I don't understand why, but the Chinese course has left me exhausted. T. offered to review the vocabulary with me yesterday, and the idea of it frankly struck stark desolation into my being. We did it today anyway; it was still tiring and much of the material had slipped out of memory. But whining can minister to a mind diseased, so here is the day encapsulated as a series ungrammatically laconic complaints:
Day began before 11 a.m. and seemed so terribly, terribly long. Also gloomy and rainy; may contribute to my present mood.
Yesterday filled out forms to get health insurance again. One form for family/other info, one bank account withdrawal authorization, one form for declaration of income. Much more straightforward than expected, especially as there were precisely 0 Euros in income to declare. Otherwise, still detest performing "duty" that has no immediate necessity to recommend it. Bank account likely to consequently diminish like snow in the Sahara.
A propos of bank, appointment coming up on Wednesday; look forward to it about as much as getting a tooth pulled. If invited to place money on the stock market, plan to decline with thanks.
Walked in park with J. Skirt splashed with rainwater by bus on the way there. Umbrella (kindly lent by T.) turned inside out. Fixed it. Broke again. Squills, daffodil buds, remnant snowdrops, tulip leaves, and J.'s cheerful chatter redeemed journey.
On Project Gutenberg, reread The Scottish Chiefs. Big mistake. First time of reading was during my gap year; was in shock for days. Literary equivalent of eating artificially flavoured icing sugar and jelly beans and drinking Sprite for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Vapoury, precious in the late 17th-century sense. Can't decide whether religious sentiments well-meant or phony. Makes Sir Walter Scott look like Tolstoy. Later read western novels; infinitely better, but overly familiar by now.
Played piano: "songs without words," movements of Haydn and Mozart sonatas, etc. Went decently through sheer force of will; at first I was in an ungenuine mood.
Later reactivated my Facebook account. All old information (which had been industriously deleted) still present in its former glory, which made me very angry. If they'd only kept my e-mail address and name it would have been all right, but they kept everything. !!!
To summarize, a horrendously tedious day.
Monday, March 23, 2009
Friday, March 20, 2009
Bees, Dragonflies, and Abrupt Endings
My Chinese course has come to a most interesting conclusion. At first I was certain it would last three weeks, then was certain that it would last four weeks, and under that impression skipped this past Tuesday and Wednesday. The reasons for said skipping are diverse, and they seemed sufficient at the time, but now look a trifle silly. This probably sounds very irritating, but the thing is that I felt sickish whenever I was stressed, and when I relaxed it went away, so it was greatly preferable to relax. The other thing is that my mind is quite stuffed with fresh information, and I thought it best to let it settle before endeavouring to cram in more.
So on Tuesday I watched the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice and the Disney film The Swan Princess (less irritating than most of its famous brethren, but quite "meh"), and generally did an excellent job of taking it easy. By the way, I am now quite in awe of the BBC Pride and Prejudice. The opening scene could, I think, very easily have been filmed from life if cameras existed back in Jane Austen's day. Its pacing and detail is also excellent; you can really sink into the story and setting and characters. Evidently I haven't appreciated it enough in the past.
On Wednesday I devoted most of the day to writing and finishing my lousy-story-set-in-New-York. It's still lousy, but it was incredibly nice to write it. This time I didn't passively see the events and record them so much as plan out the events and then see them in my mind's eye as I wrote. It also feels so good to put to use my past knowledge (e.g. school Spanish) and experiences, and let them naturally fill out the bones of the story. Then it was fascinating to think out the past lives, personalities, etc., of the characters, carefully fiddling away at them so that they are as real as possible, and to know more about them than I put in the story. Apparently my imagination has also become far better, because I could see everything in great detail, especially the characters. Most of these delights of the scribbling art are probably clichéd, but in any case they kept me busy and happy for over twenty hours in all. (Word count: ca. 12,800.)
On Thursday I overcame my fear of being looked at askance for my delinquency, and of being utterly at sea in a class that had advanced far beyond my knowledge, and of displaying my ignorance, and went to Chinese again. I tried surprisingly successfully to bear any of the natural consequences of my absence bravely and with a good sense of proportion and humour. I arrived early and began catching up with the last chapter. Then, when my classmate M. had come as well, I asked rhetorically, and with a humour that was of course rueful, "Did I miss much?". She informed me that the course would be ending tomorrow (i.e. today), and that we would be having an exam then. !!!
Fortunately I wasn't taking the course expecting to be given a graded certificate (I'd have had to do the homework in that case, which would have been so much more stressful), so I bore this news with near-perfect equanimity. Last night I thought about studying, but upon consulting the state of my mind found it signally unreceptive to new information.
I woke up this morning not in the best of spirits, thanks to my dream. It was set at first in an underground research facility. The scientists (I was an innocent bystander!) annihilated a great quantity of bees as part of their research. Not long afterward an enormous swarm of bees came to avenge their fallen kin, and darkened the sky as they crept in through all the orifices of the building. Some of us crawled into airtight rooms, or rooms that were nearly airtight but might still admit bees, but I didn't want to be suffocated and preferred to die out in an open space, which preference was granted. At around this point, I woke up and realized (not a dream) that in the tension I was ripping open my blanket cover, or whatever it's called.
Then I went back to sleep and the scene changed to our old home in Victoria, in lifelike detail. The skies were grey, almost as heavily as during snowfall, and the bees attacked again, once again fatally. This being a dream, I was given another life, and found myself in my old room. Through the firs I saw a steady confluence of wild geese and other birds flying north (the east, in real life) in a black line. They were pursued by a massive speckled torrent of black dragonflies, which funnelled down to the ground like a webbed tornado, and then poured through our house. On my skin I saw the bumps that their biting apparatuses left behind, and at length was stretched out, unconscious, on my bed. Much to my surprise, I woke up after a while, quite alive. I went out to the living room and told my parents that we had to flee to the north, like the birds, at once. My parents admitted that the insects had been behaving oddly lately, but didn't think it was so urgent. After much vehement insistence, they agreed to evacuate anyway, and so did the relatives and friends who had happened to visit us then. I hastily packed up crucial things to take along, but couldn't think properly, so stuffed pens and random items of clothing and two pewter saucers into a cardboard box, and then went down to put everything in the car. It was even more urgent as I saw a (this time greatly diminished) flock of birds fleeing northward again, pursued by the vanguard of a fresh host of dragonflies, whose wings were fortunately battered by the great raindrops that had begun to fall. Downstairs I made sure that everyone else was coming (which is good, because in dangerous dream-situations I tend to forget about the others, who then presumably die off-stage), and then went to the car. My parents, who were convinced now, had driven the car out of the garage onto the driveway. I was going to get in the back of the car, where everybody else had found a place, but there wasn't enough room, so I had to run to the other side. The car rolled forward out of the gate before I could, and I ran after, not knowing if the car would stop long enough for me to enter . . . And then I woke up.
