Geiger Counter

The first meat our daughter ever ate was turkey. It was Thanksgiving, and I gave her a few tiny pieces, along with a dollop of sweet potato. There is something slightly epic about watching someone gnaw on food for the very first time.  I told her the thing she was enjoying was called “turkey,” which it turns out is slightly incorrect. Here in the United States, we call these birds “turkeys.” We call them that because we thought, due to old trade routes, that they were from Turkey. They are not.  In Turkey, people knew they were not from there, so they decided to call them “hindi,” which means “from India.” They are not from India, either.  The Scottish call it “Cearc frangach” (the French chicken), and to the Greeks it is either “The French bird” or “the Egyptian rooster,” depending on who you asked. As an astute reader, you probably guessed, quite correctly, that the bird is not originally from either of these places.  Some Arabic-speakers call it “the Roman rooster.” Others - chiefly in Palestine - call it “the Ethiopian rooster.”  In Indonesia, Brunei, Malaysia and Singapore, people call it “Ayam belanda” (the Dutch chicken). The Portuguese refer to it as “Peru.” It’s not actually from Peru, but that is actually the closest to being correct.  In Japanese and Korean, it is called “shichimencho” and “chilmyeonjo” which both mean “bird with seven faces.” The domestic turkey that all these people are referring to is likely from what we today call Mexico, which is a place I can now only assume people in other countries call Sweden or Pluto or some such thing.  There are few thrills in life as great as having your knowledge of the world so completely thrown into disarray. One moment, you think you eat a turkey each November. The next moment, you are galloping down an etymological rabbit hole that takes delightful detours into anthropology, taxonomy, science, trade, religion and philosophy.  But perhaps the best thing about the naming of the bird we call a “turkey” is that it reveals one fundamental truth that applies to all races and religions and cultures, which is that none of us has a particularly firm grasp on what is actually happening around us. Nearly every culture in the world was given the chance to name the turkey, and one by one, country by country, culture by culture, they ALL got it wrong, including us. It’s a misnomer everywhere you go. Capitalists got it wrong. Communists got it wrong. Monarchists got it wrong. We are all wrong, which means we are all in good company, perhaps better company than we thought.  I often pause when my daughter asks me what words mean, or where things are from, because I know that I know very little on nearly every topic.  I wonder if, 500 years ago, there was a famished person walking around in England, who was from New Zealand, but people mistakenly thought was from Hungary, and that’s how we got that word for wanting food. What do they call being “hungry” in Hungary? If you want a sandwich in Istanbul are you referred to as being “Canadian”? If your belly rumbles in Toronto do they say you are a Martian? Who the &@*#*@ knows! If you still don’t believe me about the ubiquitous state of confusion that has existed throughout the entirety of the human species, I present to you exhibit B: The people who spread turkeys all around the world were Spanish. They first saw the bird, which Mayans had domesticated, in the south of what is now Mexico. And here’s the thing. They thought they were in India. It’s as if I walked into my local grocery store in southern Wisconsin, put my hands on my hips and said, “So, these are the mountains of Tibet!” Then bought a box of pancake mix, called it a rainbow trout, and left to spread my confusion throughout the rest of the planet.   People regularly think that, merely because I write, I have a deep, galvanized understanding of most words. They often ask what things mean. “Matt will know,” they claim. This is problematic on several fronts, the first of which is that I am not particularly smart in general. The second is that the more you learn about language, the more you understand just how fluid and subjective this incredible, living code really is. Words don’t mean “something”; they mean many things. But a word cannot mean everything, or else it ceases to mean anything at all. This is an almost paradoxical thing to comprehend.  I first learned about semiotics when reading the wonderful works of an author named Umberto Eco, primarily “The Name of the Rose” and “Foucault’s Pendulum.” The first is basically a murder mystery in a medieval monastery, and it drips with philosophical ambiance. Imagine Sherlock Holmes draped in a brown robe, with a rope for a belt, and you have the general idea. If I remember correctly, the plot has something to do with a murder that stems from some of the monks’ desire to destroy all evidence that Jesus Christ ever laughed during his earthy life. Maybe not. I’m not sure. I enjoyed both “The Name of the Rose” and Foucault’s Pendulum” immensely, but if you ask me what the latter is about I honestly have to reply: “I have NO idea.”  I don’t even think I understood the vast majority of “The Brothers Karamazov” when I read it, and that is one of my favorite books. I would just sit down, drink in the words on the page, and think “The character with the very long Russian name that starts with V (or, if a close friend is speaking to her, starts with M) is saying something interesting.” Perhaps the greatest mistake we make, time and time again, as human beings is to think we must fully understand something in order to love it or appreciate it. This is both a myth and a tragedy. Because if you can only love what you completely understand, 99 percent of the world is walled off from your love. To look around you and marvel at all the things you see and hear, including those that mystify you, is the greatest liberation possible. To completely understand something is to own it, in a way, and people desire ownership. They want to possess people and things - even ideas and words and symbols.  But ownership is not the answer. The answer is awe, meanings and mystery.  Semiotics is the study of signs, and signs are anything that communicates a meaning that is not the sign itself to someone else. In this way, words are signs, and you and I are signs, too.  Some of the most beautiful artwork the world has ever produced is a complete mystery. Abstract art rivets us. Stonehenge fixes our gaze, and we don’t even know who built it, or how, or why. We should allow ourselves to love a world we do not understand, and to see its beauty. Because if we don’t give ourselves that gift, we, for no discernable reason, will prohibit ourselves from truly partaking in the world or appreciating the stunning signs and symbols that swirl around us, whether we are in Turkey, or Mexico, or France, or Egypt or Wisconsin. Every time my daughter asks me what a certain word means, I pause, admitting silently to myself that I have no idea, then I give it my best shot. I usually give my best approximation of it, then gently explain to her that I’m not entirely sure. You see, I have been reading and writing for nearly 40 years, and the more I look at language, the less I understand it, which is something for which I am forever in its debt. It’s now been almost seven years since my daughter tasted that first mouthful of turkey. I realize giving thanks is completely out of fashion these days. It’s far more popular to list your grievances than to acknowledge the multitude of gifts bestowed upon us by a vast, often incomprehensible universe. But this fall, when we roast and carve our Dutch chicken – our Egyptian rooster, our bird of many faces, our Peru – I will try to give thanks, not merely for the things I own, or the things I control or understand, but for all that is beautiful, interesting and (perhaps most importantly) mysterious in the world around me.