I’m getting behind on my grading.
Correction: I got behind. I’ll get caught up … soon. But Friday will be another day of Brecht.
As I say, if it ain’t Brecht, don’t fix it.
Speaking of Brecht, we’ll continue with “Wenn die Haifische Menschen wären,” but today I decided to read and translate a short verse:
Die Maske des Bösen
An meiner Wand hängt ein japanisches Holzwerk
Maske eines bösen Dämons, bemalt mit Goldlack.
Mitfühlend sehe ich
Die geschwollenen Stirnadern, andeutend
Wie anstrengend es ist, böse zu sein.–Bertolt Brecht
Or, in English it might be:
The Mask of Evil
Upon my wall hangs a Japanese wooden
Mask of an evil demon, painted with gold lacquer.
Empathetically I see
The swollen temple veins, indicating
How strenuous it is to be evil.
I also got around to a small bit of baking, just a couple loaves with the recipe Angela gave me. Tasty.
I realized that I had nothing else to write. No interesting web pages or sites visited, no books completed, no developments in my social, emotional, romantic or professional life (though I did get the most recent and perhaps last of the three abstracts and CVs I need for moderating a panel at next week’s grad student conference). I just have this lonely little apartment, its kitchen and living room and bedroom and bathroom occupied by one little person, and on my days off I so often spend so much time in her as if it were the whole world, or at least my whole world and the windows but portholes of sorts, my world a ship upon the sea with land in sight but my ship always anchored too far away.
Across the way something is going on with Cheryl and what’s-his-name’s apartment. They seem to have broken up, but even after that perhaps they got back together because I heard her over there. But there have been no more arguments or nights of crying. He’s had some friends over, but for all I know they’re just his drug buddies or drug customers. I keep saying that, as if he were dealing. I like to think so, and as long as it’s not a meth lab that’s going to blow up, taking my apartment with it, I’m not really one to care. But the maintenance folks have been by today and yesterday, and perhaps the night before. Knock knock knock, and then “Hello? Hello? Maintenance.” And then unlocked, entered, door shut, and then he leaves a bit later. The first time I thought, “Hrm, burglar with keys?” Today he was back, and it seems he was working on the kitchen sink, and at some point he had help. I wonder whether my neighbors fought and broke something, or there was just some other reason for there to be work in the kitchen, and it’s sort of like being in Plato’s cave but with echoes rather than shadows, just sounds that I hear but often don’t understand, and so my understanding of the drama next door is limited.
They just came home. Keys jingling. Perhaps just him, nothing said, just the keys, then the lock, the door, opened and closed and locked.
Today I finished the “Miscellaneous” directory and got to Modest Mouse and Motley Crue and now Moxy Fruvous awaits me. What sort of band name is “Moxy Fruvous”?
I finished season 2 of the new Doctor Who and went back and watched the last one of season 1 to see the old Doctor’s death and to get the whole Bad Wolf thing again. Now I can watch Torchwood … the spin-off series. I’m eagerly awaiting season 3, but there will be a new “companion,” as Rose is stuck in an alternate/parallel dimension … it was a way to write the actress out of the show.
