Noam Chomsky is dumb. He doesn’t think communication is language’s primary purpose, he thinks language is a perfect formal system disconnected from gesture, intonation, and context. It’s no wonder, then, that he is mystified by how a beautiful grammar could evolve from a messy primate brain, and how he could imagine that a computer would make a better speaker than a human being.

When you watch people communicate, they use language in a very messy, haphazard way. No wonder Chomsky prefers his syntax trees and his “colorless green ideas.” But what purpose is language if it is only used to structure our thoughts? Probably ninety percent of thoughts are not particularly deep or complex, and probably ninety percent of utterances are used to communicate those not-particularly-complex thoughts to other people. It’s easy to think them without language, but it’s difficult to communicate them without language — and languages tend to be at their best when expressing those simple ideas of everyday existence.

I’ve started reading The First Word, which is a very good book indeed. I was jumping up and down when I discovered that apes can actually learn language — not just vocabulary, but syntax! and they make up compound words! — and that dolphins can go so far as to reject grammatically ill-formed sentences! The three-year-old humans of the world are getting some competition, I tell you.

Of course, humans are very defensive about their — I mean our — abilities. Thomas is especially vehement about our general superiority to other species, even if we don’t have a monopoly on any one thing in particular. I don’t quite understand this point of view myself, as in most ways (other than intelligence) we’re inferior to other species, and also because the top of the heap is a lonely place to be.

We have our inventions and imaginations — traits that I wouldn’t trade even for wings — but does that make us objectively better? Why are some people so threatened every time the line between humans and nonhuman animals is blurred? It’s not a competition, yet they want to win anyway. All I have to say is: calm down. I don’t seriously think the squid are ready to take over the world. (Yet.)

Language isn’t miraculous if other animals have linguistic capabilities, too — humans just evolved to take advantage of a latent potential for syntax and a theory of mind. To my mind, there’s no reason to posit a pre-ordained universal grammar when communication takes a more heuristics approach. Children figure it out as they go along, just like when they learn to walk.

On the other hand, if bonobos, parrots, and dolphins can figure some of it out, too, then maybe Chomsky is onto something after all: they might be thinking with language even without humans around to show them how to communicate with it. I don’t really think that’s the case, though, since animals — including humans — simply can’t learn much language if they weren’t introduced young enough.

Could it be that language is something that any brain with sufficient neurons can pick up? Is the only reason humans use it all the time because a couple geniuses in the last ice age invented a code for communication, and we’ve just been passing it along ever since? I should probably finish this book on “The Search for the Origins of Language” I have sitting in front of me before my imagination gets carried away. What revelations of linguistics await when I turn the page?

Flip.

I should speak about Ireland now, with its green fields and its crumbling castles and its eternal rain. Mary had come to work at Tir na nOg, “Land of the Children,” our host’s indoor playground. Anne practically raised Mary and Thomas, and her son Kieran was almost a younger brother. (Now he is a surly teenager, who loves hurling, but over two weeks spared not a dozen words for conversation.) Now she spends her days running her own business, bringing brightness especially to children with special needs. By the time she got home, she was exhausted, but still she managed to run the household.

Fortunately we weren’t just there to mooch. I suppose I expected to be taken around the countryside and the coastline, shown the wonders of the Irish world, but what I saw I did on my own steam. Thomas, Mary, and I spent a day in Cork city — a bit disappointing, to tell the truth, but it’s the company that makes the day. Our day trip to Killarney was far more exciting. We took the tour of Ross Castle, and our guide had a soft lilting narrator’s voice. It was like exploring the setting of Beowulf or my most recent read, The Pillars of the Earth, all the while listening to a book on tape. The rain threatened us, but we made it to the ruined abbey on Inisfallen Island, clambering over the half-tall walls and gaping at the luscious lake scenery.

Having walked all afternoon, we compromised with a horse cabby and rode halfway to Muckross Abbey. Mary bemoaned the loss of its pristine ruination, since it was covered with scaffolding — restoration is sometimes less authentic than leaving things to disintegrate. But suddenly we were an hour away from the last train to Charleville, and we had to walk all the way back to town. Even speed-walking we were unlikely to make it. My solution? Hitchhike! A plan of indeterminate success, as car after car passed us by, but as Mary’s wellied feet began complaining, we were picked up by a friendly North Irishman — a visitor like us!

