Hoarfrost

     It is true, they call spring enchanted, and no objections can be raised to that, as long as we mean it to praise these April mornings or May evenings when the lilacs and mock-oranges are in bloom. But if we take the term “enchantment” a bit more conscientiously, as it is defined in all the technical manuals (fairy tales, for example), enchantment depends on someone waving a magic wand or mumbling an incantation with the goal of creating a change in the immediate vicinity; and in the morning there is a glowing castle or uncrossable lake or some other unusual phenomenon of which there had not been the slightest suspicion before. True enchantment is never a gradual or patient process; rather, it happens with a sudden and surprising effect. To act slowly, painstakingly, to exert a great deal of time and work for something that was not there before, that is called creation; but the true and honorable enchanter just clicks the tongue or waves a wand, and it is done.

     There are no doubts that spring does not enchant in this strict sense of the word; the truth is we are never there when the first flower of the forsythia opens or the first March bud unfurls, but flower and leaf take their sweet time, and we must have an angelic patience with them. The grass does not grow overnight and the birch does not glitter with fair foliage between evening and night; it takes an awful lot of work before the thin sapling becomes the rustling crown. Everything has its long days and weeks of quiet preparation and imperceptible waxing of colors; and “enchanted spring” only suddenly occurs after a lot of hesitation and fuss.

     Winter works in other ways, and it does so according to all the classical formulas for enchantment. You wake up in the morning and have a look out the window, and suddenly where yesterday there was dark and hardened earth there is brilliantly white and fluffy snow; all at once the dirt of the whole world has transformed, it has a new pattern, new quiet, new structure—if someone had carried me off to Easter Island some Christmas Eve, it would not be such a vast change as when fresh snow has fallen.

     Or the frost comes on overnight, and in the space in which you had been accustomed to seeing your neighbor’s roof, silver ferns bristle and sparkling needles and white moss and fans of seaweed appear as frost flowers on the window pane. I say, let someone try to arouse in glass such interesting vegetation overnight! If this be enchantment, it is properly done, to contrive such an entirely new world.

     Or perhaps it is only hoarfrost; fallen in the harsh light of the moon, and now the whole world bristles in a terrible and sharp beauty and shines bleakly. What yesterday was a black and wiry tree is today an enormous tuft of marbled, shining coral; yesterday’s frightful and desolate thicket is now a wrought silver gate; the cobwebs on the old gazebo have turned into silver lace, the dried leaves are tassled with silver and the frozen asters on the lawn glitter like cut glass. Every pine or fir needle is marked with a glittering wand; the blackened leaves of the ivy are wreathed in silver filigree, the dry yarrow stalk bristles with the finest fringe of frost—and what can shall I say further, for you know it yourselves; you too have tried to lick the whitened branch and run your finger along the exceedingly beautiful tuftlets of frost. You too have seen the orchards bloom on Christmas morning with a frost so madly rich that no May can compare with its cherry trees and their fragrant blossoms; and you too have witnessed the sun shining through as the treetops rustle weakly, and the whole white show is gone: what to do, what to do, it is just enchantment, which never lasts. The truth is creation is a slow cooker, and no one will ever conjure anything like this by waving a magic wand, but it is, if we may say so, more solid and longer-lasting work.

______

1937

Trackbackery.

Nick's most recent post is another keeper. It's all good, mind.

Pertinent quote for me:

"Instead, I have to engage in this carefully planned, supplied, and fought battle with my own ignorance, and when I achieve victory, I don’t really have anything to show for it, except some bullshit shot or print that demonstrates that yes, I have the technical capability to use this technique — but that has no other virtue. And I don’t even have anyone handy to issue me a fucking gold star."

Amen. In some areas the war against my own ignorance involves way more mental preparation than I feel comfortable bragging about, even when I'm quite proud, which is an interesting mental place to be. The never-ending Fuks project, say. Work that takes a lot of effort and generates a lot of pride results in...large amounts more work. (Cooking, too, takes more energy than I would have thought, but at least that work produces edible and often surprisingly tasty results.)

Still, as Nick says, know that I'm leveling.

more apt Borges

From the story Nick sussed out that I was thinking of with no more information than the collection it was in:

"In the preceding tale, I have tried to narrate the process of failure, the process of defeat... I reflected that a more poetic case than these would be a man who sets himself a goal that is not forbidden other men, but is forbidden to him. I recalled Averroës, who, bounded within the circle of Islam, could never know the meaning of the words comedy and tragedy. I told his story; as I went on, I felt...that the work mocked me, foiled me, thwarted me. I felt that Averroës, trying to imagine what a play is without ever having suspected what a theater is, was no more absurd than I, trying to imagine Averroës yet with no more than a few snatches from Renan, Lane, and Asín Palacios."

--"Averroës' Search"

The amusing part about being reminded up this story during the YLNT show and then having it identified for me later is that I completely forget the moment of connection--I don't remember what was said, I don't remember what part of the story (it wasn't the one above) my mind linked it to. I only remember jumping up and down on the street in disbelief when Nick picked it out. The process of failure, maybe, but defeat not so much, I like to think. Or if you're going to fail, at least fail amusingly?

Dash to San Francisco.

It's nice when I have someone else (in this case Nick) to write about hilarious adventures of which I took part, viz. here.

Went up to the City yesterday to see Nick and watch Monsters of Podcasting. Within the first ten minutes of meeting Nick's mother and sister I managed to lacerate two fingers in a botched attempt to open a bottle of fermented German elderberry soda (?!) with a lighter. Six hours of jokes about my being/not being accident-prone ensued. We showed up way too early, camped out in the front row laughing hysterically and got in some nice post-show words with Merlin and Adam from You Look Nice Today. And we all learned an important lesson about The Snuggie.

All that and I was even able to figure out my crash pad after that with only a half an hour of wondering if I was going to have to stay up all night wandering around.

Not just about 2003 any more!

Here's a long-promised update. I can't do it right, but I can expand on promised blog posts from five years ago. Also, I'm closing the gap between the old and new blog for some reason. God, I love that mohawk picture.

My last seven January firsts:

2003 Orlando, Florida. (Capitol One Bowl--Auburn 13, Penn State 9. Boo.)

2004 Essex Junction, Vermont (Nate and I went downtown too early and ended up back in my father's basement. Classy.)

2005 Brno, Czech Republic (Fléda! Russian "champagne"!)

2006-Camel's Hump, Vermont (4,080 feet, lots of snow. May my hiking cohort rest in peace.)

2007-Burlington, Vermont (Six Pine St. party. Classic B-town.)

2008-Santa Cruz, California (Got engaged over the clock tower.)

2009-Mojave Desert, California (Kelso Dunes, an iron portal, fire, and song)

On Winter Research

     This time I am deliberately not writing about winter and its experiences poetically, but am instead approaching it from a purely scientific viewpoint; for we boys had lots of time to experiment with winter from a passionately scientific, technical viewpoint; we tried to ascertain what winter’s consequences were and what were its practical applications. Today’s younger generation does not get as much from winter, maybe just skis and hockey; their interest in winter is sporting rather than scientific. Only Papanin and his colleagues on the ice floes continue the sorts of practical testing of winter that every proper boy attempted in his day.¹ From a technical standpoint it is possible to undertake a great number of experiments with winter, of which I shall name at least a few:

     It is possible to chase snowflakes with your hand and watch them as they fall; but no one has yet succeeded in catching one no matter how numb the hand gets.

     It is possible to test what flavor the frost has; I once tried this on the brass doorknob of the house and tore off a bit of my tongue when it froze to it;

     it is also possible to breathe circles or stamp your nose onto frozen windows;

     and also to write with your finger on windows and prove your creative or literary talent in this way.

     It is possible to lick icicles with the goal of ascertaining their taste and nutritive value.

     and also to knock them down with a snowballs or rocks to verify their fragility and their glassy voice;

     and lastly to test how they thaw, namely by secretly placing a piece of icicle into your father’s pocket.

     One can successfully try sliding according to the proper rules of motion (standing, sitting, on one leg, or even with a pirouette).

     Skating has also been tried successfully with twigs tied to one shoe, or even (entirely exceptionally) to both.

     On sleds one can ride facing forwards, on one’s stomach, or (normally with terrible results) while facing backwards.

     Packing snow or making snowballs depends on the type of snow; soggy snow must be greatly compressed in the palms, which results in a smaller caliber but higher potency; normal, malleable snow allows the use of snowballs of the largest size; dry, dusty snow is only recommended for use in attacking with loose snowy clouds.

     Shaking snow or other things from tree branches offers valuable experience in how quickly snow can get through one’s collar and into one’s shirt, and where it goes from there.

     Snowmen are important, and, for most people, their only attempt at figure sculpting,

     Whereas making snow angels in freshly fallen snow betrays an interest in one’s own figure and size.

     Footprints in the snow allow you to sign the world with the letters of your own name;

     you can similarly try signing your name another way, about which we will say no more.

     The creation of avalanches can be performed most effectively on barn roofs by throwing snowballs at them.

