Existing or Strangely Inexisting?

"The word you just said does not exist." says my native Spanish friend having listened to my explanation of the difference between commercial and financial thinking in Spanish.

"Abrigos de verano no hay." "There are no summer overcoats." Julio answers when I ask him if I should wear a summer overcoat when coming to Madrid in october.

"No entiedo. Este no suele pasar. Nunca pasa." "I do not understand. This does not happen. It never happens." the hostel staff keeps on repeating after my trousers have strangely disappeared from the wardrope of my room in Madrid.

It seems to me that beside the worlds of either-or and both-and there is also a world of existing and strangely inexisting things. Not simply inexisting things, but strangely inexisting things.

If something does not exist, it does not exist. And that´s that. But if something is strangely inexisting, your thoughts or your hands have been in contact with the thing. If they hadn´t, you would never be able to have an idea about it. In other words, something has been normal first and then slipped out of the reach of normality into the inexistence.

This quick slipping into the world of inexistence is easy to understand when you think of the inexisting words you might just have uttered.

"Zu Hause gebacken." "Home baked" my teacher of German used to say.

Home baked words and expressions are concrete in the sense words normally are concrete, but they do not correspond to the generally accepted linguistic standards. Luckily all communication is as tightly context-bound as it is. In suitable circumstances we get surprisingly well along with home baked linguistic material. - In fact, if you become too much conscious of it, you might never learn proper ways to express yourself in a foreign language.

In folk music and foreign language learning there are no mistakes. All depends on what you do next.

It takes a bit more effort to accept the existence of the strangely inexisting things, when the inexistance refers to concrete objects and not just to words and expressions.

There are clear climatic and cultural reasons for some things to exist or not. The idea of summer overcoats is ridiculous in Spain. In Finland we need several types of coats and shoes for every season. Even summer overcoats are of several variations.

Maybe we should conclude that the existence and inexistence of something is geographically bound. But if there are no geographical reasons, the slipping into inexistence of a concrete thing may result quite astonishing, even annoying. Let´s take my trousers as an example.

Our Finnish summer has been normal - warm and rainy. Maybe, exceptionally rainy. In Madrid the weather is hot. What is a proper business outfit like in such a hot weather? What to wear in the streets?

You pack your suitcase carefully, although you know that your choices will most likely go wrong. Anyway, in August it is too late to go shopping for something new as it is autumn here. Summer clothing has been sold out long ago. You pick up simple, most generally acceptable garments - like black trousers - knowing that even that choice will go wrong.

In the Mediterranean you concretely feel how the people you meet for the first time let their eyes travel down along your body and then come up again, you almost hear how they decide who you are and what you are good for. In those cultures clothing speaks loudly.

It is quite understandable that you would like to say something reasonable in the same language in return. Anyway, you know that the likelihood of disturbing interference - is all interference disturbing? - is so obvious in so many levels of communication that you try to make your best to minimize it.

The wardrope was empty. The staff was genuinly astounded by the idea that my trousers had slipped into the world of the strangely inexisting things without having left any more traces of their existence than my idea of them having served truthfully in both everyday and special occasions.

Having got back home again it was safe to feel the plus ten degrees weather to greet you - not too coldly. In Madrid it was thirty-five abouts. I also went to buy two pairs of black trousers to replace the untruthful ones. I´ll go back to Madrid in the beginning of December. You can be sure that i`ll keep an eye on my simple black trousers to find out how the slipping into the strange worlds actually takes place.

Maybe we should pay more attention to the different versions of the world we function in, because each of them offers different types of opportunities as well. You know, the worlds of either-or, both-and and the one of the existing or strangely inexisting things.