Category Archives: Latin

Latin, Mountains, Our Land and Home, Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Moon Over Black Mountain

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Spring                                                            Mountain Spring Moon

1428323496098Snow last night, not much but enough to coat rooftops and give the moonshine a reflective surface in the back. The moon hung directly over Black Mountain for a couple of mornings. Here’s a fuzzy (phone) photo taken from the deck off my loft.

An odd phenomenon with shifting my workouts to the morning. I get more work done in the morning. Then, though, the afternoon, late afternoon, seems to drag.

This will become my reading time for work related material. Right now I’m studying germline gene therapy for Superior Wolf. I’m also reading an older historical fiction piece called The Teutonic Knights by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Written in 1900 it is a great read. Sienkiewicz was prolific, author of many other works of historical fiction, including Quo Vadis. The Teutonic Knights have a role to play in Superior Wolf,so that book is work related, too.

I count Latin, writing and reading to support them as work, as I do gardening and beekeeping. Some people would count these as hobbies, especially the gardening and the beekeeping, but for me they represent the non-domestic parts of my day and have done for many years now.

At least for me a day filled only with meals, leisure reading, volunteer activities, shopping would be lacking a contrast, the contrast provided by labor with a forward progression, aimed toward an end of some kind. As I wrote before, I’m learning to detach myself from the results of this work, but that doesn’t deflate its value. Hardly. Work remains key to a sense of agency, a sense that does not come from merely sustaining life. For me.

Mentioning work, Kate made me a spectacular wall-hanging with vintage Colorado postcards.

Asia, Family, Latin, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Habitual

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Spring                                          Mountain Spring Moon

New morning habit in process of forming. I’m going to protect the time from 5:45-11:00 am for work with timeout for breakfast. After long experience, I know that I don’t do well if my work times get interrupted. This means I’ll need to make appointments for the afternoons in the future. Yes, this potentially interferes with my workout regimen, which begins at 4:00 pm each day. And, yes, it could disrupt my nap, but I think the advantages outweigh the hassles.

It also means I’ll not be posting here until mid-day, nor will I check e-mails, do other kinds of work on the computer until the afternoon or evening.

What will I be doing in those morning hours? Latin. Moving forward with my translation of Book VII which I plan to be my first complete book translated. There are 15. Writing. I’ll be working on Superior Wolf, writing and researching.

It’s odd, but the sunny disposition of Colorado really leans toward the outdoors, not like the cold and gloomy winters and early springs in Minnesota, where staying inside just made sense. This focus on mornings spent with the mind will have outside interference. I’ll have to focus harder on getting in hikes, plant identification, exploration in the time I have available.

I’ve been taken over the last few weeks with an idea from the Baghavad Gita, action with out attachment to the results. In the Gita this notion prunes karma, since it is the entrapment of desire that bends karma one way or the other. With no focus on the result the action cannot produce bad karma. This is not the way I see it though I understand this more orthodox approach.

Instead I find the idea of action without attachment to the result as a way to cut the final cord tying me to the bourgeois desire for achievement. It was this strain of thinking that cut across my cerebral cortex when living large popped up. In other words I learn Latin with no final end in mind. Being an amateur classicist is what I will do, defining the realm in which I will act. Just so the writing. Writing novels, being a writer is what I will do, what I have done. But the results of that action? Not important. Grandparenting. Gardening. Bee keeping. All the same.

So creating the atmosphere in which I can act is critical. Creating an atmosphere in which I succeed, not so much so.

Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Medea

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Spring                                       Mountain Spring Moon

Medea. The more closely I follow her story in Ovid, the better I understand why she inspired so many works of literature and painting. In a time when women worked the looms and managed households (Penelope, for example) Medea was a strong woman in every phase of her life. She seduced Jason and literally brought new life to Aeson, his father.

She is a magician, a sorceress, a witch, one who walks alone in the night. She banishes the clouds and calls for the clouds to return. She shatters living rock with a word and calls the winds, then bids them go. She is the female equivalent of the heroes of the age of heroes.

