Pensees

I. Horse Dreams
Yesterday afternoon I had a striking and sudden daydream--not sure if that's even the right word--that would have lead me straight to a soothsayer if I had been a Roman. Even now we'd be looking at bird entrails.
I imagined us stabling horses behind our house. I imagined walking out to a barn in black rubber boots and pulling down harnesses, reins, and saddles from large iron nails and leading out a beautiful old mare that was well past mothering years and was going to spend her old age in our care. I imagined little boys growing up with the sound of hooves and snorts and whishing tails in their ears, and thought about all the hundreds of years that humankind and horsekind were in partnership. In the daydream there were vines planted behind the house on a gentle hill that had been dug up just for that purpose.
Next, just as vividly, I imagined crouching down over the kitchen floor and pulling back the old laminate so that I could put in some new tile. I imagined rented tools in the garage, and the stove and refrigerator looking out of place while they waited in the living room for the job to be done. I had no help--I had graphing paper and measuring tape on the kitchen table, and I could smell the old house smell under the section of floor that was already ripped up.
It was mildly terrifying.
I'm not sure where the horse daydream came from, but as soon as I think about it I can remember the smell of my parent's old couch where Sam, Pax, and I would stand looking out through the big living room window that faced south and watch the horses that were pastured across the road. Sometimes we'd get walked over across the road and try to screw up the nerve to offer one of them a handful of clover. (Between the possible nip of the electric fence and the smell of their breath and the peril of the teeth, I'm not sure that I attempted this terribly often.) There certainly is something beautiful about a little boy watching a horse in wonder and fascination.

II. Roasting Coffee
I get Yirgacheffe coffee about every other order, because it's a good bit more expensive than the other varieties. I'll get something cheaper, and then by the time that I'm halfway through the bag I've realized that it simply isn't as good as the Yirgacheffe and that I'm willing to pay for the top-quality bean the next time I order. This time I wanted to save a little money and ordered the Tanzanian Peaberry. The first time I roasted it I burnt it badly--it doesn't crack nearly as audibly as any other coffees I've worked with, and I ended up stopping the roast at the burnt smell instead of the usual timing by listening. Yesterday I watched the roast (and sprayed empty husks everywhere) but came up with a much better tasting result.

III. Food in Company
Last night J got up from her book, went into the kitchen, and came back with a bowl of chips. Guess what I was doing five minutes later? Yes, eating chips and salsa. (Supper was a bowl of soup of 5 PM...we were both hungry.) But I never would have left the warmth of my blanket if she hadn't gotten up first. I think that social context is an underrated factor in eating choices. How many times do I have seconds if no one else at the table is having seconds? How many times do I turn down second helpings if everyone else is reaching in? When I eat with 90 lb vegetarian friend, neither of us are likely to finish all the food on our plate. When I eat with the trombone section of the orchestra, I'm very likely to finish my plate and have an extra half a beer as well. When I eat with J, we eat healthy and we usually don't have extra helpings. And eating with the tuba player is maybe the most impressive/disturbing thing you've ever seen.
N.B. J says she felt disgusting after eating chips at 9 PM and is never going to do it again.

IV. Food in the Iliad
I'm in Book 24 of the Iliad, the greatest and most beautiful chapter ever written. How many hero stories do you know of where the two mortal enemies (if you could consider Priam to the the "enemy" of Achilles...Achilles is really everyone's enemy, including his own) reach the climactic moment by grieving together over their losses, neither softening nor changing from their purposes, but sharing tears, honor, and then sharing a meal together? Bread, meat, and sleep...good gifts from the gods.

V. Maps
I love the map of the Mediterranean in my study. I think James gets his love of maps from me. I'd love to put some more maps up, and I know that somewhere out there is a devoted reader of this blog who used to subscribe to National Geographic and now has, sitting in a pile somewhere, a stack of old maps that they are hoping to give away for semi-educational purposes. Dear Reader, if you have maps of England, France, the Levant, or New York, I am especially interested.