     And let us not even forget kicking a piece of ice along, especially when they're delivering ice to the bars; we sometimes even seem entirely serious adults engaging in this pastime on their way home from the office, and think that no one is watching them.

     Just look and see how pitiful winter sports appear compared to everything that winter offers the normal boy with a technical brain and thirst for knowledge!

1938

______


1 Ivan Dmitriyevich Papanin—-Soviet polar explorer and participant in polar expeditions since 1931, and leader of a scientific expedition which examined the geophysical conditions of ice floes in the winter of 1937-38

Literature in Finno-Ugric Linguistics

I occasionally dabble in translating things out of languages other than Czech and Slovak. College was an especially fertile time for that, what with the three years of Sanskrit I somehow managed to take, the ancient Greek, and my high school French and Latin not nearly so rusty as they are now.

German's been a lazily-pursued hobby of mine for almost ten years at this point. There's not enough time to pursue all the languages one wants to, and I mainly seem to be happy enough with an incredibly loose definition of "reading knowledge."

Occasionally I do something useful, and this is a parallel version of a German page on Finno-Ugric study materials I translated last summer. Thanks go to Prof. Laakso for her pleasant response to my enthusiasm. I'll never be a Finno-Ugrist, but I can at least try to help them out.

Crème de Menthe Bars, What Not To Do When Making

Now that I've apparently mastered my father's molasses spice cookie recipe, it's time to turn to that other family holiday stalwart, these bad boys.

I'd never really creamed butter by hand (had to do that for the bottom two layers), not had I made my own frosting. (<---lots of fun, though I think I have a headache from coming down from the sugar rush I got when I was sampling it.)

Things to do next time: wait for cake layer to cool more, to preserve frosting integrity.

Make more of the top layer, and wait longer to apply it.

Actually, that's about it (unless the cake/frosting is too granular from not enough processing, which I don't know yet.) The



We'll see what else I did wrong (not creaming the butter enough for the mint frosting? Might that be a little coarse?) later.

104 words, 1/21/09

My single-speed groans up the hill from downtown. I need to turn left at the top from the rightmost bike lane--I don’t ride in the left lane up that hill--I don't have the arrow and figure I'll go anyway. It turns green while I'm making a wide turn. A car follows me, haltingly. Lights flash. The one behind that is a cop.

My lights are on, but not my helmet. Didn't signal at the top of the hill, let alone the lane changes. I am already guilty of a dozen things when he drives on, pulling the car over.

Lucky me again.

103 words, 1/19/09

I hit the speed bump too fast and accidentally let go. I used to ride with just the bar until Mike gave me some old bar ends of his to lengthen my ride (the top tube's a bit short). Seventy cents, when you factor in the replacement Allen screw one of them needed.

These changed the architecture of the handlebars. When I went flying backwards from the ends, the straight bar played cleanup. It waited patiently to receive my hands, which knew what to do (without benefit of thought), curling two fingers per hand around just enough to catch myself.

Lucky, lucky me.

Prague in the Snow

     I don’t mean to get myself mixed up in the livelihood of Mr. Šimon, Mr. Stretti-Zamponi¹ and the other graphic artists who earn their living on monochromes, dry-needle engravings², India-ink aquatints of snow³, eaves, Charles Bridge and other winter scenes. I just want to make a single column out of snow—for alas it no longer suits me to make snowmen the way I used to. Snow forts were very beautiful too: we would pour water over the ramparts and allow it to freeze overnight, make snowballs in the morning and then wage war, with conquests and shrill cries everywhere. We fought especially fiercely with the boys from Sychrov⁴ for territorial, legal, and social reasons. Today, however, I cannot call upon even my greatest enemy (if indeed I have one) to draw up plans for a snowball fight. And that’s why I can only produce a column out of snow.

*

     When the snow falls, Prague suddenly turns into a quaint little town; overnight we go fifty or a hundred years into the past, all at once the Malá Strana is medieval, grandmotherly, baroque, nestled in the palm of your hand, more naive and antique. Out of nowhere you remember your grandmother and her seven pairs of undergarments, apples cooked in the oven, the smell of wood smoke, old rooms and flowered curtains. People are happy on the street, carving out their footprints in the snow as though they were tracing wreaths, crunching away as they did a hundred years ago. And the quiet, sir—such rural quiet—the Vltava does not even roar, the trams make no more noise than the Christ child, and no one would bat an eye if the automobiles started to jingle as if they were horse-drawn sleighs. O holy world! Suddenly the world of old things and old dimensions is here. Small-town magic. Antique character.

     Just so you know, the only real snow is the kind we get in the Malá Strana. That is why it lasts longer than elsewhere, and when it is all blown away on the other side (for they just get flurries, nothing at all to brag about) we still have it heaped in drifts, by the grace of God, with only footpaths through it. That is our domestic right. Just us and Hradčany.⁵

     But no graphic artist could depict how pretty a snowflake is resting in a girl’s hair or the sorts of tracks left by a blackbird or sparrow on a snowy roof. Those look like little poems written in Oriental script or calligraphy. An entire poem composed in a single row. I’d love to be able to translate it.

*

     Then, when the moon shines over everything, what happens then cannot even be described: Prague shrinks and makes itself tiny, scarcely even breathing: the snow sparkles like glass underfoot, the roofs press close to the earth, everything bristles with frost and it is so bright, so bright that you fear the darkness of your own core.

*

     And you, red spark in the stove, you emphasize the blue of the winter twilight with your ruddy companionship. How wonderful is that duet of glow and quietude!

*

     In the summer we see trees, clouds, water, and everything under the sun, but when the snow falls in the winter we see what we scarcely noticed in the summer—that is, the roof. Once a roof is snow-covered it is creditable, prudent, and above all, it is visible. Only then does human roofing fulfill its purpose. And we only see in the winter that our dwellings exist under roofs. The whole of our city is a city under roofs set up over our heads.

     Let us praise the snow for showing us the dignity of our roofing!

1923

______

1 Jaromír Stretti-Zamponi (born 1882)—painter and graphic artist, creator of graphic designs with an old Prague themes, who published in 1914 a cycle of four colored prints called “Snow” depicting the Malá Strana (Lesser Quarter) area.
2 Copperplate engravings (more rarely zinc-plate) made with a steel needle or a cone-shaped diamond nib.
3 Prints made without any engraving mechanism, but through the gradual deposition of material on the work surface.
4 i.e., from the industrial suburb of Sychrova in Úpice, where the author spent his childhood and adolescence.
5 [The Castle District, up the hill to the north of the Malá Strana and on the same side of the river as it.]

A Chronology of Anterior Subluxations

#1--(Spring of 2003) The Progenitor. So far back in time (junior year of college) that I didn't even have a blog and Facebook was a year away. Basketball trip and fall. Hours in the ER. First time on morphine.
#2--(8/26/03) Separation of What Now?
#3--(10/22/03) See August 26...
#4?--(3/5/04) False alarm...
#4--(3/19/04) From hero to...
#5--(Third Week of July, 2005) Came out during forward crawl, self-reduced.
#6--(Fall of 2005) Drunken fall at co-worker's house, self-reduced.
#7--(3/14/06) Oh good.
#8--(12/12/08) No link unless I decide to get all cute and self-link.

Two days after a huge rollerskating fall left me with the biggest bruise of my life, I was finally (for once!) beating my housemate in a game of one-on-one and had the arm pop out as I went for a layup. We walked back to the house, got directions of the internet, then he reduced it for me. I'm actually doing rehab exercises, for a change. May the next one not exist, or at least be more than two-plus years away.

The Score So Far:
Basketball: 5
Drunken Stupidity: 2
Swimming: 1
Andrew: -8

Sort of a translation story.

Dusting off some old blogs, I found this piece which was a story a suitemate told that involved he and I (I'm "Tall," unsurpisingly), dealing with a package of German soup mix we'd come across. I attempted to filter them through Czech with a German-Czech online dictionary.

A quote: "I scientifically examined the package as Tall perused the various translations of Beutelinhalt."

It's probably tellingly recursive that I immediately set at figuring it out: (inner monologue: "Inhalt" is 'contents' and Beutel looks like 'bottle', only it was soup mix, so probably the whole thing together means 'Contents of package,' and then spent five minutes checking that out on google, and being proud I could read the rest of the instructions better than I could five years ago. No. Scratch the "probably."

From a potential cousin in Slovakia...

My potential cousin from Slovakia:

"Pamätám, že môj dedo hovoril, ze ma niekoho v amerike, dodnes dokonca pise listy tam. ale zabudla som, kde konkretne. vies, my sme veľmi hyperaktivna rodina..."

"I remember my grandfather told me he had some [relative] in America and even still writes letters there, but I forgot where exactly. You know, we're a very hyperactive family..."

a) This is quite interesting to me personally, as I hadn't anticipated Facebook would have genealogical applications.
b) It's good to know I at least have reasonably independent corroboration that it's a crazy family to be a part of. (I know, I know, that's true of everyone, but it's nice to hear that coming from a Slovak to a mere Faux-vak.)

