuppied. She dials more hotels and out of the corner of her eye notices that the baby is unravelling an African wire sculpture of a Christmas tree. And somebody is taking a video of him. She sits down on the floor just for a moment, relishing the cool and dark and quiet. From this low vantage point she observes a Spanish girl in a yellow headscarf, talking rapidly about the 'Namibia Project'. The father is explaining their situation to a Zimbabwean wire sculpture artist and in a split-second decision they get up, walk out of the artist¡s studio and are back on Long Street, the man filming them from the depths of the room, holding his tiny digital camera steady as they vanish through the doorway.
Later they will learn that man's name (Coco); of his love for his little camera (Austrian graphic designer and wiz-bang artistic kid); his relationship with the Spanish girl (a deep, childlike, protective love); and his relationship to them (we are all Jews, we have all run from Odessa or Vienna, we have all known an old lady Lola and as we squeeze each other's hands tight, tight with the electricity of finding soul siblings, our big, dark Semitic eyes so at home with sadness weep their heart-stomping Gypsy lovesong).
Later, they will find a place to stay; far from ideal, but ok. They will dump their bags, walk back down Long Street, and the mother, hearing a distant choir singing Gospel will say 'let's follow that sound'. They will end up in the palm heart of the Company's Gardens, unexpectedly pulled into a pavillion with families, fruit and biscuits, Xosa kids warming up for a marimba concert. They will receive a call from Eric and Londi, inviting them to dineer with some gown-ups and the bizarrely! wonderfully! just-who-the-hell-are-we?! be treated to an elegant supper in one of Cape Town's top restaraunts, ogling the art nouveau detail in this converted Victorian bank while nibbling on langoustines and slowly sipping gazpacho with a raw salmon rosette and avocado icecream.
They will fall into a heap on the bed in their hotel, and declare that this shall forever be known as the day of four dinners: kabab, nachos, fruit in the gardens and langouste in the bank. They will be fatigued beyond belief. They will be happy.
And when they wake up they will travel though the rest of their time in Cape Town, constantly realising that a city is a city is a city, but not this city. This city seduces you then becomes your mother.
They will find evidence of angelic activity sequestered in the woodwork. Frangiapani trees standing guard, bottles of water offered when the baby is thirsty on a long train trip, invitations to Shabbat dinner by newlyweds who are so conscious of their footprint they have become Kosher vegetarian gourmandes. Elderly men with coffee and croissants materialising when the family is lost and exasparated, Brazilian air traffic controllers who happen to speak a little English turning up to rescue them and find them somewhere to sleep, yet again...
And so the father reviews his options: just find another room in another part of the city, pay too much for the damn thing and get out of here. Or stay at Hotel Nightmare Montevideo and fight for the room the've reserved.
And the Brazilian man taps him on the shoulder and says 'I speak a little English. Let me help you.' And he taps again. And he tap, tap, taps them all on the crown of the head, waking them to their new chapter.
And so we wake -- mother, father and baby -- stretching our limbs and looking around. And we realise, that while we slept, Table Mountain slipped under its invisibility cloak, time zones squeezed past, hemispheres almost shifted. And that it all really happened.
That the Nature of a city may not be green -- it is usually grey, splotched with screensaver silver. The sounds are not the Gaian call of the will once imagined. The pace of the subway subservients is certainly not 'natural'. But here's the thing: nature is the actions and intentions of the humans, who carry the vital force of the ethereal into the cogs of the mechanical.
And as Nature does, it just keeps happening. In the fingers and the wires and the sculpted Christmas trees. In the spiral of the city is the realisation that This is Not What It's Supposed to Be. But that's just it -- a city is a city. And for the time being, it has a good, strong, healthy heart. And with little regard for how things are supposed to be, it just keeps happening.
Let the bubble slowly gain momentum
As balloons pop gold confetti
This right here's Moments in Movement
- Macromantics
What are we still doing in the city?
And the child sleeps.
What are we still dragging our feet, lugging, slogging...how big is this whole that we're digging? they ask.
And the child sleeps on his mother's chest, sprawled and stuck. Lullabyed by the wheels on the bus going round and round. It's a cold and frosty morning, but he sleeps.
As the father, mother and baby roll along, alseep but not resting, their tired minds wonder: how much more city can we take? Their nostrils full of dust, their hair smoky, ears unable to tune down the white/blakc/mixed noise. They are weary from the weight of their bags and they wonder: where is the Nature?
As they roll along they dream of what has passed. The mother remembers sitting in Eric and Londi's student garden, drinking rooibos from a tin cup. 'It's not rooibos till you've had it in South Africa' sings Londi, all eyes and dreads and lifeforce. The baby sucks on a rusk -- the other South African staple.
