Saturday, November 22, 2008
Although the annual, official celebration of toilets occurred earlier this week, now seems the best time to reflect on how drastically different life would be had I never sat upon or viewed one, for after what I ate for dinner this evening, tomorrow will be a day spent intimately with that which receives the feasts of my bowels.
The non-existence of such receptacles as toilets would necessarily have precluded the existence of my neurotic fear that an over-sized spider will crawl out of one, bite a chunk out of my ass, and bring about an agonizing and premature, though somewhat comic, death. I saw Arachnephobia when I was six or seven, and never since have I failed to check under, over, around, down, into, and through for spiders or other potential death-causing beasts.
Were the world bereft of toilets, I would not be as well-versed in English poetry, for the toilet has been where I tend to read such material: poetry differs in density, as does a cheeseburger or a blueberry that has passed through my digestive system. With a poetry anthology, therefore, one may consume it in one sitting, or interrupt it and return later without completely severing the flow of thoughts required for reading the entire text. Prose literature-reading on the toilet hardly ever works.
To discuss this further would be to digress farther from the task of gathering research material for a paper I am supposed to have been writing all semester.
Labels: anxiety, Arachnephobia, beasts, bowels, death, digestion, dinner, literature, poetry, research, spiders, thinking, toilets
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 4:47 PM]
I Woke Up This Morning, And My Penis Was Missing
Sunday, November 02, 2008
Ich habe diesem morgen aufgewacht, um zu finden, daß ich eine geschlagene Stunde mehr haben. Ich soll meine Uhr stellen.
Jetzt kann ich weiter den Iliad lesen, die Werke Juvenals weiter bilden und ins Papier beschreiben, einen Netflix-Film ansehen, den Penthesilea Kleists weiter lesen... aber vielleicht werde ich nichts machen.
de latineque graece studiosa sum, sed non satis. linguae declinationum sunt difficiles. meh.
With the unwritten paper concerning the hundreds of manuscripts of Juvenal floating around, for which I have conducted not nearly enough fruitful research, looming over me in an almost physical sense, I took about three hours of this afternoon (mentally discounting one of them) to work out and swim at the student recreation center. The past two days I haven't moved much, reading and taking notes on points of Latin grammar for which my knowledge and comprehension are wanting. Swimming about fifteen (I did not count them) Olympic laps improves the posture.
Beforehand I listened to The Wizard of Oz soundtrack on an elliptical machine, then read the next two acts in Kleist's Penthesilea on a recumbent bike. I had forgotten how well such a combination helps me focus; after having exercised this way for three years, my body usually doesn't become too worn out, especially since I no longer work at a forty-hour week job that requires I stand on my feet six or eight hours straight. Granted, thinking rationally still comes with difficulty, but now it at least comes occasionally. Freshman and sophomore year I almost never dreamt.
Labels: dreaming, German, grammar, Greek, Heinrich von Kleist, Juvenal, Latin, manuscripts, Netflix, Penthesileia, research, routine, swimming, The Iliad, The Wizard of Oz, thinking, working out
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 1:29 PM]
Hummus In My Tummus
Thursday, September 04, 2008
This morning I arose and walked to The Tower (the eighteen-story campus office building; the tenth floor houses the Classics Department) ashiver with indecision: to study the manuscript tradition of Das Nibelungenlied or Saturae Iuvenalis? The topic abstract being due at three, I conferred with a few people and settled with Saturae Iuvenalis, after its potential use as a subject for my exit examinations in two years was pointed out. Hundreds of copies exist, of which about seventy occur prior to the twelfth century. Over the next week I shall research more thoroughly where codexes exist and narrow down which would be best to examine.
My Greek professor schlepped everyone in the class into signing up for slots at an all-day campus marathon of reading The Iliad in English on the fifteenth of this month. I dibsed nine o'clock a.m., to begin the madness with what will likely be a terrible interpretation of the first part of Book I. I do not mind doing this so much as other people will mind hearing it.
Every morning the cell phone alarm rouses me from bed between five and six (depending on how long I lie there, waiting for Andreas to grind coffee). I find something or other to read and fix eggs or eat a bowl of cereal flakes as Andreas prepares himself for exit. I then shower, gather my books into a blue University of Kentucky Graduate School satchel and a recycled rice bag, and trot to The Tower through a neighborhood with houses dating from at least the twenties. It is splendid to have a routine again.
Labels: alarm, coffee, Homer, Juvenal, manuscripts, Nibelungenlied, office, optimism, professor, reading, research, routine, satire, The Iliad, The Tower, University of Kentucky
[Lauree Frances Keith concluded this diatribe at 3:58 PM]