Snow

     Everyone says that there used to be more snow. Where the snow has gone I do not know, and the meteorologists have not yet explained it in the least. But the fact is that in some olden times there was snow like crazy (for example, Prague appears completely snowed in on Šimon’s etchings¹) and in the old engravings you see sleighs in the Prague streets; every year as kids we employed snowballs, long toboggans and sleds and wrote figures in the snow and stomped out signatures and faces and built snowmen far superior to those of the current generation. That is a phenomenon as indisputable as camping by the river, fires, and other natural occurrences that enchanted our childhoods. What made it happen I do not know; but it is not, in short, the way is was. In any way.

     Recently I saw a snowman, right in Brno, I believe, and I wondered if the scales had not fallen from my eyes. Out of nowhere, a few steps from the tram lines, I met a pagan deity, blood brother to some prehistoric stone carving. Fat, gigantic, monumental, terrifying, and official: an idol, simply. A snowy god. Kids have forgotten the proper rituals (they do not bow before their god or bring it human sacrifices) but they have set up an idol anyway out of some atavism, the bigger, the better.

     A bit farther on I find an attempt at a ramp: only a few fingerlengths long and still sprinkled with sand, and every little kid comes running that way trying (in vain) to get a good amount of sliding in. And a bit farther on the street they endeavor to make a mild slope; and already it is full of sleds, one kid lying on his stomach on each one and straining to get five centimeters downhill. Well, it won’t work, there isn’t enough snow, it barely covers the uneven and frozen mud; but they kick at the earth, rebound, dig forward inch by inch in the eternal hope that their sleds will suddenly burst into motion and go—and go—hey, is that not the eternal dream of flight, that a bit of magical power bearing one effortlessly from place to place? Is that not at the core of the ancient fairy tales about the magical cloak, the seven-league boots or winged horses, that ancient myth of superb and enchanted flight? To be borne aloft! If not over seven mountains and seas at least down half a meter of road; to be conveyed instead of ordinary walking by a magic vehicle which runs under its own power, albeit one you have to help. To drag a toboggan or sled up a hill and then loose it downwards: this isn’t just sporting delight in movement, but a fairy-tale, wondrous delight, an instinctive dream of physical thrill. Kids are living mythology, children are the pagan prehistory of humanity. The oldest tradition in the world is being a proper kid.

     You see—scarcely had I begun to worship snow than gods displayed their agreement, for as I wrote—flake by flake—snow has begun to fall on the city. Truthfully, it is only a light and wet dusting at the moment; the first sparrow on the opposite roof is hopping through the snowy crust right up to the eaves; it would be difficult to make a proper snow diety out of this, and even harder to fly down the bumpy slope of Říční Avenue² on some magic vehicle. But this thin white covering at least signifies that in these awful, corrupted and right gloomy times there is still a place for the pagan strength of life: for fairy-tale elements, telluric³ traditions, magic and wonder, that still remain-—nothing at all: for the snow melted before I finished this paragraph and it has again become dark and soggy wherever I look.
There can be no doubts: there used to be more snow, and the snow itself was better, more solid, more substantive than the flurries of today. Entirely right: où sont les neiges d’antan?⁴

1923

______

1 Painter and graphic designer František T. Šimon (1877 to 1942) created a cycle of tinted engravings called “Prague,” published in 1911)
2 In the Malá Strana in Prague. Čapek lived at No. 11 for many years, and wrote many of his books there.
3 terrestrial, extending from our globe
4 [French] “Where are the snows of yesteryear? A verse from the “Ballad of the Ladies of Bygone Times” by François Villon.

I know my onions.

The first grocery store I ever worked at my father, ever the wag, called "Grand Onion" for "Grand Union," and he wasn't far off.

Like every other (well, each of the other two) food items, the English was cheerfully stolen from Middle French. Ah, the Norman invasion. Anglo-French (and Mod. French) oignon gives us our word, and comes from the Latin unio(n). Yes, it means "union, single thing," a reference to that big unified bulb.

Bah: unlike with quince (I hope) the allium spices have already been covered better in more excruciating detail than I ever would have bothered with. With quotes from Homer, and the Greek borrowings into South Slavic, and the connections between Latin cepa and many of the European words for "onion" [and English "chive"!], proceeding on to other pages on leeks and garlic (Old English gār.lēac "spear.leek") and cloves and going on into the cloves the spice and it's all just wonderful.

So wonderful I have nothing else to add and throw up my hands at my own modest efforts. I hope, at any rate, that the link provides as much fascinating clicking for anyone else as it provided me. Quick, I better distract everyone with a pre-prepared piece of Čapek.

102 words, 1/11/09

Everything is a story, every -ism and -ology and -istics just a framework we cast out into the data brought to us by our sense organs. We like sharing our stories with others and we like living in the same tales as the people we care for, especially things that hang together well, that are funny, and that are true, or a convincing approximant. Like matryoshkas they nestle inside each other from the largest-scale Weltanschauung down to the seemingly insignificant things we tell ourselves or our friends. You don’t have the whole world figured out? Sometimes inside jokes have to make do.

101 words; 4/23/07

The first split second he didn't believe the evidence of his eyes and the course of the subway bore him away. Curiosity and the urge to explore had brought him out that way in the first place. Could it really have been-- By the time he got to the end of the line, he had dismissed what he had seen, but as the days and weeks passed, he found himself returning all the more frequently to that one stretch of track. He stopped believing a thousand times, but tensed as the spot neared, straining for a second glance at the miraculous.

Toponyms in Produce; Part 2 of a Series.

Having hitherto discussed the etymological hyperspace of the quince to a somewhat alarming degree, I thought I'd move on to a slightly smaller morsel:




The shallot. (image cheerfully stolen from Wikipedia)

I've been cooking with these (oh, man, sautéed in butter with just about anything, going to be roasting some on Monday) and have enjoyed expanding my spectrum of allium tastes. (now if I could only see the benefits of leeks except for dissolved in soup). But I'm already digressing. I'd been made dimly aware that the word for shallot (and scallion) had been traceable to the name of a Palestinian seaport, Ascalon (modern Ashkelon).

It was only after the quince intruded into my thoughts that I realized that this had to be analogous to quince.

quince : Cydonian (apple) :: shallot : Ascalonian (?).

I assumed it would be 'onion,' A bit further research confirms this: Latin ascalonia (caepa) 'Ascalon (onion), late Latin escalonia. Early/Middle French escaloigne-->eschalotte-->échalotte, English 'shallot'.

I've yet to use them in salad dressing, but I hear that's a reasonable idea as well. What I'll likely try: chopped shallot, olive oil, vinegar, sugar, salt, pepper, maybe a little mustard. I suspect I'll report back on the success or failure of this absurdly simple salad dressing when I'm back to discuss the proliferation of Lat. caepa/cepa "onion" throughout the languages of Europe. (French and English excepting.)

From New Year’s Eve to the Feast of The Epiphany

     As far as I can remember, people say each New Year that the last New Year’s Eve was more fun; why, this year was nothing, but last year’s, there was a party for you! Last year they said the same thing about the year before last, that year the year before that, etc. God, if this decline of New Year’s gaiety has been going on forever, how heathen and debauched must it have been in the youth of Wáclaw Wladivoj Tomek!¹ Or during the reign of Maria Theresa! Or in the times of Boleslav the Cruel!² But I think that even back then they said in a flight of New Year melancholy: “Why, last year with prince Václav, that was an even better one; now that was such a riot, oh, you just had to be there!”

*

     Everyone I speak to—not just skiers and chestnut vendors— says it should just freeze over already and start snowing. What sort of winter is this? Once it is winter, things should crunch underfoot and nip at your ears and you must slide on the ice and everything: everyone should have bright red noses, there should be icicles on the roofs and flowers of frost on the windows and beautiful heaps of snow along the walkways, so you can collect a handful and hit someone in the back or the back of the head (especially the back of the head). From this we understand that the human need for order has not yet died out, nor the inclination to have things be as they always have been. Humans have retained some firm conception of what is proper and belongs in nature, at least. In such vital matters as snow, we tenaciously remain traditionalists and do not want to see any climatic changes perpetuated. If we were to create the world, if that was in our hands, we would come up with assumptions just as firm as the one that says there must be snow in winter, and we would find a large amount of things that just had to be because they were supposed to be there. In every orderly and healthy thing there is some “has to.” In the republic, in parliament, in the army and in people. We gladly seek out some sort of tradition. The only thing is that tradition is not what once was, but what has to exist right now. Tradition, that is not last year’s snow or the year before’s, but the pretty and fresh snow of this year which just had to be there. I swear it had to; everyone says so.

*

     It is the ancient experience of occasional poets and columnists that as soon as they praise the snow it begins to thaw outside: as soon as they aver that outside it is black and wretchedly muddy, a blizzard begins to rage. It happened to me just now: scarcely had I written the previous paragraph than a few flakes began to fall outside, as though there had never been a blizzard. I don’t think we scribblers have any influence on it; I think the gods just want to prove that the news is never right. Just let a gambler bet that there is no snow, and lo, snow there is; let him bet that there is snow and lo, there is none. Perhaps there is some meaning in it; perhaps right when the editor writes in the paper that the situation is tense that it is not a whirling maelstrom nor a contorted jumble. Perhaps when the newspapers tell you it is a critical time, the time is not at all critical. Perhaps it is not true that that words of the ambassador Dr. Kramář have created a deep impression. Perhaps it is not even true that commissioner Švehla³ is negotiating with the populists, but the other way around. But if it is true, it is not the journalists’ fault, for it depends on the particular intention and arrangement of the gods that no one else be omnipotent.