In this catastrophic state of mind, I was not precisely prepared for an exam, but cheered up fairly quickly. (The bedlinen badly needs mending, though.) Anyway, I learned at least three new characters, went to the TU campus and wrote the test, and suspect that I received 60-70% on it. Of course test and essay marks (like dreams!) tend to go by contraries, so that what you think you deserve is rarely what you end up receiving. (Opapa liked to tell an anecdote where a couple of professors were given the same German(?) essay to mark, and gave it everything from a 5 to a 1.) It was mercifully brief, and then I bade everyone goodbye and good luck, emerged out into the sunshine, and, in an increasingly cheerful mood, walked home at a leisurely pace by the long Siegessäule route. Hopefully I wasn't too much of an enfant terrible in the Chinese class. If I am ever a delight to teach, it is certainly not due to any industriousness.
For the rest of the day I've been playing the piano, eating, conversing with the siblings, going over my lousy story with J., singing a great and varied repertoire in my best (or possibly worst) mock-operatic voice, watching an episode of The Avengers, and trying to think What To Do Next. So far, What To Do Next includes eating less; when one is swiftly walking at least fifty minutes every weekday one can consume pretty much whatever one likes, and when one isn't it is evidently incumbent upon one to exercise moderation. Anyway, I've still become slenderer, which is a very nice surprise. I look in the mirror and suddenly I have a neck.
So on Tuesday I watched the 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice and the Disney film The Swan Princess (less irritating than most of its famous brethren, but quite "meh"), and generally did an excellent job of taking it easy. By the way, I am now quite in awe of the BBC Pride and Prejudice. The opening scene could, I think, very easily have been filmed from life if cameras existed back in Jane Austen's day. Its pacing and detail is also excellent; you can really sink into the story and setting and characters. Evidently I haven't appreciated it enough in the past.
On Wednesday I devoted most of the day to writing and finishing my lousy-story-set-in-New-York. It's still lousy, but it was incredibly nice to write it. This time I didn't passively see the events and record them so much as plan out the events and then see them in my mind's eye as I wrote. It also feels so good to put to use my past knowledge (e.g. school Spanish) and experiences, and let them naturally fill out the bones of the story. Then it was fascinating to think out the past lives, personalities, etc., of the characters, carefully fiddling away at them so that they are as real as possible, and to know more about them than I put in the story. Apparently my imagination has also become far better, because I could see everything in great detail, especially the characters. Most of these delights of the scribbling art are probably clichéd, but in any case they kept me busy and happy for over twenty hours in all. (Word count: ca. 12,800.)
On Thursday I overcame my fear of being looked at askance for my delinquency, and of being utterly at sea in a class that had advanced far beyond my knowledge, and of displaying my ignorance, and went to Chinese again. I tried surprisingly successfully to bear any of the natural consequences of my absence bravely and with a good sense of proportion and humour. I arrived early and began catching up with the last chapter. Then, when my classmate M. had come as well, I asked rhetorically, and with a humour that was of course rueful, "Did I miss much?". She informed me that the course would be ending tomorrow (i.e. today), and that we would be having an exam then. !!!
Fortunately I wasn't taking the course expecting to be given a graded certificate (I'd have had to do the homework in that case, which would have been so much more stressful), so I bore this news with near-perfect equanimity. Last night I thought about studying, but upon consulting the state of my mind found it signally unreceptive to new information.
I woke up this morning not in the best of spirits, thanks to my dream. It was set at first in an underground research facility. The scientists (I was an innocent bystander!) annihilated a great quantity of bees as part of their research. Not long afterward an enormous swarm of bees came to avenge their fallen kin, and darkened the sky as they crept in through all the orifices of the building. Some of us crawled into airtight rooms, or rooms that were nearly airtight but might still admit bees, but I didn't want to be suffocated and preferred to die out in an open space, which preference was granted. At around this point, I woke up and realized (not a dream) that in the tension I was ripping open my blanket cover, or whatever it's called.
Then I went back to sleep and the scene changed to our old home in Victoria, in lifelike detail. The skies were grey, almost as heavily as during snowfall, and the bees attacked again, once again fatally. This being a dream, I was given another life, and found myself in my old room. Through the firs I saw a steady confluence of wild geese and other birds flying north (the east, in real life) in a black line. They were pursued by a massive speckled torrent of black dragonflies, which funnelled down to the ground like a webbed tornado, and then poured through our house. On my skin I saw the bumps that their biting apparatuses left behind, and at length was stretched out, unconscious, on my bed. Much to my surprise, I woke up after a while, quite alive. I went out to the living room and told my parents that we had to flee to the north, like the birds, at once. My parents admitted that the insects had been behaving oddly lately, but didn't think it was so urgent. After much vehement insistence, they agreed to evacuate anyway, and so did the relatives and friends who had happened to visit us then. I hastily packed up crucial things to take along, but couldn't think properly, so stuffed pens and random items of clothing and two pewter saucers into a cardboard box, and then went down to put everything in the car. It was even more urgent as I saw a (this time greatly diminished) flock of birds fleeing northward again, pursued by the vanguard of a fresh host of dragonflies, whose wings were fortunately battered by the great raindrops that had begun to fall. Downstairs I made sure that everyone else was coming (which is good, because in dangerous dream-situations I tend to forget about the others, who then presumably die off-stage), and then went to the car. My parents, who were convinced now, had driven the car out of the garage onto the driveway. I was going to get in the back of the car, where everybody else had found a place, but there wasn't enough room, so I had to run to the other side. The car rolled forward out of the gate before I could, and I ran after, not knowing if the car would stop long enough for me to enter . . . And then I woke up.
In this catastrophic state of mind, I was not precisely prepared for an exam, but cheered up fairly quickly. (The bedlinen badly needs mending, though.) Anyway, I learned at least three new characters, went to the TU campus and wrote the test, and suspect that I received 60-70% on it. Of course test and essay marks (like dreams!) tend to go by contraries, so that what you think you deserve is rarely what you end up receiving. (Opapa liked to tell an anecdote where a couple of professors were given the same German(?) essay to mark, and gave it everything from a 5 to a 1.) It was mercifully brief, and then I bade everyone goodbye and good luck, emerged out into the sunshine, and, in an increasingly cheerful mood, walked home at a leisurely pace by the long Siegessäule route. Hopefully I wasn't too much of an enfant terrible in the Chinese class. If I am ever a delight to teach, it is certainly not due to any industriousness.