I’ve not yet gotten to the portion of Ovid’s account where she kills her children, so I won’t comment on it.

More to come.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses
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Spring                                           Mountain Spring Moon

On Saturday I began going back through the material I translated, checking definitions, grammar, using Anderson, a commentary, as a guide. Now I’m trying to produce a translation that’s as good as I can do. That takes longer than just translating, at least for me, and for sure at my current level. At another point, not yet, I plan to revisit the idea of a commentary; this time though, at least at first, for only one book, not all 15.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

My Buddy

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Spring                              Mountain Spring Moon

My photo of Ovid's statue in Constanta, Romania, site of the originally Greek settled, Tomis
My photo of Ovid’s statue in Constanta, Romania, site of the originally Greek settled, Tomis

My friend Tom Crane pointed out that yesterday was my buddy Ovid’s birthday. Don’t know how I missed that, but thanks, Tom.

“Ovid was born on March 20, 43 BC. After holding brief judicial posts as a young man, Ovid turned to writing poetry. His work was well received, but for reasons that remain mysterious today, emperor Augustus banished him to Tomis in 8 BC. Ovid wrote two poetry collections while there, Tristia and Epistulae ex Ponto. He died at Tomis in 17 AD. His most famous works are Ars amatoria and Metamorphoses.”  biography.com

I’m debating devoting even more time to Ovid, his poetry, especially Metamorphoses, and his times, the Augustan era. It seems like I’ve finally reached a fulcrum point in my learning of Latin where I’m about to tip over from student to scholar. As an amateur classicist, I’ll need considerably more study to get ready to contribute in any meaningful way, but I believe I have the capacity and I know I have the desire.

A year from now, on Ovid’s next birthday, his 2058th, if I count correctly, I’ll let you know how far I’ve gotten. It did just occur to me that Ovid’s two millennia death anniversary is exactly 2 years away. Hmm.

Latin, Translating Metamorphoses

Medea and Aeson (an excerpt)

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Imbolc                                  Black Mountain Moon

 

I’ll stop saying this, but I am amazed at the facility I’m now enjoying with Latin. Of course, I’ve been working at it off and on for over 5 years, so there’s that. But the jump in ability is what fascinates me. How did that happen? Sometime soon I’m going to test it in other texts: Caesar, Lucretius, maybe Tacitus. Just to see.

(Medea and Aeson: Giovanni David, 1780)

 

I’m getting close to having Medea and Aeson finished. Here’s an excerpt:

Metamorphosis Book VII: (Medea’s Prayer)

180 After the fullest moon shone, and the whole moon beheld the earth through shadow
181 Having dressed she came forth, having ungirded her clothes under the roof,
182 With naked feet, exposed hair spread over her shoulders,
183 And unaccompanied
184 She takes a wandering pace through the deep silence
185 of the middle of the night. The quiet has set free
186 men, high flyers and wild beasts: when often (there is) nothing with a roar,
187 the undisturbed leafy branches are silent, the moist air is silent;
188 stars sparkle (over) the land. Her arms stretched out, turned
189 three times by themselves toward something, three times she sprinkled her head with water taken up by hand from the river,
190 and loosed her voice
191 with three ululations. On the hard earth she sank down on her knee,
192 “O night, most safe with secrets,” she says, ” whoever looks toward the stars with the golden moon
193 and by day toward the fiery sun,
194 and you, tri-form Hecate, who is aware of our undertaking,
195 and of incantation, of knowledge, of magics, she that helps, come,
196 whatever magical songs, whatever you, O Earth provide with powerful herbs,
197 and to the air and the winds and the mountains and the streams and the lakes
198 and all the gods of the forests, the gods of all the night-works, attend.
199 By whose help, when I wished, the streams turned back in their marveling banks
200 Into their sources themselves, I calmed the shaken streams,
201 Standing I aroused the seas to song, I banish the clouds and
202 I call them back, I drive away the winds, and I invoke them,
203 I destroy monsters with words and by invocation I force open their throats,
204 After I shattered the boulders themselves and the hard-wood trees, on the living earth
205 I move the forests, and command the mountains to quake
206 and to rumble alone, and spirits to go forth from the grave.