*

     Just the other day I met the Three Kings once again, but there were only two of them, and the bigger one of the two was thin as a rail. Nevertheless they were staunchly singing: “We Three Kings Of Orient Are.” At every door. If they had admitted that “We Two Kings Of Orient Are,” they might have been telling the truth, but they would have ceased to be the true Three Kings and no one would have believed that they were “bearing gifts,” and wouldn’t have given them a thing. And listen, children, we adults do the exact same thing: we sing our political carols, “We, the greater nation,” or “We, farmers,” or “We, the Worker’s Party,” and so on. If we sang “We, the party secretary,” or “We, the high executive committee,” or something similarly honest, our carols would lose all their secret power and no one would give them the least bit of credit.

1927

______

1 Nineteenth-century Czech historiographer.
2 Tenth-century duke of Bohemia; killed his brother and predecessor Václav (Good King Wenceslaus)]
3 Karel Kramář was the first prime minister of Czechoslovakia, and a member of the National Assembly thereafter. Antonín Švehla was thrice prime minister of the First Czechoslovak Republic during the 1920s

Von brigði

     Von brigði is the name of a remix album of the Icelandic band Sigur Rós, a remix of songs from their first album Von. The name is a pun in Icelandic--Brigði means "alternation/changes", so its title means "variations on Von." Von itself means "hope," though, and Vonbrigði (no spaces) means "disappointment." It's been out for ten years, and no doubt many a critic has used the rhetorical maneuver of saying "name aside, it's no disappointment," but I'm going to do it anyway. I already had a soft spot for Von, and at least two of these remixes are made out of bliss.

     A structural note, at this point, on the Čapek. "From New Year's Eve To the Feast of the Epiphany" comes out on the sixth; "Snow" a week after that. Beyond that I'm playing my cards closer to my chest, though I've got enough to run with for a little while, and autoschedule guarantees that these next two will be out at the promised times. (Oh, and Dad, the autoscheduled first one was what caused you to believe I was back in Santa Cruz for New Year's. Also, hi Dad. Not something I ever thought I'd be saying here, but for what it's worth I am glad you're reading).

     Nick's new posts (to say nothing of the old) are a delight. I've enjoyed the opportunities presented so far this year, and would be nothing short of delighted for a reprise of a few of the tea-swilling insomniac nights of yesteryear.

Postmortem, Mojave Desert New Year's Expedition.

Notes from the field: (editorial remarks after the fact)

"Surfeit of oaty goodness." (probably not, actually. .75 cup/person/day you're willing to make oatmeal.)
"Extra propane" (nope, we had plenty, the first can just leaked)
"Fingerless gloves" (warm fingerless gloves. Preferably, mittens. I wore socks on my hand one night, by the Jeezum)
"Club soda" (just to be prepared. Someone asked. We probably could have brought it instead of the ten gallons of water we brought and didn't need.)
"Chairs." (No editorial comment; it's just a good idea.)
Sand Castling (maybe a bucket? We had a moustache sculpt-off anyway)
"Nooch." (someone actually had a bunch of nutritional yeast with 'em)

Cookies were well-received. TetraPak milk is bizarre but passable.

A list of what I brought for clothing and used: (three nights, though I would have made it stretch to four no problem)

5 pair underwear,
2 pair long underwear,
1 pair pants
4 pair socks
4 T-shirts
2 tops
2 light coats
1 jacket
3 hats
1 scarf
1 pair of shorts
1 pair mittens

Things I brought but did not use:
notepad (except for kindling once)
2 pair socks
1 pair underwear
1 pair of pants

Biggest "mistakes":

Bringing the bike bag: unwieldy, hard to get at, hard to get into, probably didn't even need it. The biggest hassle from a getting-at-things point of view.
Bringing extra pair of pants: maybe a mistake--I'm happy in one pair of pants until the cows come home, but what if I'd been spilled on or tore them or something? (Duct tape?)

Too Much Water: we used maybe six, seven gallons for two people for three days, and brought 17.5. We maybe should have been drinking more, and didn't use too much for bathing (ahem)--but we could have saved sixty pounds worth of weight or so.


We packed well, but man, did it take a lot of bedding for semi-comfortable sleeping. The last night I wore two pairs of socks and both pairs of long underwear and three shirts and a hat to bed on an air mattress with a blanket on top then a mummy bag then three more blankets on top next to another person. Which was comfortable and thought-free once we get it set up, which really didn't take that long. Backpacking cold-weather camping would be significantly harder, since it's impracticable to bring five huge blankets with you.

Ah, the post-vacation brain dump. Hopefully I'll need to tap into this resource again at some point.

EDIT: Holy hell we were at ~2500 feet? No wonder it was so cold.

If I...

     If I awoke on New Year’s Day as the Lord God—no, wait, that wouldn’t work, the Lord God doesn’t sleep—then if I awoke on New Year’s Day as St. Peter, I would say: “What should I do this year for those confounded Czechoslovaks? They are such heretics, and sometimes entirely ungrateful, blast them; there must be some good in them, though. I think that their weather is too extreme; maybe that is why they are so cantankerous and stubborn. It is hot and stormy in the summer, so they grumble irritably; in the winter it’s so freezing that everyone can only think of themselves, acting icily to others. The climate does that. And so they don’t like anything; winter is too cold and summer too hot; if something is black, it is too black for them, and if something is white, it is too white for them; never in their life is anything just right. They are accustomed to this from this weather of theirs. Wait just a moment, you rascals, I’ll show you; I’ll give you a nice bit of summer, like they get by the seaside; I’ll give you mild winters (with snow, naturally, a little bit of snow is a good thing), and comfortable summers with sun and plenty of moisture—it would be deviltry if I didn’t alter it for you. If you were milder to yourselves, your weather would seem nicer; but if you won’t do it yourselves, I will do it for you. Let the Lord God help you in the New Year!

     If I awoke on New Year’s Day as prime minister, I would marvel greatly at this turn of events and stroke my chin at a total loss. (Aha, I would say, I have to shave.) When I got used to the miraculous change in my existence a moment later, I would stay in bed for a few more minutes, as I had done hitherto as an ordinary citizen, but I wouldn’t go back to sleep. I would ponder. “My word, we have the anniversary of the republic to celebrate this year. I know what; I’ll call the ministers together and say: “Boys, last year we presided over the monument to Austria; this year we have to preside over the monument to the Republic. Look, we have to put things together somehow; left and right wings are for the birds; the republic, it’s like—a circle; how can there be a left and right wing of a circle?” Then a number of other arguments would occur to me, but I would put those off until the ministers arrive; then I would get up, making sure—for luck in the new year—that I got up on the right foot.

     If I awoke on New Year’s Day as the Lord Mayor of the city of Prague, I would gaze a while into the far future and then I would say: “It seems to me that Mr. Čapek is right; they really should have started in with that green ring around our city.¹ When I imagine those beautiful lanes...and the clearings for the children...and little groves here and there...well then, let’s get to it.”

     If I awoke on New Year’s Day as a millionaire and a man of the upper class, I would say: “It’s already ‘twenty-eight? God, how time flies! Ah well, this year I’ve got to do something with my money, got to set something up in someone’s memory or establish something so long as it’s worthwhile. It’s worth some thought, but the money will be there; we will take care of that.”

     If I awoke on New Year’s Day as a twenty year-old, I’d turn over to the other side and keep sleeping; I’d have lots to think about after New Year’s Eve.

     If I awoke on New Year’s Eve as my puppy, I would scratch myself a bit with my back leg (having some disorderly flea on the nape of my neck) and then I would say: “This year I won’t anger my master any more, I will go outside peaceably, I won’t scatter bones on the stairs, I will keep clean, I won’t sleep on the couch and I won’t run through every row in the garden.” For that I would receive a cube of sugar and be immeasurably overjoyed with life.

1928

______

1 Karel Čapek himself had suggested the reforestation of the area around Prague and often returned to the concept of the “green ring” in his newspaper articles in the period around 1927. [Unbracketed footnotes are from my 1946 posthoumous edition. Bracketed footnotes such as this will be my own additions.]

Here we go again.

Last year I had fun translating this piece of Karel Čapek's online.

Now it's soon to be 2009, and though I have those short stories to edit and that novel with a bunch of prep notes or that other novel (or two collections of short stories) to edit...I have the itch. Another posthumous collection of short writings, this time on the seasons.

Almanac, or How Long The Year Is!

Edit: Oh, autoscheduling! All right then, we'll all have to wait until 12:01 on New Year's Day. I'll be in the Mojave Desert then, if all goes according to plan.