For the rest of the day I've been playing the piano, eating, conversing with the siblings, going over my lousy story with J., singing a great and varied repertoire in my best (or possibly worst) mock-operatic voice, watching an episode of The Avengers, and trying to think What To Do Next. So far, What To Do Next includes eating less; when one is swiftly walking at least fifty minutes every weekday one can consume pretty much whatever one likes, and when one isn't it is evidently incumbent upon one to exercise moderation. Anyway, I've still become slenderer, which is a very nice surprise. I look in the mirror and suddenly I have a neck.
Sunday, March 15, 2009
Frittering Away a Sunday
This evening T. took the family, a family friend, Aunt K. and Uncle Pu to dinner at a Pakistani restaurant, in celebration of the pleasing results in her university examinations. I had a bronzy bowl of fish curry, which was I thought agreeably subtle, and we all spooned delicate, slender rice out of a dented coppery bowl and forked a salad of iceberg lettuce, pickled cabbage, shredded carrot, and trickles of yoghurt and cranberry sauce onto our plates. Most of the others drank mango or coconut lassis, or tea, whilst T. and I had "Jogi" tea, which resembles cappuccino, has a satisfying layer of honey at the ground of the glass, and tastes of clove and (or so I thought) cardamom. We were not alone in dining at the restaurant, though at first there was only one pair of diners, who were looking in our direction and smiling (evidently appreciating our lively conversation) before they left.
At home afterwards, Papa and Pudel and I played Haydn trios, in C, D and G major. Ge. heated milk for ovaltine and other drinks, and everybody talked. It was fun to hear a heated debate on the merits of Wagner, and of course I was happy when the conversation turned to Jane Austen (Pudel and K. have been watching Austen film adaptations, which I mostly know inside out). At first I was going to do Chinese homework in my room, so I copied down a handful of characters. Then I looked for the characters' definitions in a list, and couldn't find them, at which point I felt very much like Mr. Bean trying to write the wrong maths test and crying "Mummyyy!" in despair. On the plus side, it was the perfect excuse to shirk my homework, go to the corner room, and listen to the conversation. Unfortunately my favourite perch on the stove was more or less untenable, as the surface temperature had become quite toasty.
Other than that I've been re-reading The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, writing a new lousy story set in present-day New York, and playing the piano. Then I went through Schubert's "Ave Maria," very slowly. It's still so challenging technically that any sappiness of the lyrics and music doesn't much bother me, which is not quite the case with the "Ständchen" from Schwanengesang, where I resolutely forget what the words mean and at times don't feel like singing it at all. Besides I watched a half hour or so of television (an episode of Pink Panther and Bringing Up Baby, which is a little frenetic but always nice to watch again) and read part of a book of English idioms.
Yesterday I picked up Andromaque again, and have almost reached the dénouement, despite my failure to understand why Orestes would still be infatuated with Hermione after so many excellent opportunities for sober second thought. J.'s outdoing me on the classics front, though, because he is presently immersed in a tome of Euripides' plays and reading up on ancient Rome. (c: We've already had an argument on whether Euripides is humorous or not. I remember his plays as being pretty thoroughly depressing (in Trojan Women, lots of people die, to put it baldly), but am probably confusing him with Aeschylus, whom I also had to read in university. Essentially the only thing I remember about Aeschylus is that he composed The Persians, was agreeably fair-minded and thoughtful, and had a brother whose hand was hacked off with an axe when he was grabbing the prow of a Persian ship that wanted to pull off the shore, after which said brother bled to death. But that last item may be a figment of the imagination.
At home afterwards, Papa and Pudel and I played Haydn trios, in C, D and G major. Ge. heated milk for ovaltine and other drinks, and everybody talked. It was fun to hear a heated debate on the merits of Wagner, and of course I was happy when the conversation turned to Jane Austen (Pudel and K. have been watching Austen film adaptations, which I mostly know inside out). At first I was going to do Chinese homework in my room, so I copied down a handful of characters. Then I looked for the characters' definitions in a list, and couldn't find them, at which point I felt very much like Mr. Bean trying to write the wrong maths test and crying "Mummyyy!" in despair. On the plus side, it was the perfect excuse to shirk my homework, go to the corner room, and listen to the conversation. Unfortunately my favourite perch on the stove was more or less untenable, as the surface temperature had become quite toasty.
Other than that I've been re-reading The Railway Children by E. Nesbit, writing a new lousy story set in present-day New York, and playing the piano. Then I went through Schubert's "Ave Maria," very slowly. It's still so challenging technically that any sappiness of the lyrics and music doesn't much bother me, which is not quite the case with the "Ständchen" from Schwanengesang, where I resolutely forget what the words mean and at times don't feel like singing it at all. Besides I watched a half hour or so of television (an episode of Pink Panther and Bringing Up Baby, which is a little frenetic but always nice to watch again) and read part of a book of English idioms.
Yesterday I picked up Andromaque again, and have almost reached the dénouement, despite my failure to understand why Orestes would still be infatuated with Hermione after so many excellent opportunities for sober second thought. J.'s outdoing me on the classics front, though, because he is presently immersed in a tome of Euripides' plays and reading up on ancient Rome. (c: We've already had an argument on whether Euripides is humorous or not. I remember his plays as being pretty thoroughly depressing (in Trojan Women, lots of people die, to put it baldly), but am probably confusing him with Aeschylus, whom I also had to read in university. Essentially the only thing I remember about Aeschylus is that he composed The Persians, was agreeably fair-minded and thoughtful, and had a brother whose hand was hacked off with an axe when he was grabbing the prow of a Persian ship that wanted to pull off the shore, after which said brother bled to death. But that last item may be a figment of the imagination.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
Idle Thoughts of a Saturday
This morning we had one of our communal breakfasts, consisting principally of buns from the bakery, hot chocolate, tea, and the spiritual nourishment of golden tulips and daffodils (Mama's contribution). J. was slumbering, despite our invitations to the table, but everyone else was present.