As wonderful as Ross Castle was, it hardly compared to Buttevant Castle. No one knows about Buttevant Castle — not even life-long residents of Ballyhae or Charleville, who live less than half an hour away. In fact, it was tucked away in a back street, with a rusty chained gate as a symbolic deterrent, and its walls were nearly stone rubble in a verdant jungle. With a little — okay, a lot — of encouragement from Thomas, we climbed through the half-gone towers and found nesting birds and second-story trees. This was the Ireland I was looking for.

But mostly the Ireland I found was at home. Thomas and I helped a bit at Tir na nOg, starting with jobs like “making sure the castle is safe” — really just license to fire the air cannons at one another and fly down the slides — but inevitably ending with cleaning up. I honestly don’t know how Anne does it all day, every day. The funny thing is, working with the kids, you find that their accent is about as contagious as their germs — Mary picked up both, and although I never got sniffles, I did start lilting a wee bit.

Anne and Paudie’s families all live in the area. Everyone seems to have large plots of land, some with fields of rolled-up hay, plenty of cows, and a few horses; in the middle of each, somewhere off the pedestrian-hostile roads, is a good-sized two-story house. Everything besides the ruins is new as of the Irish Tiger, and everyone has stories of growing up in third-world conditions — Paudie had so many siblings they had to eat dinner in shifts! Except for the shiny houses, you’d hardly guess Ireland was so new to middle-class-dom. Yet they got both sides of the sword: now they have American-style problems in addition to American-style prosperity.

One family who is friends and neighbors with Anne run an organic farm. They had us over for tea, and showed us all around — though they kept apologizing for the messy state of affairs, I loved the slight wildness of the place, with under-ripe apples at eye-level and fresh currants for the picking. (I get a thrill from eating food right from the ground, so used to stores am I.) They were so enthusiastic about sharing their passion for organics and polyculture, and I was so enthusiastic about seeing it all first-hand, that they invited us back for dinner the next day — pasta with tomato-chickpea sauce, and fruit salad mixed with orange juice, all followed by a struggle of Scrabble.

I must also mention the kittens, for they were adorable. Jill, their mother, was quite young herself — a teenager in cat years, yet she had had two failed litters before this one. This was the first time I saw cats actually feeding themselves with wild-caught things, though they were supplemented with store-bough cat food. There must be some semblance of domestication, of course! We took one kitten to its new owner when we were there, carrying him to a little girl who bossed us around (”Thomas, you have to go to jail. You’re too pretty.”) and who was determined that the kitten be a Dora (though when she finds out his real gender, we’re hoping for Dorian or Dorito).

The flight back was uneventful except for the failure of Orbitz to tell US Airways that I’m vegan, but I had inspired Anne to change her family’s meals for the healthier — she’s hoping to keep my “vegan shelf” in the pantry a little while longer — so I ate my home-made muesli with orange juice and was happy.

And now I am home again, with Thomas and his family on Cape Cod, reading and eating and swimming and socializing, and I could hardly feel more welcome and comfortable than with my own family on the other coast.

Oh how I love this life that I’m living!

My adventures continue! After getting a seal of approval for my aesthetic taste and design competence (at least regarding 3D collages), I trained into Zurich to meet Thomas. Or at least, that’s what I thought. Before Thomas arrived, I was surrounded by a wizard named Retros the Magic Stick and his beer-weilding compatriots. It was a bachelor party, and apparently it is traditional for the groom-to-be to be suitably embarrassed in public. And a wizard who has had too much beer to entertain an 8-year-old with magic certainly is embarrassing!

After four hours with no Thomas, and cursing myself for not having a back-up plan, I found some free wi-fi and discovered that I was 24 hours early (or 20 at that point). So I went to Bottighofen, found my little room above the campsite store, and returned the next day to the airport. With my toes on the line that said “go no further.” Standing at the first place Thomas would emerge to my sight, where I could behold and hold him for the first time in half a year. Half a year? No, the intervening time melted away when he walked through the customs door. No more counting weeks, my heart is happy.

After the first night, we stayed with Melanie and her husband Stefan. They used to live and work in the city of Konstanz, on the German side, but the city was too loud and busy. Now they have a new apartment in Bottighofen, only a ten-minute commute for Melanie and a 30-45 minute walk for Thomas and I. Which is simply lovely, since there is a path along the banks of Lake Constance, with beer gardens and theaters all open to the sky. As Stefan says, they all live outside during the long summer — at least when it’s not raining. For us, the rain (tagging along unseasonably) brought other things of interest: one day, slugs; the next, snails; the next, frogs. With no overlap between them.

