Ghost of Christmas Past

I don't remember when the Christmas decorations start going up in Tartu, but it started crawling around in my mind today when it snowed. They were very elaborate and evoked no uprising from the people (as I would expect in America), despite the fact that the country is mostly atheist.

I never wrote about my second Christmas in Tartu, which turned out to be a traditional Estonian Christmas tucked away in a country home in Valgamaa. On Christmas Eve I had politely refused Märt's offer to come to the country home and spend Christmas with his family, because I felt too shy. I had met him in an English conversation course for Estonian adults.

He called again the next morning and somehow convinced me to go, and it turned out to be very nice. From my perspective it seems like children get to participate in Christmas more in Estonia than back home. Santa visits them at their home and they each perform something for him, whether it's reading poetry, singing a song, playing an instrument, etc. He rewards them with their presents.

Santa came to Märt's country home in Valgamaa. The kids performed several pieces, some of which involved a recorder. I performed a poem. I had been learning Estonian but I still chickened out and read the poem in English. He gave me a small white box. The little 6 year old boy beside me pointed at my box and then pointed at his very large box to make sure I was aware of it. This made me laugh a lot.

Then we had an Estonian Christmas dinner with blood sausage and jam, potatoes, and sour cabbage. There was also some lamb from the neighbor's flock. Everyone always asks how I like blood sausage - I feel pretty neutral toward it, as I do toward most food in Estonia. It tastes fine and it's suitable fuel for the body.

There are a few Estonian food items which I really enjoy - pretty much everything Märt's parents made, always homegrown/home-made/self-hunted, etc. Before I left, his dad gave me a deer sausage he had hunted and prepared, which had a very good flavor that I hadn't experienced before. Some of my favorites were their smoked fish and homemade liver paste.

Here's a picture from that Christmas in Tartu. Their pet bird, Uku, is there in the background. He died before I went back to America (R.I.P. Uku).

You know you're a semiotician when...

• you make models of models for a living
• you know the difference between a horse and a white horse
• you establish your disciplinary history by labeling certain scholars and theories, who make no reference to semiotics, as ‘crypto-semioticians’
• you're not only part of a discipline, you're part of a metadiscipline
• people think you study traffic signs or religious symbols
• you dread family reunions because you’ll have to explain what it is you study
• you dread family reunions because after failing to explain what it is you study, you’ll have to explain what you'll do with it (which is EVERYTHING, you do EVERYTHING with it)
• you literally study the meaning of life
• abduction doesn’t mean kidnapping
• you begin most of your papers by justifying why your approach is necessary, and what it adds to the discussion already being had by other more developed and recognized disciplines for likely a much longer time
• ad hoc methodology is your modus operandi
• you hate Richard Dawkins
• natural scientists generally hate you, if they even know about you. which they don’t
• your hypothetical club-house would read: “no logical positivists allowed!”
• you could recite peirce’s definition of a sign in your sleep
• one of your biggest pet peeves is when scholarly entrepreneurs borrow semiotic terminology and then mess it all up
• you can count the number of places in the world you could possibly study your discipline proper on one hand
• when someone tells you to ‘replace’ your cigarette smoking habit with another healthier habit as a means of quitting, you criticize the approach for being quantitative and have another cigarette
• the meteorologist on tv is anthropomorphizing weather patterns
• you feel exhausted after reading 20 pages from your field
• ‘isomorphism’ is one of your favorite words
• you think one of the most important things we must do in life is distinguish the meta-language from the object-language
• sometimes the sheer arbitrariness of it all is just....SO COOL

An anecdotal reflection of Myrdene’s openhouses

I heard about semiotics and the University of Tartu at one of Myrdene’s openhouses. I don’t remember his name or where he was from, but a graduate student once came to an openhouse with a present for her. Myrdene was beside herself with delight upon his arrival. They went into the kitchen, where she had to sit down while he shared what appeared to be incredible news. She had her hands to her face in sheer joy. They came back into the larger room, where she shared that he was accepted to present at a zoosemiotics conference at the University of Tartu. Lively chatter proceeded. Later, when Myrdene happened to be in my vicinity, I asked her what semiotics was. She laughed, “Oh ho. Well! Everyone is a semiotician. Semiotics defies definition, as does everything interesting, but for now I’ll just say that it is the study of meaning-making.” I had never thought of meaning as something being made, so this led into a very funny metalogue in which she deconstructed every question I asked to the point where I felt like I had taken the red pill in the Matrix.

The first time I visited, I passed her place a few times because the garden was pleasantly overgrown. Rumor had it that she fought an ongoing battle with the city to keep it that way.