Yesterday we likewise enjoyed a communal supper, which was the joint achievement of Gi. and myself. It was a big pot of "sweet and sour pork," according to a recipe adapted from Papa's past chef d'oeuvres of that dish. I fried ca. 1 kg of pork and 500 g of organic beef in butter, sunflower oil, sesame seeds, chili powder, paprika, and powdered ginger, searing the surface of the meat to seal in the juices (as I promptly explained to everyone who crossed my path). Then I put it in a pot with chopped bell peppers, one green and one red and one yellow, and dashed in liberal quantities of soy sauce. After this point Gi. took over. He poured in 2 jars of plums and, after letting it boil away for a long time, 2 cans of pineapple chunks, and a carton of tomato sauce. Finally he stirred in a couple tablespoons of corn starch dissolved in cold water.
The result resembled a stew. It was remarkable firstly in that the corn starch had refused to dissolve properly, instead settling as glutinous blobs in the depths of the pot. (I didn't mind this at all, because I find that corn starch is too artificial as a thickening agent, and I'm fond of impromptu dumplings if only for their entertainment value.) Secondly, for some reason, the beef truly tasted of beef and the pork had a hint of pork. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it.
Since breakfast, at any rate, I haven't done much worth describing. (Gawker and Jezebel. The "feud" between the business channel CNBC and Jon Stewart is enjoyable to read about, but not quite true news.) I did play the piano, mostly Mendelssohn but also a Chopin prelude, Piazzolla milonga, and Field nocturne out of my old piano lesson notebooks.
Yesterday I took a look at English and Irish and Welsh folksongs. To my unappreciative ears, they often sound a good deal alike, but there are a couple of lyrics and melodies with fine pathos and a distinct character ("The Ash Grove," for instance), and I want to learn those. Otherwise I've tired a little of my song repertoire, which consists largely of a handful of Schubert lieder (the boringly famous ones, I'm afraid), the first verse of Bellini's "Casta Diva", and Mozart's "Voi che sapete" and Gounod's "Ave Maria" and the folksong "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" as far as I can remember the lyrics. "When I am laid" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is quite lovely too, and I like "As when the dove" from Händel's Acis and Galatea, but somehow have never gotten around to learning their lyrics beyond the first line or couplet.
My reading has not been too elevated lately, though when bored yesterday I read Racine's Andromaque up to Act II Sc. ii. (I skipped to the end; the corpse count is 2, and the fates of Andromache and Astyanax are indeterminate). At bedtime I am reading Jack London's White Fang, a chapter or two at a time. Even that I've already read twice, but skimmingly and perhaps ten years ago. I like the way London quietly explores the question of survival from such diverse perspectives, though when I was little this heterogeneity irritated me. (My preferred mode of reading was plunging to the action, finding one protagonist and seeing everything through his or her eyes, and then gradually reading the descriptive passages, etc., on the second or third reading, if the book was congenial.)
Anyway, having rambled sufficiently, I'll only mention for the sake of full honesty that I skipped Chinese for the second time on Friday. It felt pretty good, and especially the splendid piano session in the afternoon weakened my feelings of guilt, though in retrospect it wouldn't have killed me to go there for three hours when the entire weekend lay before me, and I do like my classes. The day before I had been in a very miserable mood, besides which my leg muscles are uncomfortably taut with the walking to and fro, so the rest was helpful. The mood was nothing too worrisome but fascinatingly weird; it was a state of profound but transient malaise like the kind that can accompany a fever or a flu, and I have no idea where it came from or what it is. But it is gone and it has had a good effect on my piano-playing. At any rate, enough hypochondriac navel-gazing for one day. (c:
P.S.: The latest episode of America's Next Top Model has made me ashamed to watch it again. Hélas! as a character in Andromaque would say.
Yesterday we likewise enjoyed a communal supper, which was the joint achievement of Gi. and myself. It was a big pot of "sweet and sour pork," according to a recipe adapted from Papa's past chef d'oeuvres of that dish. I fried ca. 1 kg of pork and 500 g of organic beef in butter, sunflower oil, sesame seeds, chili powder, paprika, and powdered ginger, searing the surface of the meat to seal in the juices (as I promptly explained to everyone who crossed my path). Then I put it in a pot with chopped bell peppers, one green and one red and one yellow, and dashed in liberal quantities of soy sauce. After this point Gi. took over. He poured in 2 jars of plums and, after letting it boil away for a long time, 2 cans of pineapple chunks, and a carton of tomato sauce. Finally he stirred in a couple tablespoons of corn starch dissolved in cold water.
The result resembled a stew. It was remarkable firstly in that the corn starch had refused to dissolve properly, instead settling as glutinous blobs in the depths of the pot. (I didn't mind this at all, because I find that corn starch is too artificial as a thickening agent, and I'm fond of impromptu dumplings if only for their entertainment value.) Secondly, for some reason, the beef truly tasted of beef and the pork had a hint of pork. It may not be everyone's cup of tea, but I liked it.
Since breakfast, at any rate, I haven't done much worth describing. (Gawker and Jezebel. The "feud" between the business channel CNBC and Jon Stewart is enjoyable to read about, but not quite true news.) I did play the piano, mostly Mendelssohn but also a Chopin prelude, Piazzolla milonga, and Field nocturne out of my old piano lesson notebooks.
Yesterday I took a look at English and Irish and Welsh folksongs. To my unappreciative ears, they often sound a good deal alike, but there are a couple of lyrics and melodies with fine pathos and a distinct character ("The Ash Grove," for instance), and I want to learn those. Otherwise I've tired a little of my song repertoire, which consists largely of a handful of Schubert lieder (the boringly famous ones, I'm afraid), the first verse of Bellini's "Casta Diva", and Mozart's "Voi che sapete" and Gounod's "Ave Maria" and the folksong "Flow Gently, Sweet Afton" as far as I can remember the lyrics. "When I am laid" from Purcell's Dido and Aeneas is quite lovely too, and I like "As when the dove" from Händel's Acis and Galatea, but somehow have never gotten around to learning their lyrics beyond the first line or couplet.
My reading has not been too elevated lately, though when bored yesterday I read Racine's Andromaque up to Act II Sc. ii. (I skipped to the end; the corpse count is 2, and the fates of Andromache and Astyanax are indeterminate). At bedtime I am reading Jack London's White Fang, a chapter or two at a time. Even that I've already read twice, but skimmingly and perhaps ten years ago. I like the way London quietly explores the question of survival from such diverse perspectives, though when I was little this heterogeneity irritated me. (My preferred mode of reading was plunging to the action, finding one protagonist and seeing everything through his or her eyes, and then gradually reading the descriptive passages, etc., on the second or third reading, if the book was congenial.)