The border between Switzerland and Germany, along our path, was marked by a signpost and a bundle of security cameras. This was so subtle, overpowered as it was by breezy trees and modern art pieces, that it took us a few days to notice it. Thing I did not know: Switzerland is not part of the EU. Not that it mattered, since we spent most of our time in Konstanz, with its delicious German bread, shady waterside parks, and the romantic Münster cathedral (unfortunately echoing with the screams of school children).

Melanie and Stefan were swamped with work, it being near the beginning of summer holidays and all, so we only saw them in the evenings for tea and coffee, sometimes for wine and dinner. Fortunately, Melanie did get an afternoon off to take us to Stein am Rhein — a quaint little town on the Rhine, all sunny and decorated with the ever-popular St. George and his dragon. We walked along the jaunty river with our gelato (or sorbet, as the vegan case may be), feeling the sun bounce off the water and pour through the trees. We explored the local old monastery, with its medieval wine press, and then set off up the wooded mountain to Hohenklingen castle to look over the whole thing. On the way back home we watched the beginning of the sunset at Napoleon III’s summer house, and Melanie dropped us off at her favorite pub for dinner.

Thomas and I did a day trip on our own, too, taking a ferry to Meersburg across the lake. Looking for the castle, we managed to stumble awkwardly in — and quickly out of — a boarding school (which admittedly looked a bit like a palace), and also a tiny museum we thought was the castle museum — at least they had some cool wood inlays on the doors and floors. The signs kept pointing us this way and that, and enclosed in the tourist labyrinth of very-German buildings and little streets, we were blind as bats. And we kept finding more interesting things besides, like an ornately decorated church and the awesome Zeppelin Museum — if only we spoke German, the lady who ran the place sounded like she’d talk our ears off about zeppelins! Finally, finally, we found the castle, lost in plain sight. I don’t know if zeppelins or giant medieval swords are cooler, but as luck would have it, you don’t have to play favorites in Meersburg.

As wonderful as Lake Constance is, as much as Germany tugs at me to stay, we had to move on to our next adventure. The European rail system is so timely and easy to use, it has gone quite far in relieving my travel anxiety. I still like to get moving early, but I don’t fret quite so much — and the arriving early gave me a chance to show Thomas a bit of Zurich before zipping off to Belgium. There is another thing that has helped me control OCD-induced stress and enjoy the moment, a piece of advice given by Dr. Ellen Langer on Fitness Rocks: “Notice new things.” In the simple attempt to notice things, I start embracing each little bit of experience as it comes, living in the now — a feat unattainable when I just told myself baldly to “live in the now.”

Unfortunately, my lack of freakish concern for things going horribly wrong led me to pick a train that went through France instead of Germany… and Thomas had a rail pass that covered Germany and not France. The French ticket-checker had no sympathy and chucked him out the window — “No ticket.”

I’m kidding. He did have to pay a 60 euro fee, though, which more than made up for the savings of the Eurail pass. I felt horribly guilty for the rest of the 8-hour train ride, only distracted by conversation with the two young women sitting across from us. They had spent the weekend hiking in Switzerland, and were returning home to Holland — one was a primary-school teacher who had done her training in Tanzania, and the other was a nurse who was taking classes to teach kindergarten. They were very friendly, sharing their water and sudoku, and finally helping us find the connecting train to Dendermonde. It was only unfortunate that in the rush to get on said train, we didn’t have a chance to swap information. I made up a whole bunch of nice meishi, and for what?

Anyway, we made it safe and sound to the little town of Hamme, where lives the family of Fred, a backpacker my dad picked up years ago on cross-country road trip. Fred is liberal and engaging, and Thomas and I were soon learning all about Belgium politics. The French and the Flemmish side are practically two separate countries, and now they might seriously split in twain. They were without a government for almost a year, and when the Prime Minister tried to give up on the whole mess, the German king of Belgium told him to stay put. What is so interesting is that all this turmoil is happening without any violence whatsoever — it’s all debated in pubs over large glasses of strong beer.

Fred’s wife, Annick, was simply wonderful. She is a vegetarian, an herbalist, and a fan of organic food, and she made sure I was a well-fed vegan — she introduced me properly to tofu and seitan (greetings, friends!), and kept me well-stocked with hummus and Fred’s home-made muesli. I met my first vegan since becoming vegan, the owner a local organic food store — we conspired to send Thomas off to a vegan re-education camp spa. Fred and Annick’s children were great, too, Zena and Jona helping us read their comics (Belgium is the land of comics) as they ate their raw tofu and veggies (they didn’t like them cooked or dressed).