Iterations

I've been interested in honing processes recently, and I just had a conceptual breakthrough this morning. Stupid at it may sound, I had only been using my bookmarks as a repository for crap I might want to look at later.

Now I'm trying to take some of those links and the interests they point to and view it more as a to-do list. Actively try to use my bookmarks instead of just letting them sit there. There's a beauty in that.

The Last Week and a Half

Two sunsets over Monterey Bay. Two long oceanside jaunts at night. (I must start in again with the astronomy.) I've learned to crossover turn in rollerskating, and am hoping Wednesday I still remember how. My blisters may be settling into callus. I'm tinkering with a strawberry-red vintage Peugeot, with thoughts of trying my hand at restoration. This will involve a bunch of liquid wrench. I've had lutefisk on lefse and washed it down with sotsuppe in a midwestern Norwegian yule (tonight!), and gotten an in on a garden that may need lots of weeding. I've read "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns" and am trying to get my hands on "Transmetropolitan." My hook shot and one-handed dunk are progressing, as is my foul shot, though I'm trying not to get too caught up in how awesome I seem to be at basketball. I'm prepping a novel to translate, and editing a short story I've already translated.

I'm going to replace my own doorknob tomorrow, if nothing else, and I'll be in the Mojave Desert on New Year's Day, if all goes well.

Can't think of much else to say right now--besides, there's work to be done.

It is my anniversary

I have the old notebook in front of me right now. Chapter 1 of Ladislav Fuks' Burner of Corpses, started 11/27/2004. It now seems incredible to me that I would just up and start translating, but that's what I did. Perhaps I'm placing too much importance on the date--I'd tinkered with passages before, trying to make sense of what I was trying to read--but that was the day that I started the Fuks project, which has become the Fuks and Capek project, which now involves some Klobouk short stories and has involved Slovak papers on stainless steel machineability and German webpages on Finno-Ugric language resources and spirals merrily out of control.

I am a translator. I'm thankful for this. This is where I come from.

It took me forever to get through a page in those days. I had to look everything up. I left blanks. Question marks, cross-outs, [bracketed sections that were placeholders] until I thought of something better. Of late I fear I'm moving away from the handwritten first drafts in favor of marking up photocopies of the original in advance and then typing a first draft directly. I feel like I'm gaining something good even as I'm losing something good. These drafts are tangible reminders of the incremental nature of the work and of the need for patience and stubborn, stubborn single-mindedness.

This is what I have done in four years, in order of completeness.

Fuksiana:

Burner of Corpses. My earliest work, perhaps the one in the most literal, stilted style, but I love it to death anyone. I was so uninhibited I filled it with self-indulgent footnotes I haven't done anywhere else, and launched myself with reckless abandon into the chapter where most of the dialogue rhymes. My most complete piece.

My Black-Haired Brothers. A short-story cycle about a young boy and the fates of his Jewish classmates in a Czech high school during World War II. The ends of three of the six stories still make me cry.

Death of a Guinea Pig. A collection of early short stories. Black humor abounds. Probably needs some touch-up.

The Way to the Promised Land. A raft of Jews escaping Czechoslovakia sail down the Danube on their blissful way to freedom. Bliss does not ensue.

Mr. Theodor Mundstock. Fuks' first novel, about an elderly Jew living alone in Prague and looking for meaning in the face of imminent deportation to the camps. This is trapped between a first draft and a second.

The Painting of Martin Blaskowitz. Story-within-a-story about a pair of boys, one Czech, one German, and their vow of friendship. Oh man this has rough points too. I'm about half done a handwritten first draft, and have most of the rest marked up on photocopies. If I'm lucky, and if I'm good, I could finish draft one by New Year's. That may be optimistic.

Natalie Mooshabrová's Mice. This barely counts as anything: I have the first 400 words done of what is likely to be about 120,000. I shouldn't even be including it. I have written about it here.

Karel Čapek:

Fables and Understories. Cute vignettes on life from various perspectives on the one hand, humorous short stories on the other. Available from here.

Almanac. A serious of newspaper columns collected and edited posthumously to describe the cycle of one year. Got some stuff hidden away; this is my "secret" plan to give away/post on-line during the course of 2009. Yay side projects.

And not a bit of that includes the work I'm now starting to get that pays me: so I've got enough to keep me busy for a long time. Sometimes I wish the weather weren't so pleasant here--but the rainy season waxes, and with it my desire to sit in coffeeshops scribbling all day.

Thankfulness abounds.

Unlike Ozzie Smith, I came back.

I have finally been to the Mystery Spot. The conflict between my vestibular sense and my expectations of a normal room interior was pretty fun, actually.

"Go then--There are other worlds than these."

In another universe, I'm an hour and a half into a train ride up to Portland. Santa Cruz still has me, though, to my occasional surprise.

Back to work, then.

Quince IV-The Voyage Home

First things first--a bit of research has turned up some stuff I should have mentioned earlier, but so it goes. Greek Κυδωνι (kythoni) should hardly be a surprise. Catalan codony/er had me confused until I found Friulian Italian mêl codogn for the fruit and codognâr for the tree. Hopes of further Romance languages that kept the dental stop were dashed by Sardinian mela pirongia "pear apple." And I can't even find anything for Occitan to see if there's a continuum from northern Italy to Northern Spain. Rounding out this odd mix is Lithuanian paprastoji cidonija, "Cydonian...uh...pear something?"

On to Slavic. My first Slavic love, Czech, gives us kdoule. I'd be able to tell you more about that if I hadn't mailed my Czech etymological dictionary off to Oregon or Vermont or somewhere. And that's the only etymological dictionary I actually own. It's clear that you lose that first vowel, though. In a situation we only see elsewhere in Romanian, that /kd-/ is pronounced /gd-/, through regressive assimilation of voicing. Czech has a non-productive suffix -oň giving us names of trees, and this leaves us with kdouloň, which I find to be a particularly beautiful word, although I bet that n won't format properly.

Slovak preserves the initial vowel in kutina. That's about as easy as it gets with Slavic, unfortunately. I don't know what to make of Polish pigwa at all. Serbian/Bosnian/Croatian have (normalized to Roman script) dunja, which is possibly a continuation of cydonium with the first syllable dropped altogether. (That is, like Czech, but with the difficult cluster simplified). Or it could be something else altogether.

Russian and Ukranian, thanks to contact (read: subjugation) by the Turkic tribes to the south and east (incidentally the neighborhood where the quince originally came from) have айва (aiva)--cf. Turkish ayva, Azerbaijani heyva. Thanks, Nate!

These discontinuities all make a certain amount of sense--there was a proto-Romance (i.e., Vulgar Latin) word for quince, and most of the remaining languages show reflexes of this, with some room for phonetic and semantic variation. The Germanic languages were more closely neighboring the classical languages of antiquity and in some cases (Charlemagne discusses quinces in his treatises on gardening) assuming their role and borrowed the term more or less uniformly. Where the Slavs settled in areas associated with classical languages and quince production (Czech/Slovak, the Balkan languages) they picked up some variant of it (if my supposition for the Balkan languages); Polish is a wildcard and the East Slavic languages, in spreading to the South, got their term from the Turkish.




I'm finishing this batch of membrillo, or quince jelly, or quince paste, or quiddany, or cotignac, or what have you, today. Quince on crackers with cheese, as it should be. Enjoy. From Greek to Latin to Old French to English to me to you.

Quince III

Guess I got sick of the cutesy title. It’s amazing how quickly something sweet can become something cloying. Lest this happen to me, I'll try to keep things moving in this wild speculation into etymological hyperspace. Now with purty pictures.

So. Germanic languages: We’ve already seen English quyn/ce and quince. The other Germanic languages end up with /w/ or /v/ in there as well: German Quitte (/kv-), Dutch kwee(peer) (quince-pear, cf. the Walloon), Afrikaans kweper (assumedly a direct descendant of the Dutch) Norwegian kvede and Danish kvæde (note medial consonant voicing) Swedish kvitten. No Icelandic, Faroese, or Frisian data.

Not an Indo-European language is Finnish with kvitteni—a Germanic borrowing, assumedly from Swedish. Not altered by Finnish phonology other than the final vowel—got to keep those syllables open! Also non-Indo-European but merrily borrowed was Japanese marumero, but I should have mentioned that two posts ago.

Oddly, somehow when I started this I had the goal of attempting to get more people to eat quince. I'm not sure what I've just done is the best way, but I'm having fun. Even if it's also more word-comparison than actual lexical analysis. And I didn't even look into a discussion of grammatical gender (the classical languages were neuter, French masculine, German and Czech feminine, I believe) but that's beyond my scope for now.

Next time: Part IV: "Oh right I promised some Slavic data and am totally not going to segue into this great Czech suffix that denotes TREES how cool is that?" And then I'll be done with quinces for a little while. Promise.

Quiddany Quiddities - Part II

We'd gotten as far as Latin cotoneum/cydonium malum last time, and the development and spread of the Romance languages does some funky things.