Anyway, having rambled sufficiently, I'll only mention for the sake of full honesty that I skipped Chinese for the second time on Friday. It felt pretty good, and especially the splendid piano session in the afternoon weakened my feelings of guilt, though in retrospect it wouldn't have killed me to go there for three hours when the entire weekend lay before me, and I do like my classes. The day before I had been in a very miserable mood, besides which my leg muscles are uncomfortably taut with the walking to and fro, so the rest was helpful. The mood was nothing too worrisome but fascinatingly weird; it was a state of profound but transient malaise like the kind that can accompany a fever or a flu, and I have no idea where it came from or what it is. But it is gone and it has had a good effect on my piano-playing. At any rate, enough hypochondriac navel-gazing for one day. (c:
P.S.: The latest episode of America's Next Top Model has made me ashamed to watch it again. Hélas! as a character in Andromaque would say.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
The Events of Three Month Ten Day
Today I performed the grand feat of walking all the way to my Chinese class, and then walking all the way home, and then going upon a little promenade to the Kleistpark with J. For some reason this walk is generally gruelling. I come home, do things for an hour or so, then feel overcome with slumber and want nothing more than to curl up on the sofa beside the stove or even to go to bed. Anyway, today it wasn't so bad, perhaps due to the fact that, after a white night, I slept ca. 16.5 hours yesterday. In the morning I went the long way, via the Siegessäule, and was kept on my toes (so to speak) by the threat of rain and the threat of coming late. At the CDU building (which I like to poke fun at as the Abode of Evil), I found out that I had mistaken the hour by an hour, wherefore I was actually in excellent time, instead of ca. 17 minutes late. Then I went past the building that houses the embassies of Monaco, Luxembourg, etc., and the Mexican embassy which I oddly like (diagonal ribs of grey stone and a coppery door panel that is most likely a reference to the natural resources of that country), etc., in fairly good spirits. On the Straße des 17. Juni I had the privilege of passing a convoy of black compact cars surrounded by police cars and motorcycles, and of guessing whether a criminal, businessmen, or politicians were being thusly protected. Later it did rain in a heavy, silvery April manner, but by then I was nearly at the building.
In Chinese itself we reviewed the vocabulary of family, etc. Our teacher becomes exasperated from time to time, but in a nice, restrained way and in a moment she calms down again. Considering how we learn things and then forget them again, commit a blunder over and over again, and things of the sort, it is quite understandable. (Besides, I suspect that she rather likes me and is correspondingly tolerant, because I know English and have a sense of humour.) Unrelatedly, she wants us to stop relying on pinyin; I am not inclined to heed her suggestion, as I learn the proper characters anyway, and need pinyin for the accents (not that I take sufficient pains to use the right ones anyway). We gave presentations about our families; I volunteered to go first, and it didn't go so badly. I go carefully and therefore slowly, but produce reasonable sentences most of the time. It's the listening comprehension and pronunciation that I do badly.
Then we learned the numbers from 11 to 99, which is fairly easy, as one must merely say e.g. four-ten-eight (48). Whoever evolved the Chinese language is likewise pragmatic where dates and times are concerned. Months, for instance, are known as "one month," "two month," and so on and so forth, instead of "January," "February," etc. According to the Chinese format, today's date would be expressed as 2-0-0-9 year, 3 month, 10 day. The weekday would be expressed as "week two day," the sole exception being Sunday, which is called "week tian day," "tian" (which should have a bar over the "a") meaning "heaven" or something else which I've forgotten.
On the way back home I timed the length of my walk, this walk taking the route via the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche and Wittenbergplatz and Nollendorfplatz. I arrived at Ernst-Reuter-Platz at 1:12, at Nollendorfplatz at 1:44, at Winterfeldtplatz at 1:49, and at the Kleistpark intersection at 1:59, more or less. It is a nice route, through the stir of the roundabout at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, the steady trickle of students on the Hardenbergstraße, past the bookstore where T. and I went months ago and the Steinway-Haus and an art gallery, past the Universität der Künste building where I used to go to student concerts and masterclasses, and above all past an interesting mix of people that becomes more tourist-y but remains as interesting at the Kirche. The route also leads me along a "tony" (to employ an expression which strikes me as being a little pretentiously slangy and a lot suggestive of a thesaurus, but fitting) shopping street. I like watching for particularly elegant or striking clothing, and even more watching for distinctive faces. It is a funny jumble, suggestive of New York, especially when a wave of people gathers along the edge of a broad pedestrian crossing and then breaks onto the asphalt.
At any rate, I wonder about my future as much as ever. As far as music and writing go, I haven't been very sanguine lately. I know that I can write a publishable story; the problem is my extremely demanding standards, and finding my own style. I refuse to attempt to publish anything that does not fulfill my ideals, or to sacrifice quality for quantity or speed of production. Besides, I am not precisely sure why, because I am not an experienced professional writer and can't expect to write as well as someone who is, but for instance if I read a truly excellent article (the fiction and poetry rarely impress me much) in the New Yorker, the internal dictator points to that and tells me that what I write is worthless, and then I feel terrible for a while. Then it feels as if I were far more inspired writing-wise and music-wise five years ago; where I had moments of genius then I no longer have anything except moments of moderate talent.
On the other hand, it feels better to write or play decently if it reflects months of hard work and thought. There are dozens of poorly written, unoriginal stories floating around on my computer, but they reflect hours upon hours of tinkering and research, and the germination of tiny seeds of ideas into full-fledged plots, and the determination to go on writing in spite of impatience and of the knowledge that the result would not be especially good. Not to mention that writing them can be fun. I can picture stories in my mind as if they were dreams, and then live through them and record what I see. It is especially fun when I haven't previously thought out the details of the plot, so that the twists and turns of the story come into being and surprise me as I write. The problem with such stories is that they are not very realistic, and it requires much ingenuity and exertion of mind to lend them detail and depth. The writing I'd like to do is far more realistic; I want to write stories that are so natural and plausible and vivid that one has the impression that the scenes are recorded from life. But I want to depict especially interesting scenes, and do so with a wealth of observation, so that the reader does not want to escape from life into unreality, but can better understand, be curious and critical about, and come to terms with, life . . . if that makes sense. (c:
In Chinese itself we reviewed the vocabulary of family, etc. Our teacher becomes exasperated from time to time, but in a nice, restrained way and in a moment she calms down again. Considering how we learn things and then forget them again, commit a blunder over and over again, and things of the sort, it is quite understandable. (Besides, I suspect that she rather likes me and is correspondingly tolerant, because I know English and have a sense of humour.) Unrelatedly, she wants us to stop relying on pinyin; I am not inclined to heed her suggestion, as I learn the proper characters anyway, and need pinyin for the accents (not that I take sufficient pains to use the right ones anyway). We gave presentations about our families; I volunteered to go first, and it didn't go so badly. I go carefully and therefore slowly, but produce reasonable sentences most of the time. It's the listening comprehension and pronunciation that I do badly.