VI. Florida
As far as I know my Mother and Father are still in Florida. (I'm not exactly sure when they left or are planning on coming back.) Florida is such a beautiful name for a state. (It means Flowers in Latin). It sounds even more beautiful when you look out on muddy sidewalks, piles of gray snow, and a bleak, colorless sky. I hope they're having a great time.

VII. Darwin
Reading the whole Darwin book is going to be an exercise in concentration--there are certainly sections of interest, but these only develop gradually as a punctuated variation from long passages of extremely technical biological details. (See what I did there?) One redeeming feature--he was a man (and a writer) intensely and infectiously interested in everything that he wrote about. When someone enthusiastically loves their subject, even if that subject is the tailfeathers of domestic pigeons (a species much-loved and cultivated) they are highly readable.

Lost in Translation

Today is a Buffalo double, which means that I have about 6 hours to kill between the end of the morning rehearsal and the start of the evening concert. I'm at a Coffee Culture on Elmwood Ave with a big stack of books, a laptop, and a lunchbox that used to be full of pizza. It takes 1 hour and 19 minutes to drive from our apartment to Kleinhans, a drive that I am not keen to do four times in one day. (I'll have to on Saturday...church staff party demands I come home between.)

This Coffee Culture isn't a bad place to spend the afternoon, though. I did my taxes here in March, I've read lots of books, studied scores for upcoming concerts, and planned needlessly elaborate games and projects for James and Julie. I've just spent the last hour and a half translating.

I try to keep four translation projects open at once, which has been the problem with learning Hebrew. Keeping a running fifth project open with Calvus is possible during some parts of the year, but most of the time I don't have enough hours in the day to get to everything. Currently in my backpack are the Vulgate Bible, a volume of Sedulius, a collection of plays by Euripides, and the last half of the Iliad.

I've been reading through all of the major prophets in the Vulgate, which is St. Jerome's translation of the Bible into Latin. (And in my opinion, one of the most beautiful, if not the most accurate, translations ever made.) Here's what I did today, 10 verses about return from exile and judgment using pastoral language.

Ezekiel XXXIV:11-20 
The Lord God says this: Behold I will seek my sheep again and will visit them. Just as a shepherd visits his flock in the day when he will be in the midst of his scattered sheep, thus I will visit my sheep and will free them from all places where they were scattered in the day of cloud and darkness. And I will lead them out from the peoples and gather them from the lands and will bring them into their land and will pasture them in the mountains of Israel, in the rivers and in all the seats of the land. In the most fertile pastures I will pasture them and on the high mountains of Israel their pastures shall be. There they will rest in green grass and in rich pastures they will be pastured upon the mountains of Israel. I will pasture my sheep and I will make them to lie down, says the Lord God. What was lost I will seek back and what was cast away I will lead back and what had been broken I will bind up and what was weak I will strengthen and what was fat and strong I will keep and will pasture them in judgment. But you, O my flocks, the Lord God says this: Behold I judge between flock and clock, of rams and he-goats. Was it not enough to you to feed on the good pasture, and even the rest of your pastures you trampled with your feet and when you drank the purest water you troubled the rest with your feet. And my sheep on that which had been trampled by your feet were fed, and what your feet had troubled they drank. Therefore the Lord God says this: Behold I myself will judge between the fat and the lean of the flock.

Calvus gave me an SBL edition of Sedulius for my birthday (I think) last year, and I got around to starting it a few months ago. It's a dense five-volume hexameter poem deliberately copying Virgil that adapts the gospel story and sets it in the "jewelled" style. I'm glad I was already familiar with the story...I had to look up lots of words, and unravel lots of grammar from the parallel translation. I knew I was getting close to the end, but I didn't realize that I was going to finish the book today! Once I found myself at the end of the poem I signed and dated the bottom, which I try to do with any major translations I make. The section today picks up right as the ascension is about to take place.