We went for a bike ride together soon after arriving, one-speeds on the perpetually flat Belgium countryside. I managed to catch my bag on the handlebars, falling over and making a gooey mess of my knee, but it was not far to a local pub (what am I saying? you are never far from a local pub!) where I discovered the first form of alcohol I kind of like: Lindemans Framboise, a sweet 5-proof strawberry soda. I much preferred my other drink discovery, on a rainy day in homey pub: flavorful red rosehip tea.

We stayed with Fred’s sister, Annie, and her husband, Mark. Annie was bowled me over with her bubbly exuberance, always so happy and excited like a puppy… even when expounding how she was so shy and quiet nowadays. She claims to have learned to live like a monk thanks to practically silent Mark — except he actually is as quiet as she is lively. He took us to Antwerp one day, and we spent hours in the cathedral and the Rubens’ House. It was lovely, but we hardly got a peep out of him the whole time! They we wonderful hosts, even if their house did smell like cigarettes, and even if Annie was the only one around who didn’t understand veganism. (Is there a gracious way to be a vegan houseguest? I helped out or made do where possible, but it’s hard to get out of “being difficult” or impolite when refusing food someone else has made for you. I may be thinking of the ones who suffered and died to contribute to the meal, but it’s the very living and very frustrated friends and family I have deal with at the dinner table.)

On our own we went to Ghent. There was a big festival going on, the whole place had a carnival atmosphere, with people walking from booth to booth, eating pommes frites and ice cream. There were street musicians playing hangs and Stroh violins, creepy giant Dark Crystal-type creatures selling shoes, an organ concert inside one of the churches, and a flea market. It had the summery feel of the Fourth of July, and a welcome change to almost claustrophobic feeling of Hamme with its grey skies and repetitive brick architecture. In the end, I was ready to leave… even if Belgium does have the cheapest chocolate in the EU.

I found myself missing Japan at some point, a sweet nostalgia that shows up every once and again, like a faint smell of something no longer in the room. I wonder what these memories will feel like years from now… what will the nostalgia taste like with age?

Ah, my last day in Milan. I suppose you want to here about my two weeks, eh? I will skip the parts about the top-floor apartment where I retreated every night, mostly left to my own devices by my two shopping roomies (they’re in Fashion Marketing, but academics probably has nothing to do with it), reading and bumping my head on the slanted ceilings and debating with myself as to high to turn up the air-conditioning. Yes, that part has already been over-stated.

I am one of only two Americans in my Product Design class, with the rest from Thailand, Mexico, Turkey, Poland… all over. There’s a girl from Amsterdam who sits next to me — a model — who can pick food out of her teeth and look good doing it. She’s actually quite like me, interested in natural food stores and sustainable living, and disinterested in mindless shopping and late-night clubbing. Then there’s this kid from Bulgaria, just seventeen. He dresses quite sharp — or I should say, he dresses like his dad probably dresses to go to work. He’s so inquisitive, asking all these questions. “You’re a vegan and a feminist?” “You have your license — do you drive a hybrid, then?” “Sorry I’m asking so many questions, but what do you think about smoking?” Then he mumbles something about “all men should be equal,” and clams up when I try to delve. I ask him about himself and suddenly he’s looking away and practically blushing. Is he trying to judge me? Or size me up as his future wife? Curious little bugger (though I’m sure he’d resent me calling him that).

The class itself is far from academic. There are no exams or grades, simply lectures to attend, a strange collage project, and field trips to design shops and studios. The best part by far was the brief time we spent at Cibic & Partners. Apparently the rest of the class was falling asleep, but I was all ears: the Partner presented a series of urban planning projects reminiscent of Christopher Alexander, and I’m sure he’ll remember me for asking about A Pattern Language. He seemed as excited about his work as I was, and eager for the CV’s of interested students (the more diverse the background, the better). Alas! Their office is in Milan, and I do not think I like Milan much. It is, after all, a city.

But special. Imagine that all the overweight people you see on American streets were replaced with models. That’s what it seems like, walking around Milan. It’s clean and neat (my Swiss tutor may disagree with me here), with a completely consistent character from end to end. Seriously, you won’t miss much if you only see four blocks. It’s one giant upscale shopping mall. There’s at least a fifty percent chance that any store you walk into will be full of designer clothes, and the rest (if they aren’t full of designer stuff instead) are cafe-bars and gelato stands. Yes, the very same fashionable, thin, serious individuals are consuming pasta, pizza, and ice cream with much trendy gusto.

