#inwhich

[inwhiches]

Episode 100 –

"In which I, Helen Zaltzman, have talked about language and why and how we use it for 100 episodes!”

[inwhiches]

Episode 76 –

“in which I, Helen Zaltzman, say potAYto, and language says potAHto.”

[inwhiches]

Episode 70 –

“In which I, Helen Zaltzman, help language spin straw into gold, but with some very punishing conditions attached.”

[inwhiches]

Episode 64: Technobabble --

“In which I, Helen Zaltzman, prepare language for takeoff.“

[egenussero-blog]

In which an introduction is necessary...

Hello again, old friend.

Originally, I had a Tumblr when I was in high school (less than 10 years ago) but I became obsessed with it and decided to quit. It was one of the most addicting forms of social media I had ever consumed. 

This is my new blog. With it, I’ll reflect on topics that are consuming me. Perhaps the subject will be love (a cliche but important nonetheless), or work (more of me going on a tangent), or some other elaboration of festering idea that I just can’t shake.

Maybe no one will read this. Maybe I’ll have hundreds of dedicated supporters who actually enjoy my mumbling. This is more for my own person benefit, so whatever happens, happens. I’m not too concerned. I just hope I keep up with this.

Hello world. My name’s Alex. These are my thoughts.

[in-which-i-travel]

In which people fail to Pompeii correctly

Now, I’m not normally one to judge how other people travel save for perhaps the most egregious sort of cases (I steadfastly refuse to believe that anyone needs three suitcases for themselves on a vacation, and nobody’s gonna be able to tell me any different!), by which I mean that while certain things aren’t necessarily my cup of tea, I’m not going to look down on them for using it. You want to do a giant tour-group? Sure, I can see how you might not want the hassle of figuring out transport and lodging for yourself. You want to do the hideously expensive on/off tour busses? Well, I suppose I get how you want to keep flexible and see all of the major sites as you want, especially if budget isn’t a concern. You want to bum around, not do any museums/antiquities and just enjoy the local culture? I’ve had that urge far more than once.

 That does not extend to Pompeii. Because people do Pompeii wrong.

 I’m not sure why I’m so defensive about this one random site in particular, but I am. The joy comes in the wandering, in travelling around at your own pace and discovering things as you like, ducking into and out of the various ruins whether they’re marked or not, in finding your own little spots, or navigating to something cool. It comes from the almost meditative trance that you get into wandering down the demolished streets, stepping across the giant blocks that serve as street-crossings like you’re on the cover of Abbey Road. Nothing in the city is impressive on its own, the damage too complete to allow for more than scraps of mural and mosaics in most places. I could see the dissatisfaction on the faces of the tour-groups that I walked by. The almost corporeal air of disappointment that hung around them as their guide moved them three blocks over to see another fragment of wall that would have been awesome had they been walking under their own power and not worrying about all of the people around them, or if they’d had a chance to just relax and get themselves into a good mood after the awful train-ride to get there.

 Pompeii is supposed to be done guideless. That’s the absolute, objective, truth, and I’m sticking to it.  

[in-which-i-travel]

In which I enjoy Naples far more than I was expecting

Naples was more a stop of convenience than anything else. A place that I could get to from Rome easily enough while still having a train connection to Palermo for me to take advantage of. It was described by some (who shall remain nameless, for fear of angry Neapolitans) as ‘an armpit’ and I’ll admit, it did seem a little run down at first. The approach into the town is depressingly industrial, and getting to my airBNB saw a certain level of frustration as I walked through the pouring rain down tiny roads, getting buzzed by assholes on mopeds and dangerous assholes in full-sized cars (at least by European standards). But by the next day, the rain had cleared, and things were looking up. It quickly revealed itself to be just as rough as the initial impression would indicate, but more in a Prague style than Rome, the huge number of local markets and street food joints combined with the sudden return of prices that seem slightly reasonable to my western eyes were a huge help, and the general shamelessness of how it indulged in its less pleasant parts quickly became rather endearing, giant street-markets of tasty food and worthless garbage providing a fun backdrop for wandering from museum to church to underground tunnel.

  It was just fun to look at too, the interlaced roads almost as quintessentially Italian as Rothenberg’s idyllic cottages were quintessentially German or Ghent’s utter lunacy was quintessentially Belgian. Sure, there are some things that I could more than do without (the beggars that temporarily break all of the subway ticket machines but one so that they can sit next to it and offer ‘help’ in particular), but little doorways into tile-lined shops selling 1.50 euro bottles of wine in unmarked glass bottles is unique to here so far, and was a very welcome addition even considering how cheap house-wine could get. Put that alongside a few really good museums, a neat, if creepy, church (unfortunately with very strict ‘no camera’ policies) featuring an amazing sculpture of post-death Jesus and two skeletons with plasticized blood vessels (which, disturbingly, nobody seemed to know were done pre, post, or ante-mortem) and a cool underground cistern/bomb shelter/troop transport/car impound/trash dump and you have a pretty good setup for a few days in between long stays.

[in-which-i-travel]

In which I wonder what ‘schadenfreude’ translates to in Latin

Alright, this one is entirely petty of me, especially since the entry is more about the Vatican in general than my entrance into the Vatican museums, but god damn does it feel good to just blow past a multi-hour long line because you had the foresite to book online. When you’re skipping a lineup that stretches an appreciable percentage of a country’s border for only a few Euro, you know you’ve made the right call. It’s an almost visceral feeling, made all the sweeter by the disgruntled faces you walk past, stuck in a purgatory of their own making, too deeply committed now that they’re halfway through the line but not wanting to stay for however much longer it takes to go the final few blocks needed to actually get to the museum door.

 And then you remember that you’re supposed to be in a holy place and you feel a little bit bad… Right up until the museum staff let the fifteen person line of online-buyers in all at once, while blocking the brick-and-mortar line off and you need to hold yourself back from laughing at the injustice of it all all over again.

 The museums themselves were nice as well, obviously. I’d forgotten the sheer variety of stuff that the popes had collected over the years (remembering that there’s an Egyptian mummy in the Vatican is still a little weird), in addition to the endless statuary and paintings that I’ve come to expect of a (pseudo) Italian museum, combined with some absolutely beautiful artwork on the rooves and walls for pretty much every room I passed through. The Sistine Chapel was nice too, though I’ll admit there’s a reason I used it as my ‘technical masterpiece’ example for my post on David. It’s just a bit too remote for my tastes, the high, massive, roof offering up plenty of space to work with, but reducing the scale and impact of any part in particular. It’s far enough away that it looks no different in person to me than it does on a postcard, which is disappointing. The rest of the museums more than made up for that slight letdown easily enough, however, and that’s not even taking the entrance into account.