uirne sum
quomodo uir
litterae sum in pagina
et puluis
16 January 2009
4 January 2009
last of the holiday gatherings
Just returned from the last of the annual holiday family gatherings, and now it feels like this winter break is at an end. Tomorrow will be a nice coda — a farewell dinner with my sister, and then off to school again.
Hoping this next quarter will go well. Both Laurie and I are embarking on schedules that look pretty intense from the outside. We’ll see how the intensity looks from the inside, but certainly with a booked weekend schedule in January we will be keeping quite busy. Hopefully Boo will quit biting Laurie. This has been doing nothing for household morale.
I didn’t get all the reading done that I’d wanted to over the break, but I did do some reading that I wasn’t expecting to, so all in all I’ve had a good break on that front. Notably I finally finished the Cloudspotter’s Guide, which I highly recommend. I think I have always appreciated the beauty of a good cloudscape, but the depth of my appreciation has surely increased after reading the Cloudspotter’s Guide. Just having someone articulate some new ideas to think about with regards to a subject (in this case clouds) gives one more to think about when confronted with it, and Pretor-Pinney does this in such a way that the esthetic experience is not disrupted but strengthened. A fun read too.
Bought textbooks yesterday. One of my classes is doing the old buy-the-professor’s-latest-book trick, which is hopefully more organically related to the structure of the class than it is circularly profitable for said professor.
But seriously, why haven’t I mentioned the latest addition to our musical instrument menagerie, which surely is a most blogworthy event. It’s not every winter break that a man is lent a newly refurbished, gold-colored, cat-scaring-the-crap-out-of, Italian accordion. I am far from understanding how this machine works, specifically with regards to the approximately two hundred buttons on the left side, which when individually depressed result in the sounding of various harmonies. Some buttons produce the same harmonies as others, but mostly different buttons produce different harmonies. The pressing of some buttons results in other buttons also going down as if pressed, in which case sometimes these latter buttons will have a like effect on the former buttons when they are pressed, but not always. In a fair number of cases there is a relationship similar to dominant-tonic between vertically adjacent buttons, but not in all. It is my personal project to make a map of these buttons over the next quarter, without consulting an expert or any reference material. I feel that this project will often come as a welcome change from studying language and the philosophy thereof. It is a sub-project of this project that I learn how to play Monk’s Dream on the accordion, chords and melody. It seems like the accordion is begging to play this song for some reason. Anyway, thank you Ben for the excellent gift. I promise to put it to good use.
But now it’s getting late and I am tired, and it is time to expel from my system some of the coffee that’s been making me slightly grumpy all day. Good night.
14 November 2008
A house in a desert, very dry. Blighted land and dry sticks, no trees. An empty place. Things must grow here, things grow everywhere, but you can’t tell. It looks empty. There is a house. The details are gone. There is a house, but no features. Just a place where somebody lives. It sits in a desert, alone. The inhabitant is abstract. The house is undefined. The landscape barren.
Here the only thing we can have is belief. We must believe that the man in this desert can become something. Otherwise the scene is boring. Not even terrible or sad, but simply not worth our while – a chronically alone man with no relation to you, so you don’t think of him.
But the vision may stay, and this staying is because we must believe in the potential of this man to become something more than this. A friend, a father, he may plant a tree, he may harvest its fruit. Even if he were to smile, that would be enough.
We do not need to wait and see, but we must believe.
6 November 2008
you can do whatever you want in life
which is why I am drinking a fuzzy navel flavored wine cooler and listening to Count Basie while studying for my Latin quiz.
19 October 2008
discontinuity
I feel like I’ve really embarked now on my follacious project to typologize discontinuous syntactic constituents. I’ve got my pile of books and papers on discontinuity and language universals sitting on my table, with representatives scattered about the house for good measure. In a way I wish that I could devote more time to this project and not have other classes intervening, but in another way it is good to have other linguistic pursuits and keep my feet on some kind of theoretical and methodological ground. Learning Latin is also nicely mathematical, and a good activity to keep my thoughts relatively close to normalacy. I want to read some American history as well — specifically correspondences or other writings by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. I believe a PBS documentary has ignited this interest in me, but whith’rever it came, here it is, and it seems like a good thing for an American to know. Likewise the works of Mark Twain I feel would be good to get under my belt. I want that my life won’t get too focused here, and that I can grow fast as a PhD student should, but also broadly as I believe I am capable of.