With cotoneum (malum) we see the same phenomenon as the continuation of Latin (caseus) formaticus (cheese mold-made) where the adjectival element gets continued as the name itself (fromage, formaggio, etc.) There are exceptions, though: caseus remains in English "cheese", German "Käse", etc. The same sort of thing, in yet another aside (this one promised), is why our continuation of Greek melon "apple" now refers to fleshy Cucurbitae--originally melon.pepo(n) "apple-gourd" in Greek and Latin, with the original gourd element clipped off as unnecessary.

Anyway, cotoneum/cydonium is what we have to work with: respectively (1) and (2) from here on out.

Old French: cooin. From (1). The loss of final Latin -m is common to Romance languages, and contributed to the erosion of -VC case endings. The intervocalic deletion of /t/ is harder for me to account for, but seems to have happened anyway, resulting in two contacting vowels which became a diphthong. Later on in French the final nasal went velar, resulting in the current French coing. There is a place name Cotignac in France which alone seems to have kept the intervocal /t/, place names being hardier at this sort of thing, and the name also refers to a kind of quince preserve.

Before it turned into coing, Middle English borrowed the Old French word cooin, reshaping it as coyn or quyn, developing the initial labiovelar /kw/. Things start to look familiar. The Middle English plural of quyn was quynce, which was later re-evaluated as a singular, thus giving us the singular quince. Singular indeed, though not a singular occurrence in English. "children" and "brethren" are double plurals like "quinces," although alone much different lines. Both of these were originally r-plurals (cildra/cildru and brether) which got extra -en endings tacked on when they were no longer viewed as being plural. Etymology or no, "quinces" it's still the valid English plural, though it now strikes me as funny. English also has an archaic quiddany, (from (2)?), referring to something not quite a syrup and not quite a jelly, and cheerfully stole the French cotignac, leaving us with a bunch of Enlightenment-era cookery-book references to Cotiniack. Delightful.

We've gotten sidetracked from the Romance languages. Spanish has membrillo (epentetic b following metathesis!) and Portuguese has marmelo, but Catalan gives us codonyer. The vowels make it look like (1) with the intervocalic /t/ voiced to /d/. The ending is baffling, but fascinating all the same. Walloon has "poere de cwin," "quince pear," developed from the French. Italian has mela cotogna, keeping Latin malum. Romanian has gutui. The initial voicing there is something else. I have no knowledge of Romanian historical phonetics, so I'll leave it at that.

I'll wrap things up with Germanic and Slavic, and Greek tomorrow for completeness' sake (I at least want to get to that, if only to babble about Czech for a while) and a view outliers, like Finnish and Japanese. The title should at least make a bit more sense now!

Quiddany Quiddities - Part I

My story today begins with the Greeks. Humans had been eating delicious delicious quince for thousands of years before that, since it was first domesticated in the area north and east of the Fertile Crescent; that is what is now Iran and the Caucasus. You can find people who will tell you it was the tempting fruit in the Garden of Eden, that it is referenced in the Song of Solomon and not the apple, and that its cultivation may have in fact preceded that of that apple. And yet apples get all the glory and I still have to describe it as a cross between a tennis ball and a pear.

It is the Greeks who came up with two of the more tenacious names for the fruit, both interestingly descriptive. First up is μελίμηλον (meli.melon, Latin melimelum)) "honey-apple." Melimelum is the runt of the litter here, with a limited distribution in extant languages. (Portuguese=marmelo, whence marmelade--originally a quince jelly.). Membrillo, the Spanish term for quince paste also comes to us from "melimelon," though Spanish does not continue this particular item itself for the name of the fruit or tree.

There was a certain kind of quince identified with a Minoan settlement on Crete in Κυδωνία (Kydonia, near present-day Khania), the κυδώνιον μήλον (kydonion melon) which gets into Latin as malum (Latin for apple) cotoneum/cydonium. This adjectival demonym deploys itself into a variety of forms in various languages.

It is therefore ultimately Kydonia we will be chasing through the dropping of Latin case endings, the devoicing or elision of that intervocal d, nasal palatalization, or the adoption of the term into a language with its own pholonological axes to grind.

Next time: More quince, of course, but also: why does "melon" mean apple? What does that have to do with cheese? What does any of that have to do with quinces? And why does "quinces" seem so awkward anyway?

Summer's almost gone, although you wouldn't know it in Santa Cruz.

3/4 summer trips done. Minneapolis, Vermont, New Orleans/Houston, and tomorrow I'm off to Portland. North, East, South, now West. Hopefully I'll get up to the City in three weeks, and Seattle in November, but no real concrete plans beyond that. Passed a birthday (like a kidney stone?), had a great party. Trying to get a handle on my assorted scribblings, too.

STATUS REPORT:

PENDING.

Hail from the Green Mountain State

I did it all except the silent film festival (work went too late)

Proofreading, couch surfing, couch surfing in San Francisco, got my head shaved in a bar, came back, biked 60 miles in 26 hours, sandwiching that around a hostel up the coast with a hot tub overlooking the ocean, packed, and flew across the country.

I was right about having little time to sleep; totally wrong about the amount of eating all this activity would require. And now, a shower as a substitute for a nap (2 hours of sleep on the floor of the Newark airport was all I really managed.)

Itinerary.

Let's see if I can figure this out:

Yesterday: crazy night bike ride.
Tonight: 5,000 words of proofreading stuff that used to be in Slovak, work, packing
Tomorrow night: move out, go to work, silent film festival projected under a bridge, couch surfing
Saturday: couch surfing, raising hell
Sunday-Monday: couch surfing...IN SAN FRANCSICO.
Tuesday: last day of work, couch surfing at my third place in four days
Wednesday: possibly riding 25 miles out of town to camp at a hostel?
Thursday: biking back to town, packing out of boxes, flying to Vermont:
Friday: Burlington.

Note no time for: sleep, eating

If all goes well, I'll be spending five consecutive nights (Monday-Friday) in four separate counties and an airplane.

This is an adventure.

Entschuldigung bei Ogden Nash

Das Konfekt
ist perfekt
aber man will sterben
mit Bourbon.

The cross-language rhyme of the second line occurred to me while I was waking up, and I had to run with it.

My bike is dead. Long live my bike!

I'm building up a 1984 Centurion Elite RS frame. The threading for the bottom bracket's a little worn, so I'm not predicting this'll get me through, oh, September of 2009, but it's nice what ten dollars and four hours of swearing at bike components can do for you.

The dishing on the rear wheel's a little funky, as are the spokes. Also, the seatpost creaks. And I don't have my rear brake set up yet. Or fenders.

Still, it's ridable, which is more than I thought was going to be possible late into the afternoon.

Now I'm working on a name.

And plowing through the back pages of the Futility Closet. Oh good, another thing that sucks up my spare time.

Eulogy

My bike is trashed.

There's a crack in the top tube--brought on my the stress I impart to the frame--and, unnoticed, it has been spreading and spreading in a circle around the tube. And I wondered why it was creaking so... It's about 85% of the way around. I noticed it today on the way to work. If the top tube failed in transit, it would probably have hurt me a lot. I love my bike. I will miss my bike. But I'm glad I found out it was broken the easy way, and not on my twenty-five mile ride of two weeks ago, or my drunken hill sprint of last night, or the forty-mile ride I was going to take in two days.

It gave me what it had to give, and now I will ruthlessly strip it down to components and rebuild around another frame. Which was this bike's genesis--my cranks, gears, stem, headset, and rims are from the bike before that. I'd be tempted to call this my Neurath boat, but a frame failure is not something I can really rebuild in transit.

Rhetorical Device is, as always, apt.

I remember it in building, I remember hauling it across the country, and I am thankful it took me to every street in a mile radius of my house, and more than half the streets in the city. It built my calves and whetted my appetite for long-distance bike travel. It will live on.

Requiescat in pace.

I rode to Davenport today—coastal route 1, beautiful scenery, light traffic (heading out of town at eight in the morning is a good idea), little bothersome wind, and something I think was a bobcat.

My little skinny-tire single speed is becoming more and more dear to me. Even though I made it through the whole ride uneventfully and then tore a valve stem off topping off my tires at the bike shop next to where I work. The more practice I have fixing flats, though, the less of a bother it’ll be when it happens at the side of the road. And it probably will and some point.

21.5 miles from 8:05 to 9:55. At that rate (plus some stops) it would take me eight hours to get the eighty-odd miles from Santa Cruz to San Francisco. Today will end up being my first twenty-five mile day—possibly more than I’ve biked some weeks—so there’s a way to go on the training front. Before I end up trying that, I’ll need some synthetic socks. And, yes, bike shorts of some fashion. Next step: my house to the San Mateo county line past Waddell Creek? That’s thirty-eight miles there and back, give or take…

[Slightly later edit. I’ll need vast quantities of food to do so. I cannot stop eating at the moment.]

...and in the three weeks since that last post, I've biked over a hundred miles, all within two, two and a half miles of my house.

Biking Santa Cruz update: I've biked ~99% of the streets within a mile of my house and probably 75% within a mile and a half. It's getting harder and harder for me to get to places from my house that I haven't been to yet. Seem some interesting things, but my body (and bike) are hanging in there despite the hills.

