Beltane Closing Moon
Printed out Superior Wolf’s first few chapters to read today. I need to reenter that world, get back to writing. Will try some Latin as well.
Prime task today. Sign and mail closing documents. This requires visiting a notary.
Second workout. Back at it.
Sleep still problematic. Not anxiety. I don’t feel anxious. I am weary, right now, of possible threats to my life, threats issued by own body. Still in the in-between, some information but not enough stage.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Apparently the dropout rate for language instruction is incredibly high. I believe it. There were several drop out points along the way in my Latin learning, moments when the thickness of my resistance seemed impenetrable.
Read the other day that it takes 600 hours of practice to become fluent in a foreign language. The same article said that learning a language was just hard, not impossible. Now it’s beginning to appear that this article had it right.
Thing is, it seems like I have way over 600 hours of practice translating. Now this article referred to learning, say, French, and admitted that other languages like Mandarin could take much longer. Maybe fluency and accuracy in translation are different, I don’t know, but it’s taken me a long time to get where I am and that’s still far from 100%.
Like most pilgrims, the journey was key to the adventure, but the destination has proved worthy of the path. Rationales for learning Latin developed over time. One was the third phase desire to keep the brain active, creating new neural pathways. The second, or was it the original one, involved making the stories of the Metamorphoses a deep and accessible resource for writing. The third was to challenge my self-perception as one who could not learn a language.
The first I don’t know how to measure. The second has been happening all along the way and, happily, the third was a successful challenge. Challenging self-perceived limitations is an important facet of life at any age, perhaps more so as we move well into our third phase.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
Snow 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.
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.
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.
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.
Spring Mountain Spring Moon
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.
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)
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
The Latin continues to come, if not easily, then with much less struggle. I no longer write down the words or possible translations, I simply type the translation I have completed. So, this is all mental work now. I do ten verses in less time than it took me to get through five. Not sure why this happened, but it’s clearly a culmination of some sort.
I can not yet read without Perseus or a dictionary because my vocabulary has distinct limits and I still stumble over case, declensions, verb conjugations. But, with the aid of Perseus I can read somewhat quickly now.
Still shaking my head. Huh. This is really happening.
Imbolc Black Mountain Moon
Translated ten verses today in less than an hour, the time it has previously taken me to do five. Greg says often the work comes back stronger after some time off. Well, now I believe him.