Then we learned the numbers from 11 to 99, which is fairly easy, as one must merely say e.g. four-ten-eight (48). Whoever evolved the Chinese language is likewise pragmatic where dates and times are concerned. Months, for instance, are known as "one month," "two month," and so on and so forth, instead of "January," "February," etc. According to the Chinese format, today's date would be expressed as 2-0-0-9 year, 3 month, 10 day. The weekday would be expressed as "week two day," the sole exception being Sunday, which is called "week tian day," "tian" (which should have a bar over the "a") meaning "heaven" or something else which I've forgotten.
On the way back home I timed the length of my walk, this walk taking the route via the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedächtniskirche and Wittenbergplatz and Nollendorfplatz. I arrived at Ernst-Reuter-Platz at 1:12, at Nollendorfplatz at 1:44, at Winterfeldtplatz at 1:49, and at the Kleistpark intersection at 1:59, more or less. It is a nice route, through the stir of the roundabout at Ernst-Reuter-Platz, the steady trickle of students on the Hardenbergstraße, past the bookstore where T. and I went months ago and the Steinway-Haus and an art gallery, past the Universität der Künste building where I used to go to student concerts and masterclasses, and above all past an interesting mix of people that becomes more tourist-y but remains as interesting at the Kirche. The route also leads me along a "tony" (to employ an expression which strikes me as being a little pretentiously slangy and a lot suggestive of a thesaurus, but fitting) shopping street. I like watching for particularly elegant or striking clothing, and even more watching for distinctive faces. It is a funny jumble, suggestive of New York, especially when a wave of people gathers along the edge of a broad pedestrian crossing and then breaks onto the asphalt.
At any rate, I wonder about my future as much as ever. As far as music and writing go, I haven't been very sanguine lately. I know that I can write a publishable story; the problem is my extremely demanding standards, and finding my own style. I refuse to attempt to publish anything that does not fulfill my ideals, or to sacrifice quality for quantity or speed of production. Besides, I am not precisely sure why, because I am not an experienced professional writer and can't expect to write as well as someone who is, but for instance if I read a truly excellent article (the fiction and poetry rarely impress me much) in the New Yorker, the internal dictator points to that and tells me that what I write is worthless, and then I feel terrible for a while. Then it feels as if I were far more inspired writing-wise and music-wise five years ago; where I had moments of genius then I no longer have anything except moments of moderate talent.
On the other hand, it feels better to write or play decently if it reflects months of hard work and thought. There are dozens of poorly written, unoriginal stories floating around on my computer, but they reflect hours upon hours of tinkering and research, and the germination of tiny seeds of ideas into full-fledged plots, and the determination to go on writing in spite of impatience and of the knowledge that the result would not be especially good. Not to mention that writing them can be fun. I can picture stories in my mind as if they were dreams, and then live through them and record what I see. It is especially fun when I haven't previously thought out the details of the plot, so that the twists and turns of the story come into being and surprise me as I write. The problem with such stories is that they are not very realistic, and it requires much ingenuity and exertion of mind to lend them detail and depth. The writing I'd like to do is far more realistic; I want to write stories that are so natural and plausible and vivid that one has the impression that the scenes are recorded from life. But I want to depict especially interesting scenes, and do so with a wealth of observation, so that the reader does not want to escape from life into unreality, but can better understand, be curious and critical about, and come to terms with, life . . . if that makes sense. (c:
Saturday, March 07, 2009
Top Models and Youthful Innocence
Having been of the cheerful opinion for the past week at least that I have finally lost any interest in watching America's Next Top Model, it was a bit of a surprise when I was looking at the most popular videos on YouTube, spotted the season premiere of that television show, thought "Oo!" and then "Why not?", and in a moment found myself immersed in the premiere. So often I have wondered why I still watch this show, and found the last three seasons mediocre in the absence of the rich psychological studies and compellingly endearing winners that made Seasons 6 and 7 so worthwhile. But this season is promising to be fairly good again. I watched part of Germany's Next Top Model too, but find it a little too trashy, and don't find that the contestants are as palpably individual and interesting as their American counterparts. Besides, one tires of hearing the word "krass" after the first billion iterations.
At any rate, this cycle of ANTM begins at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Never mind that I find the Romans to be a tribe of philistines, and willingly consign the lifestyle of their wealthy to the long dead past, nor like Las Vegas much either from what I've seen and heard of it; it was amusing to see the pomp. Still I internally groaned and groaned as a chanting row of centurions marched onto a walkway over a swimming pool, and then Tyra Banks emerged from their number in toga-esque garb and billowing hair to declare herself the "Goddess of Fierce" to a scarily hyperemotional, screaming group of girls.
At an interval after this formal introduction, the girls come into a room one by one to be interviewed by Tyra, the runway coach Miss J, and the photo shoot director(?) Jay Manuel. As is inevitable, each individual's life is boiled down into "their story." The Kenyan contestant is told that she was chosen because of her beautiful dark skin, which makes Tyra sound not unlike a taxidermist but does not seem to worry Sandra at all. Then there is Angelea, a girl from New York or Jersey who has already had and lost a baby, and who gets in a shouting match with Sandra. Because she is "ghetto" and perforce slept in the Port Authority building and only possesses a little over forty dollars, she is unfairly blamed for the shouting match and reported to Tyra as a troublemaker. In my view this continues the show's trend of blaming people for their tough exterior, even though they either cannot help it, must have it in order to survive, or both. Anyway, there is a girl who comes from Puerto Rico and is an obligingly extroverted Latina (there are no nuances in national or ethnic identity in the world of ANTM), a spate of small-town girls, etc., etc., and of course a girl who is suffering from an illness (this season it's epilepsy; in the past ailments like lupus and Asperger's have had their moment in the spotlight).
