Chapter One:
Skeleton Beach Backpackers 
Swakopmund, Namibia

The sun bobs below the horizon like a sinking coin.  The three of us, on the terrace, strangers forcing ourselves to find some common ground before we share a 4-bed-dorm together; before we spit airline issue toothpaste into the same sink and mark our territory with backpack crumpled clothes.

“Let’s play a game”
They wait for me to elaborate.
“Let’s play: How old am I?”
“26?”
“28?”

I ask, knowing the answers before they are spoken; yet in the reflection of my beer glass I see the echo of an elderly woman.  

Chapter Two    
Kolmanskop, Namib Desert.

In 1908 a man found a diamond here.  
And then there was a town.
But one day, there were no more diamonds.
So, eventually, there was no more town.

Diamonds, town and diamonds, dust.
That’s how it goes in this world. 
Something, everything, nothing, bust.

There is not much left to see, unless you know where to look.  To the untrained eye, this place is just an over-sized sandbox that belongs to a kid who left his toys out too long in bad weather.    Hills of sand inching their way through door jams like impatient tenants, paint curling into fronds of surrender, the roof tiles have given up completely – falling to their death, awaiting burial. 

I should have a permit to be here, but I like the feeling of minor league rebelling.  Like the kid that sneaks into the back row of the movie theatre without a ticket.  No one is getting hurt, it’s just the high jinx of “youth”.  

Why should I need a permit anyway?
I have blood.  Blood lines, not dotted lines.  

My Grandpa, Grandpa Jacks, was a miner by trade.  He dragged my grandma, Maribella, here all the way here from Bloemfontein, a city of roses in the heart of an adolescent South Africa.  But they came to the party too late to walk away any richer than they arrived.  Granny hated it.  She grew up working a vineyard.  In Kolmanskop there were no trees or shrubs, green was a forgotten color.  And the only roses now were the ones on the rim of her chipped Royal Dolton tea set.

Jacks thought Maribella was in danger of becoming ill of mind without anything living around her, so he got her a dog, a Terrier Mix named Dolly, sadly the dog didn’t want to live there either and hitched a ride on the coal train back to Lüderitz a week later.

However it wasn’t until she told him about the fountain that he thought her really off her rocker.  

Chapter Three
Two kilometers north-west of Kolmanskop.

If you had asked Jacks back then, there was no blooming fountain.
What would a fountain be doing in the middle of a desert? 
One of the oldest and driest deserts in the world no less. 

Desert madness.  It had to be what the miners sometimes talked about under hushed breaths and hunched shoulders.    Maribella had taken to wandering and not short distances either.  She said she was wandering to pass the time and the more time she had to pass, the further she walked.  Until she found the fountain.

But Jacks remained disbelieving, her mind was a suitcase.  She must have unpacked this relic from a memory to serve as comfort amongst foreign landscapes.   “A fountain with no water supply is like trying to cook over a fire with no flame.   Even thinking one out here mad –”

Maribella said the fountain didn’t need water, what flowed from its six heads were scarlet beetles.  Ripe and rotund, waiting to be trod, like grapes into liquor. 

She gestured to her stained feet one day.
“They are bathed in blood.”
“They are burnt from the sand Mari.”

Jacks ordered her to take him to this fountain hoping to expose her madness and shock her back to reality.  Maribella took him.  And as he suspected, he saw nothing. 

But she did, and so did my mother and so do I.
The catch? If a man can’t see, no one will believe it. 

She saw the way he frowned at her.  Worry, guilt and self-pity in that crease above his eyes.
Worry, that the woman he loved might be gone.
Guilt, that the choices he made had chased her away.
Self-pity, that he may not be able to raise children with this woman now, not as she was.

She put a hand on his arm, realizing his limitations.    
“You look at me that way now.  But in the years to come you will see.”
“See what?”
“Me as I am now, always.  Like a diamond Jack.”