More edible oddness: I was eating string beans for lunch, and a young man — wearing an afro (italifro?) and something approximating a basketball jersey — was eating pizza a little way off. Presently he stood in my periphery, at an angle indicating he wanted to ask me something. “Are you eating those for lunch?” “Yes…” (no, I’m mixing them with my saliva to create a green dye for my latest art project.) “I like to do that too! Fruits and vegetables. But my friends think I’m crazy.” “Really? But they’re so good for you! Well, tell them you’ll live to be one hundred years old.” I was listening to Fitness Rocks at the time. “Thank you. I will tell them I saw you.” Great; I’m the Vegetable Buddha, bringing fresh produce to the carb-loving Italian masses.

The project part of the class consisted of first “drawing” a camera, without pencils or pens. Instead we engaged in three-dimensional collage, armed with scissors, fixatives, and piles of magazines, newspapers, fabric scraps, and dried spaghetti. What emerged from this mess (after much misunderstanding as to how abstract our teacher didn’t want the cameras) then became the starting point for our own “products.” We re-created all the components, thought of something new to make with them, and then re-created the components again in order to put together our final… things. Bikes, dresses, lamps, and my own little clock. Talk about it and get a diploma! Just don’t ask for my work, as there was no way transport anything more than photographs.

If I had come across a continent and an ocean for this class alone, I think I would be disappointed. A chance for some mindless creativity, really. But the people I’ve met, and the vision of awesome I got at Cibic, have made the experience worth more than just a pastime. Pretty soon I’ll have enough new contacts in Europe to justify a return trip… just not to Milan!

I am rather in love with Stuttgart. Moni’s apartment looks like it came out of an IKEA catalogue, and her friends’ apartments are much the same: clean and bright, simple and uncrowded. The city is full of nice-looking buildings, beer-gardens spilling into the streets with cheery car-workers taking their lunch out amongst the sun and the passersby. You can’t go two blocks without finding an organic food store, and the bakeries have the most wonderful loaves imaginable, full of pepitas and flax and oats and rye, so that the bits on the crust tumble to plate in delicious crumbs — they even have multigrain croissants beaded with seeds.

The city is home to several car companies, but several years ago they did an unbelievable thing: they redeveloped the center of town to be less car friendly. So that even though you see a few more shiny Porsches than usual, there are little pedestrian streets and stairs all over. Stuttgart is also in a valley, surrounded by miles of forest and well-kept trails. The woods have flame-red squirrels and blackbirds in them, and chartreuse chestnut trees that dapple the sunlight and frame the blue sky. You just have to get up the formidable steps, which are even more numerous than Altea’s. The first full day I did a short tromp through the closest parts, and discovered a zip-line to my endless childish delight. And a few days ago I did a four-hour “tour” to the nearby Castle Solitude and back, joining hundreds of Germans at some points, all walking and picnicking and enjoying a day of perfect clarity and humidity. On my second full day, I borrowed Moni’s brother’s bicycle, and together we toured the city from top to bottom (literally), through parks and Epcot neighborhoods.

Moni herself is quite remarkable. I worried I wouldn’t recognize her, but I knew her at once, short-sighted though I am. Her hair is short and dyed red, her skin is freckled and thin like mine, and she dresses and moves and lives in what seems a totally relaxed fashion. She works with a few colleagues to produce short science videos for TV — she does the 3D animations. It’s been nice, the little routine we have going: I wake up to the sun in my eyes and go out for a run… or just climb the stairs, since even that takes half an hour… and I’m back in time to shower and break my fast with Moni. She works while I go exploring (Bauhaus architecture, check; Chinese Garden, check) or stay in her living room cum office to read; or else we go out to do errands, stopping every once in a while to look for good stuff in the inorganics (already some shellac records for a friend).

That’s another thing I like about Moni, she resourceful, and prefers old things — like her crafty manual drill, or the old cash register her dad fixed for her birthday, and her mom’s sewing machine which helped me make a new bag. But it’s not just her, I think, as the recycling bins on every block hint at a general consciousness about being friendly to the environment. Between that and the praise Moni’s friends give to the city, I’m practically ready to move!

