11:43 p.m. "Cruel to be kind" on YouTube.
11:52 p.m. Notable so far: "wagonette"; description of nature with abrupt turn from sun/green/summer to yellow/fall and abrupt end with "Halloa"; "the Notting Hill murderer".
11:55 p.m. And then "... the barren waste, the chilling wind, and the darkling sky." Just like that. From the sun/green/summer to this in just over one page. This could have been set in the midwest :)
11:57 p.m. "Swan and Edison." Yes, the book is that old :)
Midnight The hyphens are standing out again :( "weather-bitten", "Good-bye", "age-blackened", "old-fashioned", "log-fire", "coat-of-arms" ... is he doing this on purpose?
12:08 a.m. Done. Now for the Step paper. More tomorrow. I should have been a professional telegram writer. Or telegram-writer---take your pick.
Sunday, January 13, 2013
"Three Broken Threads"
That's the title of the next chapter. Reading log:
_________________________________
4:59 p.m. Initial song to reset mental language to English: "Everybody have fun tonight". This particular video has a side effect of clearing the mind rather well :)
5:01 p.m. Found the page. This is going to be 11 pages.
5:04 p.m. The song is over. Started reading.
5:12 p.m. Probably because the book was serialized, there's a helpful one-paragraph recap of previous events at the bottom of p. 52 :)
5:17 p.m. Done. That was short :) Which is just as well, because I want to get done with all homework (another chapter and the Steps paper) tonight. Interesting to learn that Sir Charles had made nearly a million British pounds in 1889 money in South Africa, because I have a friend who thinks the people of South Africa are mostly very poor.
5:22 p.m. So a substantial break now to write something else :) ... but I'll probably blog again when I read chapter 6 later tonight.
_________________________________
4:59 p.m. Initial song to reset mental language to English: "Everybody have fun tonight". This particular video has a side effect of clearing the mind rather well :)
5:01 p.m. Found the page. This is going to be 11 pages.
5:04 p.m. The song is over. Started reading.
5:12 p.m. Probably because the book was serialized, there's a helpful one-paragraph recap of previous events at the bottom of p. 52 :)
5:17 p.m. Done. That was short :) Which is just as well, because I want to get done with all homework (another chapter and the Steps paper) tonight. Interesting to learn that Sir Charles had made nearly a million British pounds in 1889 money in South Africa, because I have a friend who thinks the people of South Africa are mostly very poor.
5:22 p.m. So a substantial break now to write something else :) ... but I'll probably blog again when I read chapter 6 later tonight.
Saturday, January 12, 2013
Of logs and reading
Now I know what a reading log is :) and I'm doing my first one here today. And I have to keep a reading log for my Intro to Fiction class from now to March 25---this is not a fiction!---so that will be my blog for the next ten weeks or so.
____________________________
7:56 p.m. Wrote intro (above). Decided to wait until "Achy breaky heart" (playing on YouTube) ends.
7:58 p.m. Song over. Checked the table of contents: The fourth chapter of The Hound of the Baskervilles is 12 pages long (in my copy).
8:00 p.m. I wish I had an estimate of how long that will take me to read.
8:01 p.m. Found the page and started reading.
8:02 p.m. Counted five hyphenated words in the first paragraph: breakfast-table, dressing-gown, dark-eyed, ruddy-tinted, weather-beaten. Wondered about "eye-brows" and "bear-ing" as well (those two are hyphenated at ends of lines).
8:06 p.m. Where Doyle writes dialogue, the text reads like a play with the stage directions inadverently left out.
8:07 p.m. It's hard to read without background music. Started playing "Call Me Maybe" on YouTube. Wondering whether anything I've read so far should be the gap I'd use for Monday's Step paper.
8:10 p.m. Spotted wordplay: Sir Henry says, "... I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family ..." pet story :)
8:11 p.m. Internal front rhyme :) "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action." bang/languid, plus their front eye rhyme with changed.
8:15 p.m. But why "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door" and not "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the front door bang"?
8:28 p.m. I give up. I'll just read on.
8:34 p.m. Done. "A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features"---quote for McDaniel :) Cigarette break.
8:40 p.m. Found possible explanation: The parallelism works better when the second element is longer, as in "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the carved oaken front door open, then shut with a resounding bang that echoed back into the room" or something. The door had to be the second element because the elements are ordered by time of occurrence, and is shorter in order to avoid unnecessary detail (as in the text), so it was probably better to leave out the parallelism.
8:49 p.m. Also found a good reason to not start the next chapter right away: The chapters were serialized in the monthly Strand Magazine, so I shouldn't read two chapters in a row if I want to approximate the experience of one of the original readers :) Will grade Math quizzes instead. More later.
____________________________
7:56 p.m. Wrote intro (above). Decided to wait until "Achy breaky heart" (playing on YouTube) ends.
7:58 p.m. Song over. Checked the table of contents: The fourth chapter of The Hound of the Baskervilles is 12 pages long (in my copy).
8:00 p.m. I wish I had an estimate of how long that will take me to read.