And so, he couldn’t see the fountain but he did see her as she was, always.  Many years after they returned to Bloemfontein and many years after that, as her face stayed the same though his sagged and wrinkled, and succumbed to the god of gravity. 

He had to concede as he ran his fingers across her cheek.  “My diamond.”

Though she was not to outlive him, despite her appearance.   The generation of she and my mother you see, they only dipped their toes in another world, two feet to be exact.  Its power was only surface deep, as mine has been so far…

Though standing in the fountain now, for the second time in my life, and treading the scarlet beetles to a paste, I wonder what will happen if I don’t merely bathe but drink this time?

Writer's group exercise 08/03/2014.

I am lying in an empty bathtub blanketed in the shadow of a man standing at the opposite end in top coat and tails.  His pleated gabardine slacks not so much frayed but hacked at the knees, ragged, like he has wandered from the perimeter a bomb blast.
Bagdad Route Irish chic.

But a glance to his wild west handlebar, pomaded into precise fronds and the Kerouac quote just visible in the raised topography of his left foot tell me he’s too hipster to have attempted a tête-à-tête in the Persian sandbox. 

His expression is both intense and unreadable; therefore, unsettling. And he is staring at me with such force, I feel myself instinctively flatten my spine against the rigid L-curve of the tub, in a bid to put an extra centimeter between us.

I feel the chill of steel enamel through the thin membrane of my dress.  It travels like an up-flowing river to the top of my neck.  I shiver, over-sized earrings chiming like timpani’s against copper faucets that bookend my head.   

His body triggered into motion by the sound, he gracefully collapses to a low crouch, heels flat in the style of a Korean adjoshi.  And I wonder if I was wrong about him. 

Perhaps he is well travelled.  Seen things.  Things other than the Pyramid Stage at Glastonbury or the Quinoa section at Whole Foods. 

He’s one of those people; those people that play with the fabric of your reality because they don’t obey the role you assigned them.

 “Ready?” he asks. 

South Korea leads the world in themed cafes (cat cafes, board game cafes, design a doll cafes etc...) .  I don't understand why this hasn't caught on in the West to the same extent.  Probably because South Korea actually has a dating culture where people go out and spend time getting to know one another, in contrast to New Zealand at least, where for most, it involves lubricating your esophagus in half a pint of 42 Below, in a bar where your feet stick to the floor, before you can talk to someone (if, by that point, you can remember who it was you wanted to talk to in the first place and if in fact you can hear each other over the Britney-Pitbull remix).  

Anyway, if you find yourself in Seoul, I have a themed cafe recommendation for those who like a little weird with their side of Hot Chocolate.  



Princess Diary Cafe
Location:  Take Exit 3 from Ewha's Women's University Subway Stop (Line 2/Green line), walk until you spot Starbucks, turn right and look up!

Weddings are a huge thing in Korea.  The culture really expects you to get married.  In New Zealand, a lot of my friends are married by my age (29) but a lot also aren't, and our society doesn't judge you for it.  It's not  "mandatory" and we are very open to different ways people want to live their lives, there is no "one way". 

Not to say that Korea is intolerant, but that the norm is to get married between 28-35.  It is highly unusual not to get married and the pressure to get married is keenly felt by those approaching and within that age bracket.  There are a number of reasons for this but that is another blog post entirely.  

With an incredibly high percentage of marriages happening here, you can imagine the Wedding business is booming.  Hair, make-up, dresses, event halls, cars, caterers, photographers, flowers etc...

But for those that aren't quite ready to walk down the isle, why not visit the Princess Diary Cafe?  Here you can try on a Wedding Dress (or a Hanbok - traditional Korean dress), choose short or long, strap-less or high-necked.  Prices generally range from about 10,000 (low end) - 40,000 (high end) Korean won (about $9.50-$37.60US/$11.50-$45NZ)

It is mandatory to buy a drink but that is a fairly cheap affair (5,000-7,000won).

There are various props you can pose around with until your heart's content (including cowboy hats, a rocking horse, a piano, tiger ears, tiaras etc...).