Sedulii Paschale Carmen V.416-fin
Then teaching the following he said Peace, have you all. Take my peace, carry quiet (calm) peace, peace spread you through the peoples by my holy commands and cleanse the world from ills, to call nations from the ends of the earth as wide as the world is stretched, I command in my biddings to wash all in the fount. When this was said the Lord brought his kind address to an end, and soon he sought the fields of Bethany, and in the presence of the blessed men which merited so great a triumph to look upon, carried off into the skies he departed into the high regions/shores. (oras) And he himself sits at the right of the father and governs all by his authority which holding all things whether high or low after he entered Tartarus from heaven, he entered heaven after Tartarus. But they with joyful faces discerning the lord to go over the high clouds and to tread the shimmering expanses with his own feet worshiped him reverently and repeated with eager heart his starry path, which they would teach all, for they were faithful witnesses by the rule of the divine power, which seeing much wrote down a few of the innumerable good deeds. For if they had wished to hand down in holy pages all things done by their redeemer, neither would the whole world suffice to contain (gird) so many thick books.

I've been taking a break from my regular schedule of New Testament readings to work on Euripides' Bacchae, and I have just a few hundred verses left. It's hard, slow going. I know I'm not picking up on a lot of the subtle dynamics within the text, but I think I've been making an okay job of it with the help of a parallel translation. I picked up today directly after the verse where the death of Pentheus is announced.

Bacchae 1031
Chorus: King Bromius [thus] are you revealed a great god!
2nd Messenger: How do you say this? What is this you speak? O women, do you rejoice on my words of the events falling ill to my master? (no idea about this verse, actually)
Chorus: We shout hurrah in barbarian language, it pleases us as foreigners, for no longer are we frightened by the terror of prison.
2nd Messenger: And do you think Thebes to be without men, O women, with our king now being dead? This will bring you unto grief.
Chorus: It is Dionysus the child of Zeus, not the Thebans holding my rule.
2nd Messenger: It is pardonable to you, but on others' ills it is not good to rejoice, O women.
Chorus: Tell me, speak, by what fate did he die, the unjust and injustice-contriving man?
Messenger: Then attending leaving this Theban ground we crossed the rushing Asopus, we struck out into the rocky Cithaeron, Pentheus and I, for I followed my master, and the stranger who was escort to the festival/viewing.

I almost always save Homer for last. Where I am in the story Achilleus has just learned of Patroklus' death and held conference with his mother, who brings him new armor from Hephaestus as he prepares to retrieve the body.

Iliad XVIII.207-218
And as when smoke going from the city of a far island would reach the aether, its enemies battling around it, and those which all day were judged by hateful Ares, from their city. And together with the setting sun the numerous beacon-fires blaze and the glow comes darting on high to be seen by the neighbors, which there with ships might come as defenders. Thus from the head of Achilleus went radiance to the sky. And he going from the wall stood upon the trench, nor did he mingle with the Achaians, for he regarded the command of his mother. There standing he bellowed and Pallas Athena called aloud from afar. Yet he roused inexpressible confusion among the Trojans.

It isn't ever much, and it isn't ever much good, but with an afternoon to spare there isn't a much better way to pass it than sipping a cup of hot coffee and taking what nibbles I can of the ancient Mediterranean.

Iliad IV

οἳ δ᾽ ὅτε δή ῥ᾽ ἐς χῶρον ἕνα ξυνιόντες ἵκοντο, σύν ῥ᾽ ἔβαλον ῥινούς, σὺν δ᾽ ἔγχεα καὶ μένε᾽ ἀνδρῶν
χαλκεοθωρήκων: ἀτὰρ ἀσπίδες ὀμφαλόεσσαι
ἔπληντ᾽ ἀλλήλῃσι, πολὺς δ᾽ ὀρυμαγδὸς ὀρώρει.
ἔνθα δ᾽ ἅμ᾽ οἰμωγή τε καὶ εὐχωλὴ πέλεν ἀνδρῶν
ὀλλύντων τε καὶ ὀλλυμένων, ῥέε δ᾽ αἵματι γαῖα. ὡς δ᾽ ὅτε χείμαρροι ποταμοὶ κατ᾽ ὄρεσφι ῥέοντες
ἐς μισγάγκειαν συμβάλλετον ὄβριμον ὕδωρ
κρουνῶν ἐκ μεγάλων κοίλης ἔντοσθε χαράδρης,
τῶν δέ τε τηλόσε δοῦπον ἐν οὔρεσιν ἔκλυε ποιμήν: ὣς τῶν μισγομένων γένετο ἰαχή τε πόνος τε.