Now, there is one more essentially important thing about staying in Germany right now, and staying with Moni in particular, and it is football. Not rugby, not tell-me-when-the-Superbowl-ads-are-back-on-ball, but soccer. Back in Japan, when my dad and I first met Melanie and Monika, we bonded over the World Cup final. Germany versus Brazil. So fittingly enough, it’s currently the European Championship, with a game on every night. And the most exciting match by far has been the one that pitted Germany against Portugal, two teams with exquisite ball control and team coordination. It twisted and turned until the end, when the whole bar leaped out of their seats with cries and hugs and flags — Germany won! Germany’s going to the semi-finals! And tomorrow night, they’re probably going to kick Turkey’s butt, because they’ve got a way better team, and because I’ll be there with Moni in a beer garden cheering them on.

Ole Ole Deustchland!

What do I do about my leather jacket? It’s so sensible and fashionable, and I love it so, but nowadays I feel uncomfortable wearing it. Maybe no one else will notice I’m clothing myself in a dead animal, but I notice! I’m aware with every squeaky bend of my sleeve that this skin was meant for some other creature. The weather is too haphazard to dump it; not until I replace it; not until I find it a good home.

My sandals are wearing out quickly enough, and the fact that they are on my feet makes it less likely that others will notice; other vegans, vegetarians, whom I somehow care to impress. True, these things were got before I became fully aware of their meaning. True, my mass-produced cotton clothing is probably not cruelty-free — people are animals, too.

But somehow that doesn’t make it easier to bear.

In Paris, everyone looks beautiful. The smoke lines on their faces aren’t full of wisdom, they’re full of character. There are the fashions, of course: the trench coats, the scarves, the fabulous boots and cocky hats. But even the girl with striped stockings held up to her butt with garters, even the woman who wore nothing that matched plus garish gold platforms, even the street artist with ruffled shirt sleeves who stood bent scowling at passersby with scissors idle in his hands. They are all somehow beautiful.

I was walking through the subway station when I heard classical music wafting down the halls. I turned the corner hungry like a dog straining on its leash. It was like a dream, a holodeck malfunction: before me was virtually an orchestra, violins and cellos at least, their bows dancing in time and the musicians wearing suits and satin in their minds if not on their bodies. They were students from all over Paris, bringing classical music to the masses. And the masses clogged the tunnel, held there by vibrating strings, and I leaned against the staircase railing hoping to lose my parents — and myself — and stay in thrall forever.

Once upon a time, even tires were pretty. At the Musée des Arts et Métiers, everything is steampunk. Everything is brass and ivory and glass and wood and designed in minute detail. The astrolabes, leather gas bags, microscopes, bicycles, and printing presses — however utilitarian, they were crafted and decorated as if they were objects of art. Which now, of course, they are.

Will anyone want to put our modern junk, our television remotes with a hundred squishy buttons, in a museum someday? Will anyone want to visit?

French no longer seems scary to me. I can almost pronounce half the words half correctly, and I can imagine learning how to spell them someday, too.

The food, on the other hand, is impossible. The French have perfected the art of cream, butter, and eggs (which can also be used by bridge brigands to hurl at Seine river tour boats), using exactly those features of their ingredients that are irreplaceable, unreplicatable. And then they serve only those things. I stand amongst the macarons, an ethical vegan, a little sad.

Not that the food I did eat in Paris wasn’t fabulous. We ate at Bob’s Juice Bar every day it was open, where I filled myself with wraps and smoothies. Maoz taught me how much I need falafel in my life. The bright La Victoire Suprême du Coeur was the first restaurant I have ever been to where the menu items are specially marked “not vegan.” And with Naturalias around, I could almost live in Paris!

Almost… but not quite. There was not a wild plant to be seen within the city limits. Unless you count the milligrams of moss between stones along the Seine.

Next time I go to Paris, I will walk without purpose, bring trail mix along, and carry a map of public toilets. And next time, I’ll make it inside the Louvre!

Hans Gregory had enlisted to fight the Enemy. He had not enlisted to die. Every day he spent cowering from mortar shells flying overhead, and every day he hurled a few grenades over no-man’s land. He never saw the Enemy, not the faces of its soldiers at least. For Hans, the faces of the Enemy were the mauled faces of his comrades. He would have liked to turn his comrades into proper friends, but every time he tried to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone and chat about sports, the Enemy inevitably joined in.

He and his fellow rank-and-file soldiers wondered why they were fighting the Enemy in the first place, but no one really wanted to question their hate. Besides, it was always renewed with some new volley of bullets. If their own compassionate leaders couldn’t arrange peace — and their leaders certainly assured the public that they were compassionate — then it must be the Enemy who was at fault. So it was that he spent his first tour of duty — muddy, bloody, and jaded.

