Language is meaningless

The title of this essay isn’t totally accurate. But it reflects how I feel at the moment, and I figured a title like that might be attention-grabbing. A more accurate title would be “Language is arbitrary” or “Language is circular.” Those statements aren’t news to English majors, readers of Saussure, or thoughtful people in general. We all know language is largely just built on itself. But the truth of this was brought home to me last night in especially vivid light.

I was tutoring my Mexican lady, and as usual we were going over vocabulary questions she had from the reading she had done since our last meeting. She speaks English pretty competently, and according to a test she took with the literacy council, she reads it at an eighth-grade level (whatever that means). Last night, though, her questions were baffling me.

Take the previous sentence. “Though” was one of her questions. She had come across it in her reading, and she tried to look it up herself. The dictionary told her it was both a conjunction and an adverb. I had never known that. I often pull out the dictionary when tutoring. It can be helpful for articulating definitions of words we use so often that we never think about them. Not so in this case:

though, conj. in spite of the fact that.

Well, okay, that’s a pretty good definition, but what about “in spite of?” What does that mean, when you really think about it? I flipped back 51 pages to see what I might find under “spite.” For a second, it looked like the dictionary was going to do me a double favor by defining the whole expression:

—Idiom. in spite of, notwithstanding; despite.

Jesus. How the hell are you going to explain “notwithstanding” to an ESL student? It’s not quite the same as teaching a word like “chair,” where you get to just point at the fucking thing. 

I realized that a dictionary isn’t useful until you finally land on a definition consisting entirely of words the reader knows. If you were especially unlucky, your student might ask about some Word of Infinite Regress that would have you flipping back and forth through the dictionary for the rest of your life.

I can’t recall exactly how I ended up explaining “though.” I think it involved a fair amount of weird gesturing. And examples, those always help. If you give enough context, people can pretty well intuit the meaning of a word even without a comprehensible definition. I think my explanation came through, more or less, but it was completely exhausting. I kept foundering on overly complicated details, self-consciously realizing that the only thing I could offer was more and more words. I wanted there to be some kind of Look I could give her that would telepathically impart my knowledge. 

Once we finally dispensed with “though,” we moved on to other questions. “Struggle” came up, in the context of people “struggling with alcohol.” Thinking I might have better luck, I turned once again to the dictionary:

struggle, v. to contend vigorously, as with an adversary or problem.

Yeesh. The dictionary makes me cry.

Errors and retractions

I think I have to take back some of what I said in my previous post. I had a dream last night where I was solving some kind of three-dimensional puzzle, and there were a lot of visual elements that I could describe in intricate detail. My sense of sight really was engaged.

Maybe instead of writing an entire essay on the nature of the senses in dreams, I should have just said "Man, dreams are fucked up."

That would have left a lot less room for contradiction.

Do you dream in smell?

Last night I had a dream where I ran into an old friend from high school. Actually, rather than calling him a “friend,” it would be more accurate to call him a “drug-dealing acquaintance.” It was in a restaurant kitchen. He was waiting tables and bringing back a load of dishes. I don’t know what I was doing there. 

He stopped, and we said “hey,” in the surprised way you say it to someone you haven’t seen in years. After only a couple seconds of pleasantries, he excitedly offered me some cocaine (man, he hadn’t changed a bit!). I hesitated, so he grabbed a bag of it out of his breast pocket and offered to let me smell it. In my dream world, evidently, smell is an adequate test of the quality of coke.

So I took a whiff, which inadvertently became a half-snort. It smelled exactly—exactly—the way I remember cocaine smelling: mediciney, with a touch of sweet spiciness to it. What’s weird about it is that I haven’t smelled that smell in almost seven years. But in my dream it was perfect.

I think it’s the first time I’ve smelled anything in a dream. I can’t say for sure I’ve never had a dream that wasn’t somehow informed by smell—like, “Hey, I smell smoke, so maybe I should try to find where the fire is!”—but I’m pretty sure this is the only one I’ve had where a smell took center stage. This whiff of cocaine was so striking and true to life that—obviously—I was thinking about it long after dream’s end. In fact, it even took me a while to realize that the sensation was only imagined. I woke up thinking about the smell of cocaine, and it was only after I got out of the early morning quasi-reality that I remembered I hadn’t actually snorted cocaine since I was 18. 

This got me thinking about which of our senses are present in dreams, and to what extent. I think most people would say their entire sensory selves are present in their dreams. I don’t think this is true, even though I’m only extrapolating from my own experience.