It's a great girly day out.  But you will also see Korean guys there from time to time with their girlfriends.  

One hundred day anniversaries are really popular in South Korea and sometimes boyfriend and girlfriend will dress up in Wedding attire and get a photo to celebrate reaching 100 days in their relationship, 200 days,  300 days etc...  

Here are some of my photos of me being my own bride, or as I said at the time "I married myself because I'm so awesome...".  

Keep in mind I did purposefully choose the poofiest dress I could find for comedy's sake and this is not what I would choose to wear if I did end up getting married at some point.  

Will I get married?  The future is wide open.  I'm open to it happening, I'm open to it not happening.  If it's right, it's right, if it's not, it's not.  I'm ok with whatever journey I take.  I have a good life.

And let's be honest I have some quirks that make it a pretty hard task to achieve...
1.  I have a resting bitch face.
2.  I'm not the most social person so guys don't really get much of a chance to meet me, or me to meet them. (ie. I avoid clubs, pubs and most parties like the plague and yes, this resulted in me being unofficially labeled the "weird girl" through high-school and college - thanks...). 
3.  I'm quite a difficult person to get to know past any superficial level.
4.  I'm shy.
5.  I'm travelling. 

Put those all together and you get:  HELLO SOLO! : |
So at least I got to wear the poofy dress once, thanks South Korea.  x

P.S. special thanks to my friend Kirsty who was my long suffering photographer on the day!

Who wants to read some rough-as-guts-writing?  Me, me, me!  You, you, you?  GREAT.  I'm a founding member of a local Write Night (writer's group) and I need to choose one of my past exercises to re-write and/or extend.  

If someone is incredibly bored and doesn't mind reading some unedited work, then check out the below and tell me which one to re-write, in other words, the one you'd like to read more of, because I'm torn between the three.  

The Regular (Format:  For the page)

Punts is a pub just down from the Nandos on the corner of Windsor and Kitts. It’s the red, white and blue affair, a palette that belongs as much to the heyday of the British Commonwealth as it does to the Land of the Free.

The owner, Leeds born Dagesse, bought the joint six years ago after finalising a divorce to a lady I know only as “the blazing inferno”. Whether that nickname has something to with hair colour, temperament or menopausal flushes, I’m not brave enough to ask- there is a permanent happy hour discount at stake and, more importantly, Dagesse is descended from Rhonda Valley mining stock, those men are as hard as the rock they grafted.

As far as I’m aware, the only woman in his life these days is Mary Bennett, a fox terrier whom whenever I see her, imbues me with a sudden sense of nostalgia and desire to dig out my late Grandfather’s HMV vinyl collection (a record label whose logo features a dog of the same breed).

Last Christmas I gifted Dagesse a 1962 Gene Pitney record from that collection so he could share in the reference. I’ve since seen he has thoroughly embraced it.

He’s framed the record and hung it over the dog bowl.

Unfortunately it’s at jowl level; so a mixture of coagulated spit and fragments of Hill’s Canine Ultra-Allergen Free have escaped digestion and partially obliterated the song title. What was once “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance” has evolved into the gender flip, “a…ho…shot…bert…”.

Sometimes when it’s quiet Dagesse will join me for a Fosters, we’ll talk about José Mourinho's return to Chelsea, the shitty exchange rate and Cameron’s “millionaire’s tax cuts”- which (if we’re honest) we’d probably embrace, if we were in fact millionaires.

But we’re just two men drinking cheap beer, entertaining dreams of grandeur, in shoes we’d rather scuff than polish, in a pub called Punts. 

Three Years to Go
Monologue:  Character - Lisbeth, 32.

By the time I’m 35 I’ll either be dead or married.

Dead because what happens is that each time I get my heart broken, I leave.
And when I say leave…

I mean, I leave the country.
I leave everything behind.