The father is embroiled in an action dream. He is in an unfamiliar city. (Is Montevideo familiar to many outside its own borders?). It's late, and the encroaching darkness pushes him to find shelter for his family. 'But we made a reservation!' 'No señor, disculpe. No esta nada a qui.' He covertly fondles his credit card in his pocket; the urban man's weapon of choice. He wonders how far he will go with using it tonight...Back in the mother's dream the scene shifts to a hot Cape Town afternoon. It is seriously hot. It's Christmas Eve day and The Mountain shows no sign of bringing wet and cooling relief. Mother, father and baby are out on their arse, looking for shelter. This stresses them all, each in his or her own way. They eat a kebab from a disenchanted Turkish-German who fell in love with Cape Town and returned to build a life. 'This city seduces you at first glance. It's magic. But living here is a different story.'
Then in a swirl of Beatle-esque psychodelia it starts to shift and happen.
The mother, exhausted and nervous, runs down Long street, clutching the list of useless hotel numbers, all dead-ends, all rooms full. She speeds into the Mexican cantina where the father and baby are relaxing with milkshakes and nachos. And when the soft, melancholy owner reaches out to ask how the househunt is going she bursts into tears of exasperation. He calls his contacts. Nothing. They go back to the phone and try others. Occuppied. She dials more hotels and out of the corner of her eye notices that the baby is unravelling an African wire sculpture of a Christmas tree. And somebody is taking a video of him. She sits down on the floor just for a moment, relishing the cool and dark and quiet. From this low vantage point she observes a Spanish girl in a yellow headscarf, talking rapidly about the 'Namibia Project'. The father is explaining their situation to a Zimbabwean wire sculpture artist and in a split-second decision they get up, walk out of the artist¡s studio and are back on Long Street, the man filming them from the depths of the room, holding his tiny digital camera steady as they vanish through the doorway.
Later they will learn that man's name (Coco); of his love for his little camera (Austrian graphic designer and wiz-bang artistic kid); his relationship with the Spanish girl (a deep, childlike, protective love); and his relationship to them (we are all Jews, we have all run from Odessa or Vienna, we have all known an old lady Lola and as we squeeze each other's hands tight, tight with the electricity of finding soul siblings, our big, dark Semitic eyes so at home with sadness weep their heart-stomping Gypsy lovesong).
Later, they will find a place to stay; far from ideal, but ok. They will dump their bags, walk back down Long Street, and the mother, hearing a distant choir singing Gospel will say 'let's follow that sound'. They will end up in the palm heart of the Company's Gardens, unexpectedly pulled into a pavillion with families, fruit and biscuits, Xosa kids warming up for a marimba concert. They will receive a call from Eric and Londi, inviting them to dineer with some gown-ups and the bizarrely! wonderfully! just-who-the-hell-are-we?! be treated to an elegant supper in one of Cape Town's top restaraunts, ogling the art nouveau detail in this converted Victorian bank while nibbling on langoustines and slowly sipping gazpacho with a raw salmon rosette and avocado icecream.
They will fall into a heap on the bed in their hotel, and declare that this shall forever be known as the day of four dinners: kabab, nachos, fruit in the gardens and langouste in the bank. They will be fatigued beyond belief. They will be happy.
And when they wake up they will travel though the rest of their time in Cape Town, constantly realising that a city is a city is a city, but not this city. This city seduces you then becomes your mother.
They will find evidence of angelic activity sequestered in the woodwork. Frangiapani trees standing guard, bottles of water offered when the baby is thirsty on a long train trip, invitations to Shabbat dinner by newlyweds who are so conscious of their footprint they have become Kosher vegetarian gourmandes. Elderly men with coffee and croissants materialising when the family is lost and exasparated, Brazilian air traffic controllers who happen to speak a little English turning up to rescue them and find them somewhere to sleep, yet again...
And so the father reviews his options: just find another room in another part of the city, pay too much for the damn thing and get out of here. Or stay at Hotel Nightmare Montevideo and fight for the room the've reserved.
And the Brazilian man taps him on the shoulder and says 'I speak a little English. Let me help you.' And he taps again. And he tap, tap, taps them all on the crown of the head, waking them to their new chapter.
And so we wake -- mother, father and baby -- stretching our limbs and looking around. And we realise, that while we slept, Table Mountain slipped under its invisibility cloak, time zones squeezed past, hemispheres almost shifted. And that it all really happened.
That the Nature of a city may not be green -- it is usually grey, splotched with screensaver silver. The sounds are not the Gaian call of the will once imagined. The pace of the subway subservients is certainly not 'natural'. But here's the thing: nature is the actions and intentions of the humans, who carry the vital force of the ethereal into the cogs of the mechanical.
And as Nature does, it just keeps happening. In the fingers and the wires and the sculpted Christmas trees. In the spiral of the city is the realisation that This is Not What It's Supposed to Be. But that's just it -- a city is a city. And for the time being, it has a good, strong, healthy heart. And with little regard for how things are supposed to be, it just keeps happening.
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