How many dreams have you had where you smelled something distinct? How many dreams have you had where you touched something and really noticed its texture? Or what about the more complicated parts of sight: patterns, optical illusions, light sources and shadows? How often are you aware of those things in your dreams? 

It’s common in conversations about dreaming to ask people if they dream in color or in black and white. I’ve always thought this was sort of a bogus question, derived from a mistaken analogizing of dreams and movies (If you asked someone from the pre-film era if he dreamed in black and white, he’d probably ask where you came up with such an absurd question.). Still, the question illustrates our basic uncertainty concerning what we actually sense in our dreams.

I think people ask the question in the first place because they’re unsure of their own answers. They want other people to help them decide. I’ve never really believed the people who claim to dream in black and white. It seem ridiculous that anyone’s dreams would conform to a convention of cinematography that existed for only 50 years. But I don’t doubt that these people see no color in their dreams. I think the explanation may be that they don’t really see anything at all. 

In some of my experiences with psychedelics, I felt that I wasn’t “seeing” the kaleidoscopic patterns unfolding behind my closed eyelids, but rather that I was just imagining them so intensely that it was pretty much the same thing as seeing them. I think something similar is going on in dreams. 

Everything we “sense” in dreams is, of course, just a product of imagination, and it’s only through our unconscious laziness that we convince ourselves that the sensory parts of our brains are actually being engaged. Only in rare, rare instances (for me, at least) are the senses involved in any way I can point to. It takes something as odd as a forgotten acquaintance pulling out some high-quality blow for my imagination to reach all the way to my olfactory nerves. 
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P.S. This essay doesn't really contradict my lucid dream one, because that lucid dream was a total anomaly.

The great mental build-up to nothing

Last week at work was one of the most stressful I’ve had in a long time. It was partly because I had just gotten back from ten days out of the office and had an enormous pile of emails to sort through (this being by far my busiest time of the year), but it was mostly because of a dispute I had with one of the volunteer conference chairs I work with.

The details of the dispute aren’t important. He wanted to do something unusual in his upcoming conference, I told him he couldn’t (for various legitimate reasons), he persisted, I told him “no” again, he went behind my back to complain to the event manager (because he’s a bit of a prick), many emails and phone calls flew back and forth.

The stressful part about it was that I wasn’t sure if the event manager would back me up. Some of the other event managers I work with I would trust to support me fully and tell the chair to fuck himself. But this one I wasn’t so sure about. I was just waiting for her to come to my desk and tell me to comply with the chair’s request just to make him happy. 

I was dreading that this might happen. I had already firmly told this guy “no” twice, so it would have been humiliating and undermining of my credibility to then go back to him and say “yes” after all. It would mean saying I was wrong, which—oh—I just hate.

This drama played out over a few days, and I began convincing from the beginning that this humiliation definitely would happen. I was certain that the event manager was going to force me to go back to this dude, hat in hand, apologize for saying “no,” and give him exactly what he wanted. The whole scenario continued to build in severity in my imagination until it became a matter of professional life or death.

I imagined in intricate detail how I was going to flat-out refuse the event manager’s instructions to say “yes” to this guy. I imagined how I was going to tell her everything I dislike about her style of micromanagement and about her meddling in my work which she doesn’t totally understand. I imagined I was going to say, “Fuck it—this is the last straw,” and just walk out of the building without ever looking back. 

I have a small piece of company property stored in my luggage at home since I need to bring it to all the conferences I attend. On Thursday, I brought it in to the office just in case I really did decide to cut all ties with the company right then and there.

Well, if you read the title of this essay you’ve probably already guessed that all this imagination—all this dread, all this planning of arguments, all this pre-emptive fuming on my part—came to nothing.The event manager supported me, we politely shot down the chair, and the week ended on a relaxed high note. Jesus.

What’s funny about it is that I had been telling myself the entire time that it was going to come to nothing. I would have brief moments of sanity where I said to myself, “No no, man, you always imagine these conflicts are going to play out worse than they actually do.” I must have told myself that no fewer than ten times. It’s the truth. I do always imagine the worst-case scenario in my personal disputes. But only a few minutes after telling myself this, I’d involuntarily slip right back into crafting rebuttals and insults.

So now the stress I put myself through for a few days seems utterly ridiculous. I wish I could say I’ve drawn from this the lesson that I should finally just relax and not daydream every minor disagreement into an argument of world-defining proportions. But the sad fact is that I’ve drawn that lesson before, and I know I always forget it. I think the real lesson I’ve drawn is that human beings are indeed, as others have said, fundamentally creatures of routine—endlessly repeating ourselves in our relationships with others. And even repeating ourselves in how we, when alone, conceive of those relationships. 