When Hans Gregory went home, he found a letter in his mailbox. It told him he was promoted, due to the importance of some obscure scrap of the Front he had suffered over, and also due to the fact that everyone who had played a bigger role was dead. Also, he was needed immediately. Without even making it to his front door, he turned right round and reported for duty. The Enemy was the enemy after all, and the Enemy never slept.

Through a series of unfortunate events — for other people at least — Hans became an army general. He got to have tea with all the other generals, in a little wooden room far away from the Front, and they sat in fine leather chairs and chatted about sports. Every once in a while a man of lower rank would ask politely for some battle plans, and the tea would get cold while they furrowed their brows over maps and enemy communiques. Then the man of lower rank would scurry off with some orders, and the generals would order themselves more tea.

During one such occasion, while they waited in nervous silence for the kettle, Hans decided to ask his comrades why they were fighting the Enemy. He got a series of dark looks, and someone started spouting propaganda quite excitedly. Another someone said, “You don’t… sympathize with them, do you?”

“No, of course not! I hate them as much as you. I can’t count how many soldiers I saw blown to bits by the Enemy. And I can’t count how many of them that I’ve ordered blown up. There’s not much we can do stop this exchange, anyway, I suppose. It’s up to the higher-ups. I just want to know how we started this whole bloody mess.”

“You mean how they started it, don’t you?”

Hans nodded at their hardened faces. He stopped going to the little wooden room after that. Instead he spent more time looking over maps and enemy communiques, and as a consequence he won many battles he never properly fought. And when he finally got leave to go back home, he was a national hero. In fact, he hardly got to his doorstep when a half dozen men in black suits and equally black sunglasses drove up in long cars of a similar hue.

As it turned out, Hans was such a national hero that he had won the election for Prime Minister without even running a campaign. He couldn’t help wondering why he was so popular considering that they were no nearer peace now than they ever had been in the past. When the Front advanced under his command, it just retreated somewhere else.

The black suited men took him to a serious-looking room in an impressive building, where there was a high-backed chair and a heavy oak desk and a polished red telephone. When Hans asked what the telephone was for, they told him it would put him in touch with the Enemy Prime Minister. It took him several days of signing papers and giving interviews before he worked up the courage to pick up the receiver.

“Hello?”

“Good day, Prime Minister. How are you?”

“Er… Well. Thank you. Were you this friendly with my predecessor?”

“Yes, actually. We got along splendidly!”

“You mean you didn’t threaten one another, or boast about new military technology, or call each other pig-dogs?”

“Heavens no! Nothing of the sort. Mainly we complained about the weather and exchanged cookie recipes.”

“Cookie recipes?”

“Yes, I have a rather good one for gingersnaps.”

“But if you didn’t hate each other, why didn’t you call for peace?”

“None of our generals would believe us! We tried being subtle about it and made some foolhardy orders, but that just ended up getting more soldiers killed. The people of both our nations hate each other, Prime Minister, and there’s nothing we can do but let them play war.”

“And if we ordered them to stop?”

“My own predecessor tried that. It resulted in a military coup.”

“There’s no point being Prime Minister, is there. There’s no power in the job at all.”

“You’re catching on! We’re enemies, after all, and there’s no use losing sleep over it. Now, how about those gingersnaps?”

Hans hung up the phone. He was a little annoyed. Was there really no end to the bloodshed? He was far away from the shelling at the Front, but he had not forgotten it. He spent the days watching military plans come and go from his desk, and it dawned on him that no one was really planning the war at all. He let those in the field figure out the strategy for their little patch of ground, and they in turn rarely collaborated with one another.

So Hans began tracking the Front. It was not long before he detected a pattern.

Instead of a random series of advances and retreats, there seemed to be deliberate sequences. Some of these repeated at regular intervals, but when he questioned the generals in charge he got a different rational every time. And when he picked up the red phone, he found the Enemy to be just as clueless. This was a strange thing — there seemed to be an intelligence behind the shifting Front, yet the brain behind it was nowhere to be found.

Hans transcribed the patterns into analogue charts, and handed them to the head of his Cryptography Department. He told her they were radio signals picked up from enemy territory, and he wanted to confirm they were just noise.

Two days later, she returned. Her face was full of disappointment. “Well, it certainly wasn’t noise. It took some trouble to decode, but I believe you will find the message just as disappointing as if it really were noise.”

Hans was stunned. A message? There was a language there, even communication? But who was speaking, he had no idea. Someone was using the army as a voice. Yet it was no one he could identify. No human was sending the message, and no human was receiving it. He realized, turning quite pale, that the only ones that could be talking to each other were the nations themselves. Somehow two collections of people had become two sentient beings, and the citizens were just the cells.