 
And when then indeed they arrived coming together to the place, then they cast with hide-shields, and with lances and fury of the brass-cuirassed men. Yet the studded shields filled one another, and aroused much din. And thither at the same time lamentation and prayer moved the men destroying and being destroyed, and blood flowed upon the earth. And as when winter-swollen rivers flowing down the mountains to the glen basin where the heavy waters unite from their great sources within the torrent of a gorge, and their thunder in the heaven instructs the shepherd afar, thus came both the cry and toil of their meeting.

I subbed a half-day today for high school choir, a class M&Lux both take. Lux came down during the empty first block and we took turns reading aloud sections of Paradise Lost IX, coming through the part where Satan "like a black mist low creeping" inhabits the serpent. Currently reading more Iliad IV, Matt 25, Joshua 15, Livy, and Rabelais. J&I , who have done well in our resolutions to cleanliness and order, rewarded ourselves with Monopoly Streets, which we stayed up playing far too late into the night. J is officially in her second trimester, and I've begun to experience some paternal anxiety. Not on behalf of myself, of course, (though I am frightened I'll become the sort of single-minded person whose social interactions consist entirely of talking about his children...my parents did an exemplary job of protecting themselves and their children from this embarrassment) but for the tumbles and scrapes of the baby. Two nights ago Baby H fell in the bathtub, and chipped a tooth badly; her smile is awfully crooked now. It's a hard enough thing to hear about secondhand to your niece; how could I watch something like that happen to a son or daughter?

Favored Ilium

αἳ γὰρ ὑπ᾽ ἠελίῳ τε καὶ οὐρανῷ ἀστερόεντι
ναιετάουσι πόληες ἐπιχθονίων ἀνθρώπων,
τάων μοι περὶ κῆρι τιέσκετο Ἴλιος ἱρὴ
καὶ Πρίαμος καὶ λαὸς ἐϋμμελίω Πριάμοιο.

For of the cities of the earth-walking men which dwell under the sun and under the starry heaven, of these was sacred Ilium most treasured to my heart, Priam and the spear-gifted people of Priam.

Reading Il 4, Matt 8, and Epist Cic. I've spent most of the day getting anxious about my recital tonight for no good reason (it's a very light program) and sorting old emails. J and I visit her parents in PA this weekend while she plays her concerto with the HSO--that being a legitimate reason to get nervous.

Reading List

Reading today:
Revelation ch.8, Isaiah ch.40
Iliad II, Aeneid VI
Cicero
Comparative Grammar (Buck)
The Mysteries of Udolpho (Radcliffe)

I wonder if this line
Καὶ οἱ ἑπτὰ ἄγγελοι οἱ ἔχοντες τὰς ἑπτὰ σάλπιγγας ἡτοίμασαν αὑτοὺς ἵνα σαλπίσωσιν.
(And the seven angels holding the seven trumpets made them ready that they might sound)
means that they were emptying the water keys on a little mat before the throne, and if this
Μηριόνης τ᾽ ἀτάλαντος Ἐνυαλίῳ ἀνδρειφόντῃ:
is a bawdy joke.

Talked on Thurs. about Matt. 9 and the differences between the accounts of the paralytic. St. Matthew is called in the verses which immediately follow, and we will all look to see whether his accounts are closer to the other gospel writers once he is present in ministry. Future posts will include whether this proves to be true and whether this says anything about authority or inspiration. Two other questions: 1) Was it through the faith of the paralytic or the faith of his friends that he was forgiven and healed? 2) Why are the Pharisees abused every Thurs? More on this too...