Am I always going to imagine myself as the beleaguered voice of reason needing to battle it out with those who just don’t understand? Well, probably. I’m pretty well used to imagining that by now.  

Waste not

I’m going to revisit yet something else from my most recent trip. On my flight out through Seatac (first thing in the morning), I stopped in the food court to have an idiotic sweetened bread product (something I usually wouldn’t do). 

The tables in the food court all had these gigantic circular stickers on them devoted to Seatac’s waste disposal programs. Like so many public institutions in the Northwest, Seatac has jumped fully on the bandwagon of confusing patrons with separate bins for food scraps, mixed paper, plastics, metal, glass, scrap lumber, volatile solvents and oils, burned-out refrigerator compressors, ammunition casings, cigarette butts, and used syringes. Anything not included in those categories is meant to be thrown in a bin vaguely labeled, “Waste.”

The point, anyway is that Seatac is going to great lengths to soothe the guilty consciences of upper-middle-class white consumers, and these circular table stickers were there to help said consumers (and also Seatac) congratulate themselves for their efforts. The circle was divided into thirds: one green, devoted to compostables; one blue, devoted to recyclables; and one gray, devoted to the “other” stuff that gets thrown in a landfill. 

In the green section was this header: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Composts!” Fair enough. 

In the blue section: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Recycles!” Okay.

And the gray section: “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Reduces Waste!” Huh.

You’ll notice the last one deviates stylistically from the theme established in numbers one and two. They go from using an intransitive verb in the first two to using a transitive verb and direct object in number three. Composts. Recycles. Reduces Waste. One of these things is not like the others.

In the first two, they are telling you exactly what Seatac does with what is placed in the respective bin. Put a banana peel in the green bin. Seatac composts it. Put a pop can in the blue bin. Seatac recycles it. 

Try that same sentence construction with number three. Put a styrofoam codpiece in the gray bin. Seatac reduces waste it. Doesn’t work.

What I’m getting at is that if Seatac wants to be honest, they need to change that header in the gray section. It ought to read, “Seattle-Tacoma International Airport Wastes!” Because that’s what they do with the stuff in the gray bin. They waste it. 

There’s no “reducing” involved in the gray bin. Seatac as a whole may be producing less landfill-fodder, but the waste reduction happens as a byproduct of what happens in the blue bin and the green bin. When you toss something in the gray bin, you (and Seatac) are not reducing waste. You’re just wasting, and it’s deceitful of the information sticker to imply otherwise.

I’m not trying to cast moral aspersions on Seatac for wasting a lot. I don’t care about that part, since we all waste a lot. What bothers me is just their circumlocution regarding it. They want to self-righteously pat themselves on the back for their recycling and composting, but they have to put a linguistic spin on their landfilling to make it more palatable. 

They’re stuck in a position of not being able to brag about the positive without simultaneously revealing the (much larger) negative. So they cleverly evade the question, and everyone feels a little bit happier knowing their airport is making a difference. 

Of course, I’m probably the only pathetic loser who’s taken the time to actually read that sticker. 

Why things have to do things

I was thinking about something from a flight I took a few days ago. Across the aisle from me was a three- or four-year-old boy with his mom. I sensed that it was the kid’s first flight, or at least the first one he was conscious of. He was really excited to look out the window, and he had a lot of questions about the plane. 

One question stuck out. He kept asking his mom, “Why did it have to do that?” whenever the plane did anything strange. We hit some turbulence at one point. The plane shook and made the usual turbulence noises. “Why did it have to do that?” he asked, with a concerned look on his face. Same deal when we had a slightly rough landing. The plane jarred to a semi-halt and gave everybody a surprise. “Why did it have to do that?”

I realized the kid was still living in the comfortable but illusory world of childhood in which everything happens for a reason. He imagined intent in everything he experienced. I hated to think of him growing older and finding that things just happen. It’s a talk that the parents never give explicitly, but which kids get the gist of eventually: “Sorry, Billy, but the world is outside anyone’s control or purpose, and there’s often no sense to be made of anything.”

It was hard for me to catch what the mother was telling her son. It sounded like she was basically saying, “Well, that’s turbulence from when the air moves around.” But she most definitely was not answering why the plane had to do that. She was ignoring the real thrust of the kid’s question. I could tell the answer wasn’t totally satisfying to him. Part of his entire conception of the world—that nothing would happen unless it was god-damned necessary for the proper functioning of the universe—was left wanting for reinforcement.