8:01 p.m. Found the page and started reading.
8:02 p.m. Counted five hyphenated words in the first paragraph: breakfast-table, dressing-gown, dark-eyed, ruddy-tinted, weather-beaten. Wondered about "eye-brows" and "bear-ing" as well (those two are hyphenated at ends of lines).
8:06 p.m. Where Doyle writes dialogue, the text reads like a play with the stage directions inadverently left out.
8:07 p.m. It's hard to read without background music. Started playing "Call Me Maybe" on YouTube. Wondering whether anything I've read so far should be the gap I'd use for Monday's Step paper.
8:10 p.m. Spotted wordplay: Sir Henry says, "... I've heard of the hound ever since I was in the nursery. It's the pet story of the family ..." pet story :)
8:11 p.m. Internal front rhyme :) "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door. In an instant Holmes had changed from the languid dreamer to the man of action." bang/languid, plus their front eye rhyme with changed.
8:15 p.m. But why "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the bang of the front door" and not "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the front door bang"?
8:28 p.m. I give up. I'll just read on.
8:34 p.m. Done. "A clever man upon so delicate an errand has no use for a beard save to conceal his features"---quote for McDaniel :) Cigarette break.
8:40 p.m. Found possible explanation: The parallelism works better when the second element is longer, as in "We heard the steps of our visitors descend the stair and the carved oaken front door open, then shut with a resounding bang that echoed back into the room" or something. The door had to be the second element because the elements are ordered by time of occurrence, and is shorter in order to avoid unnecessary detail (as in the text), so it was probably better to leave out the parallelism.
8:49 p.m. Also found a good reason to not start the next chapter right away: The chapters were serialized in the monthly Strand Magazine, so I shouldn't read two chapters in a row if I want to approximate the experience of one of the original readers :) Will grade Math quizzes instead. More later.
Wednesday, January 9, 2013
New major, new minor :)
Yesterday's depression---the feeling that I'm stagnating again---is starting to lift now, because I spent the morning declaring a Communication major and a Journalism minor. While retaining the Writing minor that I'd already declared some time ago, of course.
Plus I picked up my new lenses this morning---the old ones had cracked at the climax of the road trip---so I'm no longer seeing the world through crack-colored glasses now :)
Okay, time to get back to homework. I don't want to already fall behind in the first week of the semester. Here's what I'm reading today:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Identity,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League, and
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Final_Problem.
Plus I picked up my new lenses this morning---the old ones had cracked at the climax of the road trip---so I'm no longer seeing the world through crack-colored glasses now :)
Okay, time to get back to homework. I don't want to already fall behind in the first week of the semester. Here's what I'm reading today:
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Case_of_Identity,
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Red-Headed_League, and
http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Final_Problem.
Tuesday, January 8, 2013
Anticlimax
Out of paper, also almost out of chemicals, no darkroom today :( And the supplies won't even show up till Friday ...
Which is probably just as well, because, two days into the semester, I'm already depressed and sleep-deprived.
Dr. Pichot's translation class met today. Because of that, and also because I have no reading log as yet, I'm posting a translation. Here's the original (including a reading of the poem by the poet herself), here's an English translation, here's a French translation, here's a Swedish translation, here's a Norwegian translation.
Here's another English translation from this book.
_______________________________________
sibyl---poem in eight syllables
By Anja Utler
Сивилла: выжжена, сивилла: ствол.
Все птицы вымерли, но Бог вошел.
Sibyl: in cinders, Sibyl: a trunk.
The birds incinerate, but God has come.
Marina Tsvetaeva
has touched the: grains, with her naked eye: naked mouth en-
kindled, sibyl, she shudders, she glows: the sand singes the finger
tips tongue it strikes sparks in the body: flares up
*
she: staggers, sibyl, struck down to: the sand falls she, streams
---myriads of pores---blasts through flashes through sibyl the sun---turns:
sunstorm---she murmurs she spits, knows: it no longer sets
*
has: burst open, sibyl, the: splinter in flesh is she---bleeding still?---
tinders---is severed, she gapes: like the lips, stump---is lamella, lignified
slices: the light, drips: she screeches, it: springs forth
*
sibyl so: yawns so she, sighs: vocal lips, folds they: swing they
scrape: off over limestone, they scrub, rip a: crater from
basin to gullet the: voicecleft, so sibyl, she: oscillates, shakes
*
shaken: the quaking is, sibyl---shock---lurches: in sand eddies
air eddies gnashes she throws out: her joint buckles, wails so she: pines
wastes away to: spit, sand bar she---oscillates: uprooted jaw---she: erodes
*
sibyl she: towers up, turns to: cliffs hisses is: spindrift glows out in the
pores sprays out: sibilants, goes out -sss- ebbs
surges swells and: suspires
*
sibyl her: head swims, she: breaks in the swirling heat: whispers,
she whirs: sump, slough slick thighs the: reed belt she wets she en-
girds herself tongues gurgles---adder---she slips off and: sisses
*
*
and still. just the scent: fire site clearing to hear---once
a rustling---and spoilage: toes finger the stump:
fungus hollow, they probe cast-off skin: it breaks down
on the scaled soles and: crackles out
Which is probably just as well, because, two days into the semester, I'm already depressed and sleep-deprived.