Then the lucky number of contestants is chosen, sporting gilded laurel wreaths in their hair, and they weep with joy whereas the less fortunate weep with disappointment. Angelea is among the latter number, and at this point I, metaphorically speaking, mutter angrily. Amid much squealing, which is an unfailing and puzzling accompaniment to almost any activity in ANTM, the girls fly to New York. They are staying in an apartment on the Upper East Side, at which point I think about the expense thereof and about how fortunate the girls would be if they weren't going to spend the coming weeks being put through their paces in a human circus (a second-rate version of the Cirque du Soleil, if you will).
The first photo shoot is about one of Tyra Banks's Causes. These causes are quite as faddish and change quite as frequently as her hairstyles (speaking of which, she is no longer imitating Victoria Beckham's bob). One season it was global warming and the girls were ferried about in an apparently windowless van as if they were vegetables en route to a grocery; the next season it was something else and the girls were ferried about in a heavyweight stretch limousine. The Cause for this photo shoot is the disparition of childish innocence amidst the onslaught of premature sexualization. So the girls have to dress up in pigtails and curtailed childish clothes, and hop and skip about Central Park in fancy-free juvenile pursuits, like dodgeball and musical chairs and hide-and-seek, as behind them loom the degraded, threatening figures of three prematurely aged "bad girls."
One of the "bad girls" has committed the sin of teenage pregnancy; at this point I am seriously irritated. I detest the tendency to label teenage mothers as stupid or sluttish. Their situation can be, and often is, so hard that I think that they have a far greater claim to consideration and respect than (most of) the rest of us. Then I hate the habit of moralizingly blaming people for their misfortunes. Being born into the bourgeoisie is -- and this may surprise some people -- not in itself a virtue. Thirdly, I don't think it should be considered a misfortune to bring another little being into the world, as long as one does one's best to care for it and society doesn't do its best to sour the experience.
At any rate, the episode ends in the customary manner, with a judging session. The girls appear before Tyra, Miss J, the photographer Nigel Barker, and Czech model Paulina Porizkova, who proffer their commentary on the girls' attire and self-presentation and photos. Then the judges de-li-be-rate (as Tyra invariably puts it) and decide which of the contestants they will kick off. This week it is Isabella, an agreeable chirpy individual who is let go in preference to Sandra. The current theory is that Sandra has been retained to be the designated villain of this cycle of ANTM, which does appear likely as she is prone to the typical villain traits of inaccurate self-assessment and egocentrism. But Sandra does have a distinctive face and temperament, so, though I do not like her as much as Isabella, it seems to me that someone else should have been voted out this week. At least Isabella, delivering the soliloquy with which every parting contestant leaves the show, was not a mess of tears and wounded ego, but good-humoured and optimistic. She is one of the ones who display magnanimity in (temporary) defeat.
Long story short, I am watching this season.
At any rate, this cycle of ANTM begins at Caesar's Palace in Las Vegas. Never mind that I find the Romans to be a tribe of philistines, and willingly consign the lifestyle of their wealthy to the long dead past, nor like Las Vegas much either from what I've seen and heard of it; it was amusing to see the pomp. Still I internally groaned and groaned as a chanting row of centurions marched onto a walkway over a swimming pool, and then Tyra Banks emerged from their number in toga-esque garb and billowing hair to declare herself the "Goddess of Fierce" to a scarily hyperemotional, screaming group of girls.
At an interval after this formal introduction, the girls come into a room one by one to be interviewed by Tyra, the runway coach Miss J, and the photo shoot director(?) Jay Manuel. As is inevitable, each individual's life is boiled down into "their story." The Kenyan contestant is told that she was chosen because of her beautiful dark skin, which makes Tyra sound not unlike a taxidermist but does not seem to worry Sandra at all. Then there is Angelea, a girl from New York or Jersey who has already had and lost a baby, and who gets in a shouting match with Sandra. Because she is "ghetto" and perforce slept in the Port Authority building and only possesses a little over forty dollars, she is unfairly blamed for the shouting match and reported to Tyra as a troublemaker. In my view this continues the show's trend of blaming people for their tough exterior, even though they either cannot help it, must have it in order to survive, or both. Anyway, there is a girl who comes from Puerto Rico and is an obligingly extroverted Latina (there are no nuances in national or ethnic identity in the world of ANTM), a spate of small-town girls, etc., etc., and of course a girl who is suffering from an illness (this season it's epilepsy; in the past ailments like lupus and Asperger's have had their moment in the spotlight).
Then the lucky number of contestants is chosen, sporting gilded laurel wreaths in their hair, and they weep with joy whereas the less fortunate weep with disappointment. Angelea is among the latter number, and at this point I, metaphorically speaking, mutter angrily. Amid much squealing, which is an unfailing and puzzling accompaniment to almost any activity in ANTM, the girls fly to New York. They are staying in an apartment on the Upper East Side, at which point I think about the expense thereof and about how fortunate the girls would be if they weren't going to spend the coming weeks being put through their paces in a human circus (a second-rate version of the Cirque du Soleil, if you will).
The first photo shoot is about one of Tyra Banks's Causes. These causes are quite as faddish and change quite as frequently as her hairstyles (speaking of which, she is no longer imitating Victoria Beckham's bob). One season it was global warming and the girls were ferried about in an apparently windowless van as if they were vegetables en route to a grocery; the next season it was something else and the girls were ferried about in a heavyweight stretch limousine. The Cause for this photo shoot is the disparition of childish innocence amidst the onslaught of premature sexualization. So the girls have to dress up in pigtails and curtailed childish clothes, and hop and skip about Central Park in fancy-free juvenile pursuits, like dodgeball and musical chairs and hide-and-seek, as behind them loom the degraded, threatening figures of three prematurely aged "bad girls."
One of the "bad girls" has committed the sin of teenage pregnancy; at this point I am seriously irritated. I detest the tendency to label teenage mothers as stupid or sluttish. Their situation can be, and often is, so hard that I think that they have a far greater claim to consideration and respect than (most of) the rest of us. Then I hate the habit of moralizingly blaming people for their misfortunes. Being born into the bourgeoisie is -- and this may surprise some people -- not in itself a virtue. Thirdly, I don't think it should be considered a misfortune to bring another little being into the world, as long as one does one's best to care for it and society doesn't do its best to sour the experience.