It would really be great if all the weird, unpleasant, inexplicable things that happen to us were in fact necessary for the proper functioning of the universe, and if we could somehow get those answers:

“Why did my bank have to become insolvent and lose my entire life savings?”
“Because that’s going to make the Earth rotate today!”

“Why did my girlfriend have to meet a dashing Bosnian male model on her Peace  Corps trip?”
“Because that’s going to give them a nice sunny afternoon in Omaha!”

“Why did I have to get cancer on my eyeball?”
“Because that’s how zebras get their stripes!”

It would be very comforting, wouldn’t it? I mean, you wouldn’t be so upset about your house burning down if you knew it had to do that in order for the world to have ice cream. There may be some kind of cosmic order like this. After all, the universe is a closed system that was all contained in one pinprick 12–15 billion years ago. Maybe everything good functions on something bad. So maybe that time you got two flat tires on the interstate was necessary for me to have a really great steak for dinner that night. 

Customer service insanity

So I’m back now from my silly little conference thing in San Jose. It’s good to be back. 

I was doing a different job down there than I normally do at these things. I was checking in all the conference attendees. Every attendee has to have a badge. The badge has their name, their company, and also a barcode that all the sales reps in the exhibit can scan to retrieve their contact information and begin spamming them with marketing emails. Depending on what part of the meeting they’ve signed up for, the attendees also get various handouts: technical programs, exhibit guides, junky tchotchkes branded up and down with sponsor logos. 

The badges and handouts have to be printed and distributed on site, and I was the guy working the station where that all happens. I had help from some locally based temp workers, but I either oversaw or personally handled the preparation of a badge for each and every attendee, of which there were about 2,500. My station was also, by default, an information desk for the entire event. 

It’s the most customer service I’ve ever done or ever hope to do in my entire life. It was a veritable marathon of politeness, attentiveness, consideration, professional empathy, good-natured problem-solving, hospitality, and all the other shit that any sensible person would hate to do for hours on end.  

It’s not so much that the people were unpleasant to help. Overall, the clientele at these events is quite appreciative. What bothered me was simply that they were there. It wasn’t their manner I had a problem with, but their very existence. 

Every one of them wants to talk to you (legitimately enough), and they want you to talk in return. I need my badge. I lost my badge. Can I register here? I lost my program. Where’s the poster session? What time is it? I need a receipt. Why didn’t I get a lunch ticket? I left my underwear in China. Is it going to rain tomorrow? Where’s the nearest Starbucks? 

I don’t mind answering these questions at first, but once I’ve answered each of them a few dozen times, I’m tapped out. In a given day I can handle 115 distinct interactions, tops. That number lowers considerably when we’re talking about politely professional interactions. At some points during this event I was having upwards of 100 politely professional interactions in a single hour. I can make it happen when I need to. But it hurts.

By the end of it I was ready to completely lose it on the most respectful customers. We got our huge rush of registrants on the first two days of the conference, but late-comers continued trickling in for two days afterward. By the third day my movements and verbal responses had become so robotic that I worried a small slip in my wiring would make me go berserk on some poor little Japanese man who had flown all the way from Nikon HQ. The only thing he wanted was his registration packet, but I just wanted to strangle him for making me do and say what I had already done and said about a million and a half times.  

I began scanning the convention hall for people who had that look in their eyes—that look that said they were approaching me with a question I had already heard eight times in as many minutes. They were walking straight toward me, and they were going to make me talk, god damn their filthy hides. When the moment of truth came and I actually opened my mouth to reply, I found my voice catching here and there as I restrained myself from lashing out with irrational and nonsensical verbal abuse.

I’m back home now, though, and thanking god I don’t do that stuff for my regular job. But there are many who do. My few days of customer service torture gave me some insight into the peculiarities you observe in these people. I’ve noticed that flight attendants frequently leave inexplicable pauses in their scripted PA announcements. Example: 

“Attention passengers, portable electronic devices may once again be used at this time, although any device that sends or receives a signal must remain powered off for the duration of the flight. Cabin service will commence shortly, but for now we just ask that you sit back, relax, and . . .

. . .

. . .

. . . enjoy the flight.”

It always perplexed me. She can’t have forgotten what she was going to say—she’s said it a hundred thousand times. Now I realize that it’s precisely because she’s said it a hundred thousand times that she pauses for so long at such a strange moment. The robotic speech just becomes too much for her. She’s momentarily staring into a very deep and very dark abyss. She’s thinking about murdering all the passengers and then blowing her own brains out right after. 

I now have so much more sympathy for the poor girl.