Dr. Pichot's translation class met today. Because of that, and also because I have no reading log as yet, I'm posting a translation. Here's the original (including a reading of the poem by the poet herself), here's an English translation, here's a French translation, here's a Swedish translation, here's a Norwegian translation.
Here's another English translation from this book.
_______________________________________
sibyl---poem in eight syllables
By Anja Utler
Сивилла: выжжена, сивилла: ствол.
Все птицы вымерли, но Бог вошел.
Sibyl: in cinders, Sibyl: a trunk.
The birds incinerate, but God has come.
Marina Tsvetaeva
has touched the: grains, with her naked eye: naked mouth en-
kindled, sibyl, she shudders, she glows: the sand singes the finger
tips tongue it strikes sparks in the body: flares up
*
she: staggers, sibyl, struck down to: the sand falls she, streams
---myriads of pores---blasts through flashes through sibyl the sun---turns:
sunstorm---she murmurs she spits, knows: it no longer sets
*
has: burst open, sibyl, the: splinter in flesh is she---bleeding still?---
tinders---is severed, she gapes: like the lips, stump---is lamella, lignified
slices: the light, drips: she screeches, it: springs forth
*
sibyl so: yawns so she, sighs: vocal lips, folds they: swing they
scrape: off over limestone, they scrub, rip a: crater from
basin to gullet the: voicecleft, so sibyl, she: oscillates, shakes
*
shaken: the quaking is, sibyl---shock---lurches: in sand eddies
air eddies gnashes she throws out: her joint buckles, wails so she: pines
wastes away to: spit, sand bar she---oscillates: uprooted jaw---she: erodes
*
sibyl she: towers up, turns to: cliffs hisses is: spindrift glows out in the
pores sprays out: sibilants, goes out -sss- ebbs
surges swells and: suspires
*
sibyl her: head swims, she: breaks in the swirling heat: whispers,
she whirs: sump, slough slick thighs the: reed belt she wets she en-
girds herself tongues gurgles---adder---she slips off and: sisses
*
*
and still. just the scent: fire site clearing to hear---once
a rustling---and spoilage: toes finger the stump:
fungus hollow, they probe cast-off skin: it breaks down
on the scaled soles and: crackles out
Monday, January 7, 2013
First day of classes
Am, for all practical purposes, dead. As expected.
Okay, about the blog: Having kept the blog for over 4 months now, I'm really reluctant to, in modern parlance, shut it. I learnt that I'll have to keep a reading log for my Intro to Fiction class with Dr. Chesley this semester---we're reading the Hound of the Baskervilles for that class right now, and we'll find out in class on Thursday what exactly "a reading log" should be---so I think I'll just post my reading log (whatever that may turn out to be) as my blog during the semester. That way, the blog will still exist for at least another 4 months :)
I'm also planning to work steadily all semester on the photography this time (so I won't have to die in the darkroom during Finals Week), so I probably won't write the blog tomorrow, but I will write again later this week :)
Okay, about the blog: Having kept the blog for over 4 months now, I'm really reluctant to, in modern parlance, shut it. I learnt that I'll have to keep a reading log for my Intro to Fiction class with Dr. Chesley this semester---we're reading the Hound of the Baskervilles for that class right now, and we'll find out in class on Thursday what exactly "a reading log" should be---so I think I'll just post my reading log (whatever that may turn out to be) as my blog during the semester. That way, the blog will still exist for at least another 4 months :)
I'm also planning to work steadily all semester on the photography this time (so I won't have to die in the darkroom during Finals Week), so I probably won't write the blog tomorrow, but I will write again later this week :)
Sunday, January 6, 2013
End of story?
So this could be it for the blog. Tomorrow, after back-to-back classes from 10:50 AM--5:45 PM, I'll have to decide, while keeping office hours from 6--7:15 PM, whether to continue the blog at all ... even if I do, it will certainly become much more irregular.
So, even though it's the middle of a middle-of-winter afternoon, here's Puck's closing monologue from Midsummer Night's Dream:
__________________________________
So, even though it's the middle of a middle-of-winter afternoon, here's Puck's closing monologue from Midsummer Night's Dream:
__________________________________
From A Midsummer
Night’s Dream, Act 5, Scene 1
By
William Shakespeare
If we
shadows have offended,
Think
but this, and all is mended,
That you
have but slumber'd here
While
these visions did appear.
And this
weak and idle theme,
No more
yielding but a dream,
Gentles,
do not reprehend:
if you
pardon, we will mend:
And, as
I am an honest Puck,
If we
have unearned luck
Now to
'scape the serpent's tongue,
We will
make amends ere long;
Else the
Puck a liar call;
So, good
night unto you all.
Give me
your hands, if we be friends,
And
Robin shall restore amends.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)