April showers bring May downpours
It's been pissing it down lately -- welcome to Australia. Rumours of boiling hot sun 24/7/365 have been, fortunately, greatly exaggerated. Even the desert's been flooded of late.
Sunday's the last weekend I stay up all night, even if it is because I had work until 4am and then a new AIESEC trainee (nice chick, incidentally) to welcome at the airport at seven. After twenty-odd hours awake I have even less control over my tongue than usual and I don't think a certain asylum seeker line went down too well. (To put it another way, if the crack had come out of a major-party polly's mouth I'd have punched it.)
Got a start on a certain Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia. You know, one of those books people refer to often in conversation (circles of hell, seventh heaven etc) without ever having actually read it. Which is understandable, given most people's mediaeval Florentine isn't exactly extensive (in language or cultural background). And some translations apparently haven't been the best, if the translator's intro, magnificently snarky about many of his predecessors' overwriting, is anything to go by. And let's face it, most people these days boggle at the idea of a poem, singular, filling a two-inch-thick volume, even if a third of it is annotations. Without which I'd be totally lost. All the more so now, given the uni library insist on a two-week maximum loan for a book that takes a hell of a lot longer than that to get a grip on. It's on the back burner (somewhere in the sixth circle) for now. I'll just have to stick to Something Positive...
I'm writing this on the train (and transcribing it later, Gawd bless fat little notebooks). The man in front of me is reading Tom Clancy, aka the world's most widely read weapons manuals. A woman behind him is reading Jackie Collins. All of a sudden I feel like putting to use all those snobbery skills I'm sure I absorbed at high school. But mostly I'm wondering what would happen if I pulled that thirty-year-old Polish textbook out. Not a lot, probably.
In French, in honour of my Host Family issues from the year before last (get over it? Never! ;o) . Hey, if I can't write it in my native language, I may as well fuck it up others too.
Il ne sait plus ce qu’il a dit
cette nuit-là,
et plus important,
comment il l’a dit,
l’a expliqué
à des qu'il ne croyait pas
capable de le comprendre.
Sunday's the last weekend I stay up all night, even if it is because I had work until 4am and then a new AIESEC trainee (nice chick, incidentally) to welcome at the airport at seven. After twenty-odd hours awake I have even less control over my tongue than usual and I don't think a certain asylum seeker line went down too well. (To put it another way, if the crack had come out of a major-party polly's mouth I'd have punched it.)
Got a start on a certain Dante Alighieri's Divina Commedia. You know, one of those books people refer to often in conversation (circles of hell, seventh heaven etc) without ever having actually read it. Which is understandable, given most people's mediaeval Florentine isn't exactly extensive (in language or cultural background). And some translations apparently haven't been the best, if the translator's intro, magnificently snarky about many of his predecessors' overwriting, is anything to go by. And let's face it, most people these days boggle at the idea of a poem, singular, filling a two-inch-thick volume, even if a third of it is annotations. Without which I'd be totally lost. All the more so now, given the uni library insist on a two-week maximum loan for a book that takes a hell of a lot longer than that to get a grip on. It's on the back burner (somewhere in the sixth circle) for now. I'll just have to stick to Something Positive...
I'm writing this on the train (and transcribing it later, Gawd bless fat little notebooks). The man in front of me is reading Tom Clancy, aka the world's most widely read weapons manuals. A woman behind him is reading Jackie Collins. All of a sudden I feel like putting to use all those snobbery skills I'm sure I absorbed at high school. But mostly I'm wondering what would happen if I pulled that thirty-year-old Polish textbook out. Not a lot, probably.
In French, in honour of my Host Family issues from the year before last (get over it? Never! ;o) . Hey, if I can't write it in my native language, I may as well fuck it up others too.
Il ne sait plus ce qu’il a dit
cette nuit-là,
et plus important,
comment il l’a dit,
l’a expliqué
à des qu'il ne croyait pas
capable de le comprendre.