Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Wow. It’s gotten warmer since the late afternoon. 26. Tomorrow will see the temps above freezing, then a major plummet. Gonna try to get some work done outside tomorrow. Not sure what.
Daily Archives: January 3, 2014
A Sweetness in Aging
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
There is a sweetness in aging that comes unanticipated and for that reason even more 
welcome and surprising. The races have been run. The stakes won or lost. Now there is a peace, Kate and I growing old together. Of course we still have dreams and goals, but they have taken their proper place, the place they could have taken all along had we been awake.
Life never has a ribbon for your worth; we only worry that it does. And that instead of of a blue ribbon we’ll get the honorable mention, or good sport award, or the congeniality award. The truth is he who dies with the most toys still dies, no matter what the brave bumper sticker on your BMW might say.
Life values life, values living toward enrichment for yourself and others. No, not that kind of enrichment. The other kind. Where your work engages all of you, stretches you, challenges your talents, takes you into new territory. Where love lays your life down alongside others, so that, as Camus has said, this trip to death might be just a little more comfortable. Or, as the millenials have it, so that life will suck less.
Turns out age can strip away the detritus from those insecure parents, those overly ambitious teachers and mentors, that eager super ego and set you free. Of course, yes, you can always have this. At any age. Yes. But age can slide it onto your table unannounced, no fanfare, just a quiet, hey, you’re fine just the way you are.
I’ve been thinking about a couple of things in this regard. The golden years is one. It’s true, these are the golden years. Never thought it was true. Now I know.
The second thing is heart. As in, at heart I’m a… Or, I know this by heart. I’m putting it in my thinking box alongside home. Something to bring out now and then and ponder. When you say casually, at heart I’m a…, pay attention. You have just offered yourself self-knowledge.
In these golden years we become what we are at heart. Or at least we can. Let it be so for you.
A Couple of New Things for this Next Year
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
A couple of new things for 2014. First, a circular calendar, which I like for reasons explained often here, and one I like even more for its clean design and it’s simple graphic showing the amount of sunshine on any given day in the year. The inside of the circle has concentric rings that go from 16 hours of sunlight a day on the outside ring, down to 2 hours of sunlight in the center. The yellow follows the curve of daytime around the calendar, or, another way of conceiving it, around the earth’s solar orbit. (at 50 degrees N latitude, which is 5 degrees north of us, passing through Germany and Canada, for instance)
You’ll notice it’s pretty beat up. The mailing tube from Germany got smooshed. Soren, the designer, and I corresponded, first about how much I liked the design and then about the calendar. He refunded my money and put me on a discount list for next year. A nice guy.
The second item is a gift from Kate. I have to work on the presentation, but you’ll get the drift.
Ho, ho, ho, ho, ho.
Advanced Problems
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Wow. 19. Hard to imagine Monday’s high will be 33 degrees lower.
Today’s focus was Latin. The sight reading has gotten easier though there are still instances like verse 215. After struggling with it, I looked over to see what I’d gotten in the slower pace of translating with helps. Brackets. 215 looked like this { }.
As the Latin begins to loosen its occult barriers, the little things, as I said a couple of weeks ago, loom larger. Is that a neuter plural? Yes. Well, it can’t modify that masculine singular. Oh. Yeah. Sounds obvious and it is, unless it isn’t. Choosing the right English word to translate a particular Latin word is harder for me. I still haven’t read enough Latin to know what Latin authors usually mean by a particular word. All the meanings seem possible.
But these are advanced problems and I’m happy to have them.
Next Year’s Quotes Already
“How pleasant it is to spend an evening this way! I declare after all there is no enjoyment like reading! How much sooner one tires of anything than a book!- When I have a house of my own, I shall be miserable if I have not an excellent library”
| — | Jane Austen, Pride and Prejudice |
“I am looking for someone to share in an adventure that I am arranging, and it’s very difficult to find anyone.”
| — | J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit |
“I am unmoved by daily pictures of the dead.
A poet sings of toads and strikes straight at my heart.”
— Jee Leong Koh, “Heart Ghazal” from “A Lover’s Recourse” (from Seven Studies for a Self Portrait)
Cold, Colder, Coldest
Winter Seed Catalog Moon
Well, this is a cold forecast. The New Year is chilly.