Of course, I have my own reasons for obsessive amounts of biking. Add to this the fact that my dog died this morning. RIP Mickey.

For no sane reason...

I just biked up Western Drive...in the middle of the night because it was there.

Of course, now I'm shaky and nauseated. And my fingers, neck, and lower back are sore.

But I biked from sea level up to the USCS arboretum on my single-speed without stopping. Gotta be a couple hundred feet, anyway. [Edit: Research tells me I went about 320 vertical feet up in a mile and a half. That's only halfway to upper campus. Better keep trainin'.]

God, I'm going to hurt in the morning. I hurt now.

Mourning.

I'm undergoing a pretty big change right now--the reasons I had for being where I am are being taken away. Perhaps that's too cruel--maybe those reasons weren't particularly hardy to begin with, say--but right now I do feel somewhat adrift.

Still writing, though. And my binoculars came, though I haven't had much time to use them of late.

Everyone's warm regards have been incredibly helpful.

Cheers.

There have been...issues with internet access.

Nevertheless, I am fascinated with Nick's new project. I do adore the pokings-around in natural places sprouting up in otherwise built-up locations. I just like knowing my surroundings in a more complete way--schematic maps and road maps are just so incomplete.

Also, I'm a fan of birding, and will be able to do more of that once my binoculars arrive from Kansas.

Alternate-day posting comes to a near-crashing halt.

Closing Friday, opening Saturday, loads of biking and bike-tricking-out...and I am beat.

Today I wrote nothing. But I did swap a bike chain out on my lunch break.

I love the internet.

Stalactites and stalagmites? Oh, that's so yesterday. Seriously, it's nice to see other people interested in the same random thing, even if no one seems to know why there's a difference. Merriam-Webster tells me the words date back to New Latin in the 1660s or 1670s, and so they were probably coined for someone's science research...but my inclination to look wanes beyond that.

Which is a good thing, really, since I've been distracted by sketch comedy.

Icicles

Been tinkering with the old and tinkering with the new, and came across the odd fact that Czech apparently has two words for icicle, neither of which is etymologically related to the word for ice. There's one from a word possibly meaning "drip" or "flow," and another related to the word "roof."

That got me thinking about the English word icicle, which seemed odder to me the more I looked at it. -icle is familiar to me as a Latinate diminuitive suffix (test-, veh-, etc.) but ice isn't a Latinate word, it's Germanic.

Turns out, according to Merriam-Webster, that the -icle part comes from Middle English ikel from Old English gicel, meaning icicle; cognate to a German ihilla with the same meaning that's no longer extant in Modern German, which has, if I'm not mistaken, Eiszapf "ice-spike."

So somehow English ended up with a Latin-seeming but very Germanic word for icicle that means "ice-icicle." Presumably the -ikel lost some of the semantics of icicle itself and was strengthened by the first "ice." I suppose I would guess that it was due to interference from the Latin suffix that confused me.

Next post: how did stalactite and stalagmite end up with their roof-floor differentiations in meaning, since they're from the same damn Greek verb?

Another Godforsaken Translation Update

I've scrabbled my way through another three thousand transcribed words of Mr. Mundstock. Twenty more handwritten pages to go--both sides--maybe twelve thousand words in total.

I've reformatted a whole load of fables (why didn't I do it properly to begin with? I must love three-key commands to center and right-justify) and edited maybe half the understories. (I still hate that decision, though I do like the way these stories are coming together. Undertales? Sub-stories? Fairy tale-lets?)

I'm drawing up plans for Almanac, and poking around with a bit of handwritten translation there, while resisting the urge to get bogged down in planning my own Hipster PDA.

This [title] is not true [for me the day I posted it. It is a good read, however.

Progress?

Progress. The rust is coming off the wheels. I'm editing Capek fables, transcribing Fuks' Mundstock, and drawing up crazy plans for a calendar-cycle collection of Capek's for 2009. And then another for 2010. Maybe.

I can't be thinking about soup right now.

STATUS REPORT:

Fuks:

Burner of Corpses. Farthest along. Revised multiple times. Still needs work. The self-indulgent footnotes could go too. (Anyone ever get through this thing?)
Mr. Theodor Mundstock. Version one handwritten. Probably four-sevenths typed up.
The Way to the Promised Land. Transcribed. No thorough editing.
My Black-Haired Brothers. Transcribed. At least one major overhaul. Haven't touched it otherwise since December of '06.
Death of a Guinea Pig. Oh right now I'm not even sure.


Čapek:

Fables and Undertales: version 1 online. Editing proceeding sporadically.
Almanac Faint scribblings. Perhaps a next project? A premature assessment. Why would I even think of a new project right now?

I'm sure it's a fairly common thing, but on some levels I'm very common.

This blog's up out of semi-retirement to wish one and all a happy Leap Day.

Everyone enjoy their March 0th.

New 2008 project.

Resolutions, incremental actions, and all that. I'll update it until it's done. I think it's the first time this has ever been done in English. Well, for a theoretically large audience, anyway.

Two momentous bar-going birthday parties in three days, the latter on Christmas.

I'm taking a bit of a break.

Thought I'd post once in December. No real content here, move along.

My Slavicist hobby continues...

I've recently read my first book in Slovak, and think it would make for an excellent translation into English.

Granted, "The Old Man and the Ocean" is a bit of a clunky title, and "Ernest Hemingway" doesn't seem like a Slovak name, but it was a compelling read nevertheless.

New hobby: trying to learn things about Sorbian!

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

...oh, is that all?

One earthquake under my belt, anyway. Well, one California one.

Pro pána krále!

Burner of Corpses was just over one hundred and thirty pages. I translated a first draft in nine and a half months. Six pages was probably my maximum for any one day.

I've done that amount of new writing in the last seventeen days. Twenty-eight more pages to go. I think I can be done in the next forty-eight hours.

Pan Theodor Mundstock

So this novel, Fuks' first, had been the bane of my existence.

Not really, but it certainly was a non-starter.

I tried a hand at it in October 2005, after I got done transcribing Burner of Corpses. Got a few pages into it.

Didn't pick it up again until October 2006. Did maybe a page, couldn't even make my way out of the first chapter. I put it on my to-do list for 2007 back in January, after a whole lot of other stuff (The Way to the Promised Land, some reading, lots of transcribing.) Did the aforementioned stuff, and then stalled.

Wrote part of one sentence on August 17. Part of the same sentence on August 19. Finished the sentence on September 1st. Managed to hack my way into Chapter 3--twenty-four pages, all told--right before I moved.

I picked it up again a week and a half ago, figuring if I did a page and a half a day I might get done by the end of the calendar year. But then it became my job for four hours a day. Eighty pages done since last Monday--eighty pages in eleven days. Forty-seven of those since Monday morning. That's four days. I've broken my own record for productivity, I think, five or six times, and certainly all four days this work week, and am about to write through my second pen.

Seventy-eight pages to go. If I keep this pace up, I'll have done a quarter of everything I've thus far translated in three weeks' time.

Wow.

"Instantly there was a racket that sounded to the keen ears of the bloodhound like a police dog being forcibly dressed in women's clothes by a leopard, and that is precisely what it was."

James Thurber, Further Fables For Our Time.


I love Thurber, and not just because of The Thirteen Clocks He's strongly reminiscent of Čapek. Except less horticulturally inclined, I suppose, but no one's perfect.

In California, unemployed, translating up a storm, &c.

We don't know where we're landing yet, but we're definitely taking the leap. Random errands and packing today.

Montpelier--->Burlington today.
Burlington--->Ann Arbor (we think) tomorrow.

And points west.

Sorry if I've been hard to get ahold of. It's going to get slightly harder (goodbye my cell phone). I'm gonna keep writing, both for myself and for others.

To work.

Pan Theodor Mundstock

I translated originals for the first time in over five months today, rattling off a couple of pages of Pan Theodor Mundstock, and did some editing on a collection of short stories I finished transcribing, oh, a year ago?

Progress is being made. I'd like to have edited and formatted versions of the two collections of short stories, as well as a second computer draft of the novella I've just finished. All while continuing to chip away at the largest project I've yet undertaken.

This illustrates some of the problem of a massive quixotic project composed of several slightly-less massive projects running in parallel. And highlights the important fact that you really can't do multiple things at once.

No way out but through, however. We'll see what September brings.

Wheat and chaff

Casting a ruthless eye to one's library, especially in the light of a very long move, leads to some interesting discussions. What complicates things is that there are two conversations at work--what can I get rid of wholesale (and the concomitant question of "how?"), there is also "what can I take with me?" The results have been...interesting. Mostly it's a matter of giving up, grudgingly, some side interests. I don't need seven books right now on German, I need an actual desire to learn to read German.

I need one translation project text and that's it. In May of 2005 I was translating Czech with a book, my dictonary, a red pen, and the back of an e-ticket confirmation in the Vienna airport. (I still have those integrated into the notebook I'd run out of space in, naturally.) I don't now need three Čápek plays, say, even if they are Czech postwar editions, even if one is R.U.R, which I might want to read at some stage, it's just distraction. I hope this streamlining is good for productivity. (Now, don't think I'm trashing these other texts, oh no. They'll be kept.)