Dead because I cast myself deeper and deeper into unknown lands and inhospitable landscapes; in the hope that Maslow’s ‘Hierarchy of Need’ will kick in and I’ll be so busy just trying to survive, that eventually I’ll never have to deal with anything. In between navigating unsealed roads on a 6th-hand Uralmoto to filtering water through the remains of a checkered keffiyeh, there’d be no time to process the petty. No time to wonder what went wrong, why they did what they did, why I did what I did and why I still do it.

Some questions are too difficult to ask.
Or perhaps it’s more, that the answers are too difficult to hear.

Guinea,
Mexico,
the Wadi Rum

Dead because my passport is a collage of stamps from countries people forbade me to visit, from my Mother to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. But I never listened to them before, and can't see myself changing now.

Dead because, that'll eventually catch up with me.

In my absence, in the layer of silence I wear like a qiviut, I leave those I left behind with little but mystery, confusion, and a few megabytes of photos displaying a past they now question the authenticity of.

Ade, Leon, Vin, perhaps Daamin, they will monitor my social networks for the post of a song of shared significance or some subtle cry of despair that I can’t function in life without them.

The truth is I don’t. My lovers follow me like ghosts. Our histories, arguments and sweet words, knitted together, dragging behind me like a Bride’s train. From time to time, taking unexpected form, stealing my breath when I perform an archived e-mail search, or stumble across someone with a similar arch in their brows or slouch in their walk.

My disappointment when I register it's not one of them only serves to remind me there is another life out there. One I am simultaneously drawn to and run from.

And married, well...

Married because, it's always the unexpected which happens. Married because, it's so ridiculous it just might work. Married because, someone might finally convince me life is about more than just myself.

Married, maybe.
But dead?
More likely.

The Sale of Central Park (Format:  For the page)

Everything is for sale. At the right price, in the right climate; especially in times of panic or greed. Where farcical suggestions, that on a normal day, would be dismissed on the scrap heap of incomprehension, suddenly become the beacon of hope - not because we think they are good ones, but because no one else proposes a solution.

Solutions to:
Increasing unemployment.
Housing shortages.
Rising crime rates.

People are desperate. And if yours is the only voice speaking, then that is the one we will follow.

And so it came, that on this day Molly and I stood and watched the sun rise over the last hours of a national landmark. We were to witness history made by history lost.

Nothing lasts forever.
Not the things you grew up with.
Not the things you grow to care about.
Certainly not the things you love.

Molly has pockets stuffed with tulips and daffodils. She made a $50 donation to the Conservancy three years ago, she said she was only taking back what was hers.

I have a pry bar in my left hand, and my right, my right is protectively wrapped around an iron florette. It is attached to the arm of a bench I’ve “salvaged”. I think I can up-cycle the piece, and sell it on to a collector – once I re-stain the wood and remove the rusted donor plaque: “"C'est Lui Pour Moi, Moi Pour Lui, Dans La Vie" (in life, there is only him for me, and me for him).

She runs her finger over the brass inscription, with a longing I’ve come to recognise but learnt to ignore. That’s Molly. She thinks that somehow, as if, just by touching, she can transfer the passion of a past long gone and inject it into a hopeless present.

I wish I was a more willing subject.

I don’t know what happened.
I wonder if our relationship will endure much longer than the flowers suffocating in the depths of her polyester blazer. It seems a cruel and drawn out death.

A man behind me touts the virtues of the site’s future plans to a confused tourist with an old city map. I silently refute each point:
“…the proposed construction will create jobs” (temporarily)
“…and include a set of residential buildings” (for the rich)
“…plus, without a central meeting point, it will decrease crime in the inner city” (pushing it out to the suburbs)

But the tourist nods, believing him to be true. Most would. He has a voice of a politician, steady and even. He has conviction. Me? I say nothing, as is my way.

The man examines the out-dated map and points the tourist in the direction of the Museum of Modern Art.

Molly takes ten paces to the left and tilts her head towards the growl of diesel motors, her dark eyes searching.