26 September 2007
a moment
I saw a truck that gave me a moment of syntactico-semantic pause (though I think the idea may not be as curious as I believed at the time)
and I saw some balloons rising into the sky, framed by the federal building
then an airplane flew by
(the end)
22 September 2007
a feed, and a bat
Two interesting if somewhat disjunct events:
1.
I’ve successfully made an rss feed for this blog, which you can find here. Much perl under the bridge for that… [ADDENDUM: This post pointed to an old, now dead feed. The new feed, which Wordpress and not I have created, is here, though probably the new-fangled contraption of your choice can already tell you that.]
2.
A bat is attempting to take up residence in our stairwell. Just one bat. We were coming home last night and he flew right out over Laurie’s head. Very exciting…
He was there again this morning, but we scared him closing the door. It’s probably better if he stays away, since it wouldn’t be the most restful of bat caves, though otherwise it’s a pretty good environment. Warm and full of bugs. Delicious bugs.
He hasn’t come back since this morning, and I’m kinda hoping he’s found a better place to live. But if we see him again I’ll try to get a picture for the blog. The blog that has a feed!
The promised posts about cat and typewriter are on their way. Until then, friends, adieu.
21 August 2007
Melaleuca linariifolia
We found out today that the spongy-barked trees that grow around here are Melaleuca linariifolia, aka flaxleaf paperbark, and are native to Australia. It is a strange tree.
Its fluffy canopy is composed of little lumpy segments, each of which blooms differentially from neighboring segments. The result of this, visually, is that sections of the tree periodically appear to have been replaced by large heads of cauliflower.
Another interesting aspect of this tree is its bark, which is spongy, as previously suggested. It is similar to the bark of a cork tree, except that the Melaleuca’s bark is made of layers of flakes. I think the Encyclopedia of Stanford Trees, Shrubs and Vines puts it best: the flaxleaf paperbark’s bark is “composed of sheets of thin ‘paper’ interleaved with thin sheets of a spongerubbery substance.” Some Stanford horticulture student has been reading Joyce.
Our street has quite a few of these trees, and they bring us much joy with their spongerubberiness. They are now less of a mystery, but shall continue to be a curious tourist attraction. That must be why we get so many tourists. And blog readers. Right guys?
4 March 2007
a walk around the neighborhood
I took a nice walk today and thoght I could start things off here by posting pictures of said walk. I live in a normally old neighborhood (but a goodun) in El Cerrito, CA. It’s an old trolley car suburb from the earlier part of the 20th century, apparently. For those who enjoy the histories of amusing little towns, there’s a little collection of El Cerrito history narratives here.
The California poppies are beginning to bloom here, which is always nice to see.
And a phenomenon I’ve never seen so much of before — oxalis everywhere! They’re in practically every garden. Nice purdy little flowers.
And now we come to Hillside Natural Area. It’s a fairly extensive tract of land — 80 acres of eucalyptus groves and oak groves, interspersed with open grassy areas. It’s all rather steep, which makes for good exercise and excellent views.
There’s the Golden Gate, for instance. We live in the residential bit in the foreground. You can see our place if you know what you’re looking for.
And there’s Mt. Tamalpais, with Richmond in the foreground. Notice also the fuzzy thistle thing on the bottom right.
Here’s a closeup of another one. Those blooms are fist-sized! Very impressive.
And speaking of impressive, here’s an old granddaddy of a eucalyptus. He’s been around the block. Or he would have if trees could walk. And if he lived on a block. He hasn’t been around the block, but he might have been, and things would have been different then, that’s for sure. Right little lily thing?
You betcha.
Well we’ve descended into madness here, and it’s just about time to wrap things up.
So there’s the end of my walk — home sweet home.
Soon perhaps I’ll post about the various goings-on inside this home of ours, perhaps including a chronicle of the restoration of my very own Remington Model 1 typewriter. Or perhaps a character study of my strange and loud cat. So many bloggy possibilities! I know you can’t wait.
In the mean time, have an excellent day. In fact, have an excellent series of days, for knowing me I will not be posting often.
16 December 2006
untitled
The ravens and the astronauts
Will meet someday in space
And then
We’ll know who’s boss.