At any rate, the episode ends in the customary manner, with a judging session. The girls appear before Tyra, Miss J, the photographer Nigel Barker, and Czech model Paulina Porizkova, who proffer their commentary on the girls' attire and self-presentation and photos. Then the judges de-li-be-rate (as Tyra invariably puts it) and decide which of the contestants they will kick off. This week it is Isabella, an agreeable chirpy individual who is let go in preference to Sandra. The current theory is that Sandra has been retained to be the designated villain of this cycle of ANTM, which does appear likely as she is prone to the typical villain traits of inaccurate self-assessment and egocentrism. But Sandra does have a distinctive face and temperament, so, though I do not like her as much as Isabella, it seems to me that someone else should have been voted out this week. At least Isabella, delivering the soliloquy with which every parting contestant leaves the show, was not a mess of tears and wounded ego, but good-humoured and optimistic. She is one of the ones who display magnanimity in (temporary) defeat.
Long story short, I am watching this season.
Han Yu
This is a leaf from my Chinese class notes. Evidently the way I prefer to drive the characters into my memory is through repetition. A few of my favourite characters:
dì
The labyrinthine squiggle with the vertical line through it and the two little people or birds perched on top, and which is used to identify ordinal numbers. As I found out two or three days ago, "ordinal numbers" means, logically enough, numbers that signify an order. So dì yi kè means "first lesson," whereas yi kè would just mean "one lesson." [The yi should have a bar over the i, but I don't know the html code for that.]
kè
Looks like an "i" with a spiky scarecrow standing to its right. It means "lesson," and as such this piece of vocabulary has been of great utility so far.
hao
To me it looks like two happy people dancing. It means "good" (wherefore the common greeting Ni hao literally means "you good") and is supposed to have an upside-down circumflex over the "a."
shì
Be. It is an oddly Egyptian-looking character, and vaguely resembles a box on a chair with one straight and one baroquely curling leg.
hen
It's supposed to have an upside-down circumflex over the "e," and means "very." For instance, hen hao means "very good." To me it looks like a person walking away from a fir tree, and I remember the meaning by imagining that the tree boughs are being swayed by a very strong wind.
qi
Stand. The way I remember the character is that it looks like an odd chair (with a cross on top and a curly leg) on whose tip a squiggle (possibly a seahorse) is standing. There should be an upside-down circumflex on the "i." Duì bù qi means "I'm sorry," but literally the words signify "I cannot stand before you (i.e. out of shame)."
At any rate, I like most of the other characters, too. As for "qi," "hen," etc., I've written them here in pinyin (pronounced "pin-ing," the "y" being the way for writing "i" at the beginning of a syllable). Pinyin is a mode of representing Chinese characters phonetically, using the Latin alphabet, which not only students of Chinese but also native speakers use to navigate their alphabet of ca. 30,000 characters. It isn't infallible, because as my teacher said yesterday, she once checked the chart that gives all the possible combinations of vowels and consonants in pinyin, and it only offers ca. 241 possibilities, which of course represents an infinitesimal fraction of the entire syllabary (if that's the correct term).
The accents in pinyin indicate whether the pitch of one's voice should be raised or lowered, or both in succession, or not at all. Theoretically it may be difficult to grasp this concept, and when I was learning ancient Greek I refused to attempt it (not that we were expected to do so), but I've realized that we change the pitch of our voices all the time anyway. At the end of a question, if you compare the beginning and end of the last syllable, you do hear that the voice becomes higher.
Admittedly I've found the pronunciation of Chinese quite difficult. The pinyin "j" sounds, to my ears, an awful lot like a hard "d," only that the "d" is followed by a kind of buzzing "z." "Zh" is apparently far more analogous to the English "j." "Q" and "x" are also weird for me, because "ch" is "ch" and "sh" is "sh," whereas "q" and "x" are respectively something subtly different which involves considerable stretching of the corners of the mouth. "E" is an enigma, and at present it seems to me like a vague approximation of "eu-eh" as that would be pronounced in French; I've decided to pronounce "eng" as if it were French, too, because it sounds a good deal like "ong" but isn't. Anyway, my approach to the pronunciation of unknown languages is to hit on a reasonably euphonious compromise between the languages I know and the one I don't, instead of running the risk of perpetrating a grotesque caricature that would induce trauma in a native speaker. That is why I do not experiment with Spanish "r"s in public.
Thursday, March 05, 2009
Bulletin from the Chinese Frontier
The first week of my Chinese, specifically Mandarin, course is well underway, and in many aspects I quite enjoy it. Each lesson begins at 10 a.m. and goes on to 1 p.m. (except on Thursdays), excluding two ten-minute breaks, taking place in the same TU building where I signed up for the course. T. (who is enrolled in a French course) and I go to the TU together via the bus and the U-Bahn (or only via the bus), and for the first two lessons I walked home by myself afterwards. There are altogether six students in the class, perhaps my age or a little older, and for once I don't feel any marked difference in maturity. Everyone is quite nice. Besides, for once my fears of speaking in class and of being disliked are pretty much nonexistent. I don't care and it feels good.
Yesterday I admittedly had a bit of a meltdown and ended up not going to the lesson, because I've felt sleepwalker-ish and unlike myself and very tired. The evening before I had tried to learn new characters and hadn't managed to do it because my mind was too saturated and muddled. So, having gone to sleep at perhaps 1 a.m., I slept and slept for eleven or twelve hours, then was up for an hour or two, then went to sleep again for at least six hours. Afterward I indulged in a thorough course of customary relaxing activities, like reading newspaper articles and online books, telling myself to let go the tension and the anxieties regarding my homework, and then went to sleep again until 5 a.m. Now I feel beautifully regenerated, and am ready to go at it again. There is roughly an hour left for me to become up-to-date on our work. Hopefully I didn't miss too much.
Anyway, apologies for this vague and general post; I hope to write something more specific and interesting soon.
Yesterday I admittedly had a bit of a meltdown and ended up not going to the lesson, because I've felt sleepwalker-ish and unlike myself and very tired. The evening before I had tried to learn new characters and hadn't managed to do it because my mind was too saturated and muddled. So, having gone to sleep at perhaps 1 a.m., I slept and slept for eleven or twelve hours, then was up for an hour or two, then went to sleep again for at least six hours. Afterward I indulged in a thorough course of customary relaxing activities, like reading newspaper articles and online books, telling myself to let go the tension and the anxieties regarding my homework, and then went to sleep again until 5 a.m. Now I feel beautifully regenerated, and am ready to go at it again. There is roughly an hour left for me to become up-to-date on our work. Hopefully I didn't miss too much.
Anyway, apologies for this vague and general post; I hope to write something more specific and interesting soon.
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