Hans realized that the head of his Cryptography Department was still moving her mouth. “I’m sorry, what did you say?”

“I was just saying,” she repeated, rolling her eyes this time around, “that the message said: WHAT NICE WEATHER WE’RE HAVING.”

Hans instinctively looked out the window. He wondered what kind of weather nations considered to be nice.

Perhaps you are all wondering what I am up to, what new adventures I’m having in Spain. Since coming to Altea, my parents and I have settled into a regular routine. We all wake up about the same time as one another, between 8 and 9 o’clock, do some quick stretches, and head down the many stairs to run along the shore. We do a mixture of jogging and walking, actually, but my mom is such a fast walker that my dad and I have to jog to keep up. Our neighbor, David, calls us crazy, and yesterday I would have to agree with him — we must have been mad to go running in the pouring rain, and this time I do mean “running,” as it was the only way to keep warm.

Then we walk up all those stairs again, take showers, and eat some breakfast of fresh squeezed orange juice, fruit muesli and oatly (a brand of oat milk), or bananas sliced up with cinnamon on top. The rest of the day is a mixture of reading, working on the computer (or sewing tiny bears if you are my mom), chatting with neighbors that wander past, and walking up and down all those stairs several times to explore the town. The old town is by far the best, situated on top of the hill surrounding the blue-domed church, a mix of terrace restaurants and art galleries set in white buildings and narrow streets. The rest of town is more modern, with cars and clothing shops and “Consum” and “Masymas” supermercados. The beach is lovely, with a long sidewalk or boardwalk extending almost uninterrupted from Altea to Albir, and English-speaking cafes arranged along the entire stretch.

Dinner is a casual affair, something simple and light like chickpea salad and plum tomatoes on pan multicereal, or a broccoli stir-fry with brown rice. And it is always accompanied by Star Trek. Somehow dinner and a show manages to remain special no matter how many times we do it. In fact, this whole routine may sound boring to some, but it is truly not. The daily rituals frame continuing conversations with my parents and the gradual soaking in of the Altean atmosphere. Instead of violently inflicting culture upon myself (and perhaps myself upon a culture), I think I prefer this sponge method of travel. I can sit still, watching and listening, and for a time at least, figure out how to live here.

Lest life get altogether too formulaic, however, we have done several day trips. In addition to the fabulous local Tuesday market, there is a flea-market on Saturdays quite a drive out of town. Last week David took us with him, and we spent at least a hour taking in the booth after table after carpet displaying everything from nudibranch-like polyester dresses to antique bronze braziers. Yesterday it cancelled due to the downpour, but next week I hope Anna, our other eccentric British neighbor, will join us.

We hiked out to the lighthouse in the Serra Gelada one day, and another we spent getting our train tickets refunded and exploring the hilltop castle at Alicante, and just last Friday we walked the painted town and floral bayou of La Vila Joiosa, ending the expedition with a mancerina of dark drinking chocolate at the Xocolateria.

And really, every adventure should end in chocolate.

The world is both incredibly limited — how many times must we repeat mistakes, replay history, watch reruns? — but also incredibly unlimited. Every time I get dragged down by the muck of ignorance (e.g. abstinence-only education), pettiness (e.g. bodysnarking, via Feministing), or hostility (e.g. the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act), I then find something really cool to life my spirits again.

I can never have enough Malcolm Gladwell, and in his New York Times article In the Air, he describes the phenomenon known to every math and science student: people are constantly re-discovering and re-inventing the same things… at approximately the same time. Ideas, he exclaims happily, are hardly rare at all. Well of course not! But as the author of The Tipping Point, Gladwell knows quite well that it takes more than an idea to get something off the ground. One needs the resources and connections, and sometimes a new perspective. He talks about the Intellectual Ventures’ 32 inventions over a single casual dinner, and their hundreds of patents, which are all perfectly stimulating; but the really exciting part is hearing about those that are actually happening!

For example, in Technology Review I read about a garbage-fueled power plant with no harmful byproducts. Very cool — let’s build one! Maybe the reason genius seems so rare is that the big ideas are so rarely put into action. Thankfully, the simple and the small ones are often just as thrilling. Like the turbid tale of vegan marshmallows (don’t forget part 2).

You can’t trust good ideas will get follow-up, and you can bet bad ones will. Obviously that’s not actually the case — plenty of bad ideas are forgot during the hang-over. But you never remember the rain when you have an umbrella, now, do you?