 

Health, Latin, Myth and Story, Translating Metamorphoses

Pole Vaulting

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Imbolc                                                   Black Mountain Moon

Working on Latin today. A plateau pole-vaulted. For the first time, I worked from the text in Perseus alone, writing nothing down, looking up words in the usual click-on-the-word style with Perseus, but assembling the translation in my head, then typing it into my Evernote file for Medea and Aeson. This is the private equivalent of sight reading and I’m becoming facile at it, at least in Ovid.

If you were here in the room, I’d ask for a high five. This feels like a culmination, a passing through one of the key doors on my way to the amateur classicist tower. Still a good ways to climb, but I’m far beyond the half-way point. Amazing.

Another positive note. After each night’s sleep and each nap, I get a reading on my resting heart rate thanks to my Basis watch, my 2014 birthday present. Before leaving Minnesota I had my resting heart rate down to a 62-67 bpm average, leaning more toward 62. Which is pretty good for a guy in his late 60’s. After being without exercise for almost two months, I began again last month and my heart rate showed up in the 70-73 range and stubbornly stayed there. Just when I had begun to get frustrated with it, it began to drop. Now, I’m running 67.

Feels like a victory, especially at 8,800 feet.

Beyond the Boundaries, Health, Latin, MOOCS, Original Relation, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Third Phase, US History

It’s All Real Stuff

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Imbolc                              Black Mountain Moon

Prep days. Yesterday reorienting my workouts, today moving back into Ovid with the Latin. Prep is important but I find I want to hurry through it, press on, get to the real stuff. But, it’s all real stuff, isn’t it?

When doing the Latin, for example, I want to work fast, translate easily, get it. But, most often I have to work slowly, translate with difficulty, struggle to understand.

In the MOOC I’m taking from McGill University the current section is on physical literacy. An amazing insight for me. Literacy in the alphabetic, language based world, yes. Numeracy in the numbers based, mathematical world, yes. But physical literacy? That is, learning basic moves and physical actions that can later be strung together to play a sport, keep one fit, teach us how to fall, no. The idea never occurred to me.

It apparently surfaced in the 1930’s in America whereas numeracy only emerged as an idea in the 1960’s. It’s not surprising, I guess, since the move from the farm to the town and city was weighted against the old, physical ways that had existed since hunting and gathering gave way to the neolithic revolution.

Perhaps, come to think of it, becoming native to this place is a component of physical literacy, a tactile spirituality. As we move less and less, we interact with the natural less affectively, less often, less well. Perhaps play is a big component of becoming native to this place, wandering aimlessly in the woods or by a pond, in the mountains, on lakes.

Anyhow, I’m excited about this idea, a human trilogy necessary for a satisfying life: literacy, numeracy and physicality.

Art and Culture, Faith and Spirituality, Humanities, Latin, Myth and Story, Reimagine. Reconstruct. Reenchant., Translating De Bello Gallico, Translating Metamorphoses, Writing

Back At It

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Imbolc                                  Black Mountain Moon

I’ve found my rhythms. Back at Latin, going to turn today back to Ovid from Caesar. Writing. I’m 4,000 words plus into Superior Wolf and my brain is buzzing, following trails here and there with characters, research, narrative structure. Working out is back, too, 6 days a week right now. I’m not where I was in terms of fitness, not sure how the altitude has affected me, but I’m improving and that’s the key. The whole fitness area is still in flux, but I have a pattern I’m using.

A new element, too. I’m going to make some art. Not sure what quite yet, though I’ve got some ideas and lots of material. When my center room work space gets finished, I plan to get at it. There’s also, with art, the research and work with art history, theory. Not there yet in that work, but it will come.

Even, if you managed to get through my long posts under Beyond the Boundaries, Original Relation and Reimagining Faith, you’ll know, my reimagining project has finally begun to take off. Why now I’m not sure, but there you go.

This blog, of course, has remained a constant.

Now, if we could just sell that house.