“This is it” she says needlessly, as if I can’t see what’s right in front of me.

Who are you if you walk away from everything you know?  The daily rituals you've come to depend on, the rungs on the ladder you've climbed, the day-to-day social network(s) you've acquired over a number of years, with no idea when or if you'll be back, and if not, where to from here.

For me it was the only way I was really going to see what I was made of.
Would there be anything left? 

New country.
New city.
New job.
New apartment.
New bank.
New language.
New people.
No history.
No knowledge of past achievements or past glories.
Just another face on the street. 
Nameless.
 
And I knew I would only really find out if I did it alone.  

Everyone should have an opportunity at some point to draw on themselves as their only emotional support.  Yourself as your back-up, your best friend, your life coach, your Zen Master General.  On the point of solitude though I am well qualified, as I have done most reckless things in my life on my own.

It is a dishonest life, in my opinion, when you do not push yourself, when you do not test and challenge your boundaries.  Because, in what other life are you planning to take risks? 

In some way or another I've been running towards fear for a number of years.  If it scares me, I'm going to go over and pat it on the head, shake hands with it, sit down and talk to it.  

Fear and I.  We are good friends.    

I'd like to introduce you to Kate "Smurf Shoes" Morris.  This version of Kate appears when I forget to bring my indoors shoes to work.

In Korea, most public elementary schools require you to change from outdoor shoes to indoor shoes.  I no longer leave my indoor shoes in a cubby outside my school because my last pair got stolen, so I bring them with me each day.  Today I forgot.

If you forget, then you have to cover your outdoor shoes in light blue tissue paper hair nets, the same as you might find worn in a food preparation service.  Fortunately mine had working elastic in them today, because this is not the first time I have forgotten my indoor shoes and if you get hair nets with no elastic/snapped elastic, they come off every three steps.  This is very annoying. 

Here is a photo of Kate "Smurf Shoes" Morris:

(Un)Fortunately as school was out and I am desk-warming, only one other person got to see me in my fantastic blue shoe covers.  

I mean, if you are going to make me wear shoe covers, at least make them out of fabric that is good for sliding across floors in and I could have spent my day pseudo-skating up and down the halls to keep warm.  

When I was little, birthdays used to be a thing.  

SNAPSHOT EIGHT YEARS OLD:
- Dunedin, New Zealand.
- Invitations and RSVPs
- Pretty dress, patent shoes
- Hair tied back with a ribbon
- Infamous birthday cake (one year I had a swimming pool, the next a horse's head)
- Orange wedge jelly boats and fairy bread
- 10 other little girls running up and the down the hallway screeching and popping balloons.
- Pass-the-Parcel and Pin-the-Tail-on-the-Donkey

SNAPSHOT FOURTEEN YEARS OLD:
- Dunedin, New Zealand.
- I'm too cool for birthdays and have decided it's something other people celebrate but not me.
- My friends throw me a surprise sleepover birthday party anyway.

SNAPSHOT 29 YEARS OLD:
- Gwangju, South Korea.
- I slipped over in my apartment and have bruises all down my left arm.
- Almost forgot my birthday.
- I buy a candle from Paris Baguette.
- A slice of cake from Starbucks.
- Light the candle, eat the cake, by myself, in my apartment.
- I watch five episodes of The Office (US) on my laptop (which sounds like a lawnmover because the fans are broken).
- Then write my favourite Great Gatsby quotes over all my dinner ware.

At some point during my life I lost the point of celebrating my birthday.  My question became:  Yes, it's my birthday - but why are we celebrating it?  All I've done is complete another revolution around the sun, a feat which I'm definitely not alone in. 

I am also extremely uncomfortable with days which have social expectation and celebration attached to them or me as the focus.  Think Birthdays, Christmas, Graduations, Weddings, Valentines etc... there is an expectation they are supposed to be happy-happy-dance-around-the-maypole type gigs.  I spend the entire day holding my breath waiting for the one thing to go wrong and break the illusion, because in my experience 99% of the time it always happens.   In many ways it's easier to not participate in the illusion at all than have it fail and disappoint.  

