Wrong job or wrong life
So it comes to this; waiting for a job offer I don't want. I've worked through the pluses and minuses and I no longer care. It comes down to "it would be a big pain, but it could also be the last train out of town".
I would much prefer to spend my time studying. Studying what, well I've never lacked for interests. For instance I got caught up in symmetry, algebra sets and monte carlo methods a few days ago and wasted hours and hours reviewing and learning.
I can look forward to taking the Dante Alighieri Society language classes this fall where i can pretend once again that I'm prepping for an Italian holiday. In truth I'm interested in the language for the language sake alone. I don't say that because it sounds pedantic and pompous. It's the truth. I still fondly recall sneaking off to the mostly empty cafeteria with Karl and whiling away the time with our bibles. I wasn't engaged in bible study, at least not in the religious sense of the phrase; no we were translating passages from competing bibles. I brought my Italian bible and my French bible and Karl brought his Portugese and Latin versions. Aside from the pleasures that playing hookey from an otherwise routine assignment at work.
Our theory was that the bible was an excellant source for learning a language. It has most of the common day verbs. Verbs that are used throughout the day in a normal life. You'll also find the verbs associated with more esoteric thought. The future and past tenses as well as the subjuntive and conditional are to be found as well. The nouns are lacking the names of the lastest objects such as cars and airplanes. What they don't lack is a full range of items in normal life, such as foods, animals and natural objects of all sorts. As far as the prepositions, articles, adverbs, adjectives and conjuctions they are all there.
Anyhow we would pick an topic such as the "Lord's Prayer" and go through it in that days chosen language. Generally these phrases were familiar enough that I could get the gist at first read and we could then dig in a bit deeper an go through the passage word by word. Karl knows 6 languages besides his native Hungarian and for him this was review, but he is also picky about exact meanings of things and he was always a good sport about the further mulling over of a sentence. What was really fun was that we used the other texts whenever we ran into trouble. No dictionaries were allowed. We would flagrantly waste hours on this interprise. The songs of David were a particular favorite of ours.
This is what convinced me I was doing the wrong job.
Ah yes listening to Laurie Anderson and her violin on "Born, never asked"
It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?
You were born.
And so you're free.
So happy birthday.
And that's how her show began. In the Portland Woodsmen's Hall in 1979, sitting on a folding chair, waiting. A slight woman in white appears with a violin and starts to talk.
So it comes to this; waiting for a job offer I don't want. I've worked through the pluses and minuses and I no longer care. It comes down to "it would be a big pain, but it could also be the last train out of town".
I would much prefer to spend my time studying. Studying what, well I've never lacked for interests. For instance I got caught up in symmetry, algebra sets and monte carlo methods a few days ago and wasted hours and hours reviewing and learning.
I can look forward to taking the Dante Alighieri Society language classes this fall where i can pretend once again that I'm prepping for an Italian holiday. In truth I'm interested in the language for the language sake alone. I don't say that because it sounds pedantic and pompous. It's the truth. I still fondly recall sneaking off to the mostly empty cafeteria with Karl and whiling away the time with our bibles. I wasn't engaged in bible study, at least not in the religious sense of the phrase; no we were translating passages from competing bibles. I brought my Italian bible and my French bible and Karl brought his Portugese and Latin versions. Aside from the pleasures that playing hookey from an otherwise routine assignment at work.
Our theory was that the bible was an excellant source for learning a language. It has most of the common day verbs. Verbs that are used throughout the day in a normal life. You'll also find the verbs associated with more esoteric thought. The future and past tenses as well as the subjuntive and conditional are to be found as well. The nouns are lacking the names of the lastest objects such as cars and airplanes. What they don't lack is a full range of items in normal life, such as foods, animals and natural objects of all sorts. As far as the prepositions, articles, adverbs, adjectives and conjuctions they are all there.
Anyhow we would pick an topic such as the "Lord's Prayer" and go through it in that days chosen language. Generally these phrases were familiar enough that I could get the gist at first read and we could then dig in a bit deeper an go through the passage word by word. Karl knows 6 languages besides his native Hungarian and for him this was review, but he is also picky about exact meanings of things and he was always a good sport about the further mulling over of a sentence. What was really fun was that we used the other texts whenever we ran into trouble. No dictionaries were allowed. We would flagrantly waste hours on this interprise. The songs of David were a particular favorite of ours.
This is what convinced me I was doing the wrong job.
Ah yes listening to Laurie Anderson and her violin on "Born, never asked"
It was a large room.
Full of people.
All kinds.
And they had all arrived at the same buidling at more or less the same time.
And they were all free.
And they were all asking themselves the same question:
What is behind that curtain?
You were born.
And so you're free.
So happy birthday.
And that's how her show began. In the Portland Woodsmen's Hall in 1979, sitting on a folding chair, waiting. A slight woman in white appears with a violin and starts to talk.
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