Myrdene’s house wasn’t the most functional in a physical sense for the openhouses. You walked in and there was less than a square meter of space to prop yourself up on the walls while you wrestled off your shoes. It would be an adequate entrance for just one person but with a pile of shoes there it was tricky. Presumably, Myrdene wouldn’t have cared in the slightest if I stepped a bit into the living room to get my shoes off (or even if I didn’t take my shoes off at all). For whatever reason, I always endeavored the balancing act of remaining within that one square meter.

Myrdene’s living room, where most of the socializing took place, was occupied by a table in the center the size and height of a ping pong table (it might have actually been one but it was covered by a table cloth that Myrdene would brilliantly clean her hands with after eating). There was about a yard of space around its perimeter which ended at the bookshelf-walls that extended from floor to ceiling, popping with books nobody had ever heard off, like No five fingers are alike: cognitive amplifiers in social context. Myrdene lent me that book to write my paper on math as a language for her linguistic anthropology course. She made sure I knew that she doesn’t normally lend out her books and that I should not tell a soul. She gave it to me covertly, eyes darting around the party to make sure no one was watching. She had known exactly where it was after she had exclaimed that she had the perfect book for me. Once someone had asked her how her bookshelves were organized and she said that once she had a couple of Chinese students, who were in need of some money, come clean up around her house. They did a less than adequate job so she gave them a more specific task of cleaning her bookshelves. The students noticed that the books had no organization and asked if they could arrange them in order. Myrdene agreed and they wound up organizing them from Z to A. This reminded Myrdene of a brilliant solution to dusty books that she had witnessed at another academic’s house: tiny curtain-like fringes hanging from the shelves above each row of books, extending just past the tops of the books, so that they would automatically dust the books as one pulled them off the shelves.

People awkwardly stood around Myrdene’s ping pong table, which was decked out with snacks and alcoholic beverages. The snacks were always spread out but the alcoholic beverages always sat in a tight group, as if we feared one might get left out.

People also wandered into the kitchen, which was a much smaller room but had an open enough space to hold a circle of five or six people. I remember standing in a circle about that size and suddenly noticing that a graduate student who studied anthropology of music in Brazil was calmly observing my knee, which was subconsciously wiggling at a rapid but rhythmic pace. I stopped suddenly when I noticed his gaze and he met my eyes without changing his expression. I hoped I didn’t reveal anything about myself that I was unaware of. 

There was also a small square room with pale red carpet that was usually closed off, as it was used as a guest room to house anyone who was passing through. Myrdene always treated them as the guest of honor, introducing them at the openhouses. One of the guests that I remember was a dog trainer.

One time the guest room was empty and I saw it for the first time when I peeked in on a three year old boy, who was playing in there. His parents, from one of the Scandinavian countries, were in the living room sitting on a couch crammed between the ping-pong table and the wall, so tight that in order to pass around it you either had to crawl underneath the table or over the couch, so they must have done one of the two to get on the couch. The mother was a well-advanced horticulturalist, while the father did post-doctoral research in medicine. They had a seemingly genetic calmness and small, elegant features.

When I spotted their child in the guest room, I found him talking to his reflection in the tv screen, which was turned off. He pointed at his reflection and said, “Look, I’m on tv.” We shared some small talk, or rather, he narrated his proceeding playful actions in a half-audible voice, before he politely asked me to leave so that he could dance. I stepped out and he closed the door. I shared this information with Myrdene and his mother, who were chatting in the kitchen. The mother’s eyes brightened and she said, “He’s very good at dancing.”

Nobody ever ventured up the steep and narrow wooden staircase, which led straight into darkness. A few stairs at the bottom were bathed in the light of the living room. Usually the cats hung out on the stairs, though one time a Finnish student studying anthropology of dance in Canada sat there. We shared a very awkward conversation until we bonded over how boring anthropologist Marvin Harris is.

Later, the little boy stood on a chair with his elbows resting on the ping pong table, occasionally popping cheetos into his mouth. I sat next to a woman from Africa, who sat on a chair slightly higher than mine. She told me she was a Ph.D. student. Her master’s degree had gone smoothly, but for reasons unknown to her, her Ph.D. was a very chaotic, non-linear journey. She got distracted by the child and asked him to come over to her. He stared at her silently, then went back to the cheetos. She asked him why he wouldn’t come over. “Because I just don’t,” he responded.

