Tonight’s wine: a 2003 Bulls Blood from Eger. Tasty red that gets much better the longer it sits out. Starts watery and fruity but not sweet. Only later does it linger. It becomes fuller, but doesn’t have the tannins of the strongest and driest reds. I’ve been drinking this for years and it’s one of my preferred dry cheap reds.
Another day of teaching, another day of tangents. Today: language, history, and language-history. I briefly confused Faeroese with Frisian.
An honest mistake.
A discussion with Andrea about grammaticalization and the synthetic to analytic process, along with Finnish, Hungarian, and the like, as well as polling various native speakers about satt (not hungry, sated, full) and whether they could/would use it to mean “no thirsty.”
Uniform answer: no.
In the department I asked Stella and Klaus Berghahn. Walking down Bascom Hill I encountered Lukas and he provided a similar answer. My unexpected delay from talking with him enabled me to run into Christoph as soon as I crossed Park in the direction of the Historical Society, so I queried him as well.
After dropping off Sabine (by A.P. [London: Bloomsbury, 2005]) at the library I wandered down State Street in the direction of Fair Trade. Along State Street all the snow had melted. One young woman went jogging in shorts. Sun glasses and leather jackets had come back in fashion. Pajama pants tucked into faux-fur-lined boots had returned. Thongs, pants that barely covered hips and did not approach non-existant, pre-teen non-waists, and ill-defined, too-short tops that did not reach said pants had likewise come back in style. This will last a few days until winter returns, even if only for another week or so.
I enjoyed a tall dark roast near the door and front window, which provided me with an outlet, wireless, and a people-watching-panorama in the afternoon sun. To my left sat an undie and two older male professors with whom she discussed a paper and seminar presentation focused around a Marxist economic analysis of a certain nation-state building enterprise and a seemingly paradoxical need for the seemingly unnamed Marxist or post-Marxist state to both centralize (as Marxist) and de-centralize (due to taking over an already centralized state) at once. sehr verwirrend. One professor left and the student and other professor continued their analysis, and then a discussion of others in the program.
When observing a student-professor afternoon coffee meeting that extends beyond the discuss-the-paper stage one begins to wonder.
Eventually the professor stood and excused himself with a weak and less-than-confident “I think I’d better head out” comment and at that small table to my left there was some tension but I was unable to identify what exactly it was.
I transitioned from writing anther diary entry to reading the rest of Jennifer Egan’s The Keep, and during this time the vaguely Latina woman to my left switched chairs, visited the restroom twice, and began work on some other project. Before finishing my book I decided to leave, to catch a bus home, and so on, so I packed up my belongings and wandered across the street.
I felt overdressed in my heavy black wool coat.
The bus eventually came and to my surprise Jen was onboard, but since she already had a neighbor I settled for a seat next to someone else behind her at an angle and we chatted until, a few blocks before her stop, I got off and moseyed home. I mentioned meeting Christoph and Lukas, the first book I had finished and the one I was finishing, and the one (Book by Robert Grudin) lent to me by Ben.
A few houses before my own a young-ish resident was taking out the weekly garbage and quite a pile of white plastic bags tied with pink plastic handles had accumulated. “And I thought I had a lot of garbage.” I belonged, so it seemed, to another resident. Perhaps an ex-resident or soon to be ex-resident. Perhaps someone in the middle of winter-cleaning. Like spring cleaning but crisper and less enjoyable. Perhaps purging recent relationship memories or experiencing a lifestyle change. A drastic one.
I continued my walk, dropped off my bags, got online, walked to the co-op for milk and water (the former 1) to drink and 2) to use in a bread recipe I found online that called for whole milk), returned, finished The Keep, and watched the most recent episode of Lost, which was not too filled with drama but which had a few fine character moments. The ending was the most melodramatic I’ve seen on the show, and it was not even done ironically. I hope that was not a jump the shark moment. I still love the show.
I should pull out the wonderful “Prometheus” text penned by Kafka, but without doing so I’ll summarize a few main points. Kafka states that for sagas report of Prometheus. The expectation is, or at least should be, after reading that that Kafka will will us four parallel or at least competing stories, but upon conclusion of our careful reading and analysis we are left with the fact that such is not the case. Instead each “saga” is a partial completion of the one before. Imagine the reverse of a 4-year-old, who always asks why.
Infinite regress.
He or she asks why? You respond. He or she asks why about that. You respond, and it never ends.
Here a tale is told, but it leaves things unanswered, but more along the lines of “well, what happened to …?” or “what came next?” And since every explanation introduces something new that must be explained, the process into the future or forwards, like the “whys” heading backwards, is inexhaustible.
There is a little theory- and abstraction-loving demon inside of me that wants this to be Lost‘s premise. The perfect, ideal serial fiction. Comics are similar but far too often repeat themselves or fall back upon supposed archetypes, already told stories, models, ideals, whatever. Every story or conflict must be solved, but unless this solution is tidy it will introduce a new element … and how to we explain that? And at times that is what it seems they’re doing with Lost. Tell a story and solve a current conflict. Then tell another story, creating a conflict, based upon the most recent so-called solution.
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.
It’s a drug that I can still hand.
I’m not a junkie I yell.
I am mostly done with Giant Steps. Great background music but also more. I also acquired Thea Gilmore on Amy’s recommendation, and I found a recording (Kyung Wha Chung) of Franck’s gorgeously romantic and melancholy sonata for violin and piano.
I still think of L. Skoczylas when I hear it, but that was ten years ago. I’m not sure if that taught me the dangers of getting too close or those of not getting close.
Time to take out the garbage and return to Grudin.