Back to birthdays:  So I decided to downplay my birthday as much as possible and my rule became I'll only REALLY celebrate when something cool happens.  'Cool' usually meant I won a writing award or something like that.  But when that happened I didn't celebrate properly then either because I thought, I'll celebrate next time - when I climb another rung up the ladder.  

And now?  I haven't written anything of note in a while.  So if that was my rule for celebrating then my life has become one unbroken nothingness devoid of celebration. 

Maybe I need my birthday celebrations back again just to break up the nothingness.  

These days when my birthday rolls around I make a goal - something concrete I can achieve which doesn't rely on anyone else (otherwise the goal is potentially impossible).  

In 2012 my goal was to be in a different country by the time I turned 29.  GOAL:  ACHIEVED.  I am in South Korea and although from time to time it can be isolating and has the expected frustrations of living in a non-English speaking country, I genuinely like my life here.

But 2014... I think my goal might simply be to celebrate my birthday again.  Properly.  As much as that idea makes me feel uncomfortable, it's probably time to bite the bullet and get over myself. 

Now I'm back on Fakebook I've noticed a lot of trends this year, and I've come to the rather delayed realization that this is because it is our generation's time.*

Our generation's time to buy their first house.
Our generation's time to get engaged and get married.
Our generation's time to have their first or second child.
Our generation's time to climb the next rung on the career ladder now we’re no longer new graduates.


I would have realised this without Fakebook but Fakebook sure does amplify it.
I HEAR YOU FAKEBOOK.  I HEAR YOU.  BUT I STILL HAVEN’T EVEN FIGURED OUT HOW TO WALK IN HIGHHEELS YET. 

Hit your late twenties and I tell you what everyone suddenly seems to be in a hurry to do THINGS. 
I think I missed the THINGS memo.

Oh, no that’s right – I did get the memo.  I just spilt tea over it.  And then I left it on the table and then the ink started to run and then by the time summer rolled around the Eastern sun had faded it, and I couldn't quite decipher what it said. 

Honestly:  Part of me did feel momentarily sorry for myself that I seemed to have failed on all four of these normative milestones vs. years I've been on the planet, but when I broke it down – let's see how I actually fared.

Our generation’s time to buy their first house.
My argument against failure: 
I don’t know where I want to live yet.  What country, what city.  I'm waiting to find a place to get me in the gut where I instinctively go:  THIS IS IT FOLKS.  THIS IS WHERE I WILL BUILD MY
TINY TUMBLEWEED or ECO Perch.

Our generation’s time to get engaged and get married.
My argument against failure:
Even if I was currently in a relationship, I just don't have a rampant desire to get married.  I think a lot of people get married for the wrong reasons (not everyone of course before you start ripping me to shreds).  

But for example, here are some commonly misguided reasons why some people do get married:
-  We've been going out so long it would be a waste of all those years if we didn't get married.
-  I don't think anyone else will put up with me.
-  I'm scared of the possibility of facing life on my own.
-  I'm not getting any younger. 
-  I don’t want the hassle and potential rejection of finding someone new.
-  Everyone else is doing it.
-  I want a Wedding damn it.  But actually you just want the photos. 

And because of that it has somewhat tarnished my opinion of it. 

I just don’t think you need to be married to love someone.  I probably would only get married if it was important to the other person AND EVEN THEN I’d probably skip the Wedding part and just elope.  AND EVEN THEN probably end up wearing something ridiculous and unceremonial and devoid of tradition as possible.

Our generation’s time to have their first or second child. 
My argument against failure:
I'm not going to lie that from a genetic perspective a mini-Kate would be very interesting, although if myself as a child is anything to go by, I’d probably end up having a kid that looked like an extra from The Village of the Damned…

But biological curiosity isn't a good enough reason to have a kid and I can somewhat satiate biological curiosity by using the MorphThing website which generates what your offspring would look like.  