Myrdene has said more than once that children are the greatest philosophers. She appeared to be profoundly amused when that same boy pointed to a small stool and asked if it was a step-chair. “Why, yes it is! It is a step-chair!” she exclaimed. I approached and asked him what his name was. Without hesitation, he replied, “I don’t have a name,” then wandered off.

Hope this paints a better picture than my responses via speech (which usually only paints a picture of my awkwardness). 

Made in China

At Nora’s birthday party (I think she turned 8 but I can’t remember), her mother told me as I poured some coffee out of a large old thermos that when she was younger, that very thermos was special because it was made in China. Everything was required to be made in USSR so having something made in China was extraordinary. It was turquoise with large colorful flowers on it, which was also extraordinary at the time because everything was plain and the same - typical, as Krraka would say. They had to keep it hidden and only took it out for special parties.

Snails

There are a lot of snails in Tartu. There’s even a spiraly tower called Tigutorn (snail tower). It’s super tall and has neat rows of windows different shapes and sizes. When I asked Hugo (age 6) to draw something on my poster about Tartu, he drew Tigutorn. His mother said that Tigutorn is very important to him, and that he’d like to visit it someday. 

I remember walking along a boring road on the outskirts of town with Krraka, who led me through some tall grass toward a pond. It was summertime and the sun was setting so it was probably around half past 1 am. We didn’t make it to the edge of the pond because we could hear the crunching of all the snails we were massacring with every step, so we turned back.

I laughed harder than I had in a long time at Kalevi’s garden party when I was playing with some kids and we found snails. One hilarious little girl picked one up, turned it to look at the gooey side, then suddenly started this strange high-pitched squealing at it, “Yee oh woowoo weeee oooo eee oh weee!” She shrieked at the goo, wobbling her head for emphasis. I laughed so hard. Later I found her with a strip of bark and seven snails on it. She sat watching them and would poke them back into their shells if they tried to peek out.

Katrin mentioned that hedgehogs are good for her garden because they eat snails, which destroy her plants. We spotted a couple of hedgehogs one morning and I got some good pictures, because they don’t run at all. Apparently they can jump at you very suddenly with their spikes aimed appropriately, though.

I tried to take a close-up picture of a snail along the Emajõgi but it came out blurry. One thing I like about Estonian language is that they have a special word/preposition for being by water, like a specific ‘by’ for water - ääres. 

One of our professors asked that we come up with our spirit animal. When I thought really hard about it, I realized that I have a different spirit animal in Tartu than back home. In Tartu, my spirit animal is a snail. I don’t know what it was in the U.S., but something that moves a little faster, and probably a vertebrate.

Sauna

I went to the sauna just a few times here in Estonia. Once was with a bunch of female semioticians in a smoke sauna during summer school, next to a large cold pond into which we periodically jumped to cool off. We were lucky enough to catch the moonrise right over the pond, huge and full. Another memorable time I went with my boyfriend’s mother at their country home. The building housing the sauna was a couple of hundred years old. They had converted it themselves, but the old walls remained the same. We each took a beer and a bundle of branches thick with leaves.

After undressing we entered the room, dense with heat, and sat down on a high bench. She 

took a ladle of water to pour over the hot rocks. When she did, a burning steam slowly enveloped us. Then she began to hit herself all over with her bundle of branches. I followed suit. When I asked why we are doing such a thing, she said because it is so clean in here. I asked again and she said, bacteria can’t live in so hot a place. I couldn’t make the logical connection and didn’t speak enough Estonian to express my discontentment with her answer, so I went back to beating myself. What it did for me was fan the hot air around me, seeming to make it even hotter and almost unbearable.

When we had our fill, we approached a large barrel of ice cold water. We took buckets and dumped it on ourselves - a bone-deep shock. Then she said it was time to wash, so she gave me a sponge and we began to scrub ourselves clean. She told me she would wash my back. Confused, I let her. Then she had me wash hers, saying ‘aita!’ I didn’t know that word yet (help) and it sounded like aitäh (thanks), so I said aitäh! She said ei ei, aita!  I nodded and said thanks for washing my back. She laughed and I didn’t get it until much later.

The long and short of it

Today on the drive home Märt and I listened to Russian church music, Russian folk music, then Russian spiritual music. It all sounded the same and we promptly switched it back to drum and bass. The sun set fire to the fields of dandelion seeds. It was peaceful and approached nirvana because I had awoken with the sunrise at 3am and was very tired. I had also attended a party with highly educated proper Estonians, who are difficult to converse with (at least for me). I busied myself at the perimeters of the printing museum where it was held and checked out the old typewriters, then read all of the Estonian posters word-for-word even though I understood nothing.