Yeah.  I bet you’re all going to see what your kids would look like with Ryan Gosling now, right?
Or that hot guy from Prometheus.  

Seriously though, kids are expensive.  The responsibility is massive and I just can’t imagine not being able to up and travel somewhere at the drop of a hat, which you can't do if you have a kid.  

Maybe I’m just too independent.
Anyway, this is a hypothetical conversation for my mid 30’s – not for right now.  
Slow down everyone you move too fast.

Our generation’s time to climb the next rung on the career ladder now we’re no longer new graduates.
My argument against failure:  
I keep changing ladders and the only constant is writing – for which there is none 
(just a repeated kick in the shins). 

…

In review, I'm feeling pretty good about my set of decisions.  I have no regrets (apart from the subject of my undergraduate major).  So, if you are like me and haven’t ticked off any of those milestones.  It’s OK.  DON’T PANIC.  Everyone in their own time.  

And even better?  Write your own list or let things unfold organically.  Who knows what's around the corner?  Maybe you don't buy a house – maybe you buy a boat!  A Tiny Tumbleweed that floats.  Now there’s a thought.  

*Kids of the 80’s.

Image References:
Village of the Damned Photo taken from the Celluloid Moon blog.
Wolf Head Picture taken from here:  CLICK ME.  

The limits of speaking one language.  This blog post is - unwittingly to her - inspired by my younger sister, Lucy, who is currently learning German.  Over the last few weeks, she has been sharing some words/concepts which don't exist in English or at least, not in exactly the same way.

e.g.  Drachenfutter - Literal translation is 'dragon food' but it is a peacekeeping gift a husband must bring his wife after pissing her off.

e.g. Kummerspeck - Literal translation is 'grief bacon' but refers to excess weight gained by emotional over-eating.  

For me, language is the doorway to culture and one of the ways this is best demonstrated is by the discovery of words which don't exist in other languages.  

I stumbled across the following word about three years ago and immediately fell in love with it.  

Mamihlapinatapai.

It is from the Yaghan language from Tierra del Fuego (Chile - near the Southern most tip of South America). 

It's often described as the most succinct word in the history of language and one of the most difficult to translate.

It's meaning?  As defined, by the sometimes academically dubious but extremely useful site, Wikipedia, mamihlapinatapai refers to  "a look shared by two people, each wishing that the other will offer something that they both desire but are unwilling to suggest or offer themselves."

Wow.

If you have a fascination with words and language as I do, I'll leave you with a few other unusual words but that actually exist in English:

Entomophilous - Adaptation for pollination by insects.
Apodysophilia - A feverish desire to undress.  
Boustrophedon - Alternating writing left to right, then right to left.
...for more visit here.

And...

A brilliant infographic:  Untranslatable Emotions in Other Languages other than English vs. Parrot's Emotion Classification.

Click the above link for the full view.  Here is just a teaser:

Possible sounds for the sun rising.  
If the sun rise had a sound, what would it be?  

It's not a rational question, I'm not talking about ambient noise like your alarm clock, birds twittering or the sound of your neighbor taking a shower through the wall.  And, suspend disbelief before you bring physics into the mix that there is no sound in space, just think IF.  


IF the action of the sun rising had a sound.  What would it be?  Something like this?
This? (Woman Sighing)
This? (Eggs Frying)
This? (Creaky Door)
This? (Balloon Inflating)
This? (Toaster Pop Up)
This? (Bottle Pop)
This? (Yes! Ha, ha, ha)
This? (Corporate Success YES)

And then part of me just thinks it should be accompanied by a song - similar to International Cricketers who choose a theme song to introduce their entry onto the field.  

If the sun rise had a theme song, what would it be?  
Personally, I don't think you can go too far wrong with a bit of Sam & Dave - "Don't worry, I'm coming".  

Sunrise Image Courtesy of WikiMediaCommons.