I guess the more I look at it, the more it's how many books I take with me, versus how many I leave behind, with an eye, to borrow a phrase, towards radical parcimony. I'm even toying (halfheartedly) with the idea of leaving my giant Czech dictionaries at home, though that would leave me at the mercy of the Internet for my word-finding needs. I might even leave some Fuks behind. That's unlikely too, but this feels like a healthy streamlining instead of a purge.

Ten more days of work.

EDIT: I think I can get everything I want to take with me, books-wise, into a single paper box. It's hurt, and it will hurt, but there's a lot of good in there. Nick, heads up that you may be getting another box of mailed books, if you're so inclined.

Finished with two things...

I put in three and a half weeks' notice at the job today, and then came home, and, after some desultory packing, finished transcribing The Way to the Promised Land . Two short story collections, the novel, and now this novella. About 160,000 words, all told.

It's a start.

If it weren't for punctuated equi,li?bri;um...

I was going to follow that title up with "there'd be no equilibrium at all" but then realized that didn't make sense. It's the equilibrium-rupturing what's important. It's the punctation that's important, for many reasons besides separating us from the e e cummingses of the world.

I'm nine thousand words into an August transcribing jag. ( The Way to The Promised Land emerges from an inchoate state) Three months of negotiations with management have left me itching to take on a landlord who is acting both childlishly and illegally tomorrow. The lease is up in three weeks, and California beckons shortly after.

So how much can I get done before then?

To work.

You know those Germans...

So evidently the middle English had a word for Prussia, a variant of the then-Middle French Pruce (currently Prusse, if my high-school French hasn't mouldered away completely). This variant was Spruce.

Whence the name of the genus of tree (whose leaves provide an emergency source of Vitamin C), and (I am given to understand) the verb and adjective, after an apparently trim and tidy "Spruce leather." Those Germans were stereotyped for their meticulous cleanliness even then, it seems.

I'm seven thousand words in to August's transcribing binge, and brought my Czech-English dictionary home from work, where it had languished lo these several months.

I daresay I'm sprucing my writing up a bit.

UE 203 contract negotiations finished--ratification on Monday!

So I've been engaged in contract negotiations: what are our rights and protections as a union? How much money's on the table, and how do we spread it around?

After three and a half hours on Tuesday and Wednesday, almost seven on Thursday (until 11:30) and then another six yesterday (9-3) we finally hammered out a tentative agreement. It's a two year contract, we kept fully-funded single-premium health care for the life of the contract, and got some nice raises this year, and at least cost-of-living increases (if not more) for those who stick around.

Ugh. Trying to revise and update a seven-tier wage scale with a bunch of different steps with people placed on those steps in different ways back when it was a different scale the year before and trying to figure out contract language to deal with all the random situations people have worked their way into.

But we had a good committee, and no one has to deal with this for another 21 months or so. Now we just sit around and watch the daily machinations of store life show us where all the loopholes are.

It's good to be done.

A second post?

Well, it is a day off now after all. After some interesting-ish bouts with productivity, I may have inadvertently stumbled on a way to get some things done.

My afternoon:

1-2:50. Internet-based wasteland. Although I supposed I did archive a bunch of e-mail. Better strike that second sentence and refer to the first.
2:45. Mix small vodka tonic. Add ice. Have preliminary sip.
2:46-3:05. Shave, clean bathroom, make bed, shake out dog bed, wash dishes, put away dishes, rinse recyclable bottles, wipe down counter, finish getting dressed, hang up some clothes.
Now: Back to computer, lightly sipping drink.

This seems like something it would be easy to abuse (jusht one more and then I'll shweep the kitshen, I shwear!) but it seems to be working so far.

Yes, it's a worthless blog post, but it's something, and that, I feel, must be better than the nothing that was up here. Hmm. Maybe I can type a thousand words before my ice melts...

Apologies and explanations...

To Jef and Jesse, I offer apologies for the lack of a letter. It's been a good summer, but times have been trying of late, what with the increasing stress of negotiations and the summer thunderclap that was the death of an old friend which has hit me harder than I would have thought possible.

I cannot write more right now. Nevertheless, I remain optimistic. My grandmother would have told me that everything would look better after a good night's sleep. And I look to get up swinging in the morning.

Ars longa, vita breva and all that.

To work.

Let's try something

You write me a comment and I'll mail a letter within two weeks of getting your address. The catch: you'll have to send something back within two weeks of getting something.

Also, am struggling with productivity on the Czech front. But one thing at a time.

First the cell phone...

...and now I have my own MacBook too. Mmmmmm, laptop-y goodness. I'm trying to integrate all my writing projects (like the ones I've posed piecemeal to this blog) into nicely organized Scrivener files. (Nick, do you have the full version? Is it worth it?) and beginning to try to conceive of hosting some of my increasing collection of Fuksiana online.

Also, random music uploading and my third Finnish lesson. I suppose I must loves me my adessive case, but I mean, come on. Finnish has such a multiplicity of these things and the adessive has to be a locative "on" case, the instrumental, and the basis for indicating possession (no verb "to have") all at once? And if I have to say Mannerheimintiellä (On Mannerheim Avenue) one more time....

If I...

If I awoke on New Year's Day as the Lord God--no, wait, that wouldn't work, the Lord God doesn't sleep--then if I awoke on New Year's Day as St. Peter, I would say: "What should I do this year for those irascible Czechoslovaks? They are such heretics, and sometimes--blast them--entirely ungrateful; but there must be some good in them. I think that their weather is too extreme; maybe that is why they are so cantankerous and stubborn. It is hot and stormy in the summer, so they grumble irritably; in the winter it's so freezing that everyone thinks only of themselves, acting like icicles to others. The climate does that. And so they don't like anything; winter is too cold and summer too hot; if something is black, it is too black for them, and if something is white, it is too white for them; never in their life is anything just right. They are accustomed to this from this weather of theirs. Wait just a moment, you tricksters, I'll show you; I'll grant you a nice bit of summer, like by the seaside; I'll give you mild winters, with snow, naturally, a little bit of snow is a good thing, and comfortable summers with sun and plenty of moisture--it would be deviltry if I didn't alter it for you. If you were milder to yourselves, your weather would be nicer; but if you don't want to start yourselves, I will do it for you. Let the Lord God help you in the New Year!

If I awoke on New Year's Day as prime minister, I would wonder greatly at that and stoke my chin, at a loss. (Aha, I would say, I have to shave.) When after a while I got used to the miraculous change in my existence, I would stay in bed for a few more minutes, as I had done hitherto as an ordinary citizen, but I wouldn't go back to sleep. I would ponder. "My word, we have the anniversary of the republic to do this year. I know what; I'll call the ministries together and say: "Boys, last year we presided over the monument to Austria; this year we have to preside over the monument to the Republic. Look, we have to put things together somehow; left and right camps, it's for the birds; the republic, it's like--a circle; how can there be a left and right wing of a circle?" Then a number of other arguments would occur to me, but I would put those off until the ministries arrive; then I would get up, making sure--for luck in the new year--that I got up on the right foot.

If I awoke on New Year's Day as the Lord Mayor of the city of Prague, I would gaze a while into the far future and then I would say: "It seems to me that that that Čapek is right; they really should have started in with that green ring around Prague. When I imagine those beautiful lanes...and the clearings for the children...and little groves here and there...well then, let's get to it."

If I awoke on New Year's Day as a millionaire and a man of the ruling class, I would say: "It's already 'twenty-eight? God, how time flies! Ah well, this year I've got to do something with my money, got to set something up in memory of or establish something, as long as it's worthwhile. It's worth some thought, but the money will be there; we will take care of that.

If I awoke on New Year's Day as a twenty year-old, I'd turn over to the other side and keep sleeping; I'd have lots to think about after New Year's Eve.

If I awoke on New Year's Eve as my puppy, I would scratch myself a bit with my back leg (having some disorderly flea on the nape of my neck) and then I would say: "This year I won't anger my master any more, I will go outside nicely, I won't scatter bones on the stairs, I will keep clean, I won't sleep on the couch, I won't run through every row in the garden. For that I would receive a cube of sugar and be immeasurably overjoyed with life.

/1928/

Karel Čapek, Almanac (posthumous collection of short writings)

It has been brought to my attention...

that my earlier post's tone may have been a bit on the confusing side.

I wasn't originally thrilled with the horribleness of Simmons' offer, but had a series of good conversations with a number of people. I accepted but deferred to the fall of 2008. This opens up options to look around--one of my new goals may be URI's library program, with its regional New England tuition. Also, it probably behooves me greatly to volunteer at libraries and look at scholarships and that sort of thing.

So Boston not so much in the foreseeable future, and maybe not at all--but that's probably for the best.

As for the moving, I've moved across town and in with someone. We're here through the summer, and then we'll see where we get taken.

It's good that the first has finally come; the mania of writing and deciding and moving was uplifting, yet draining.

Punctuated equilibrium, punctuated thoughts

I will not be attending Simmons in the fall; I am deferring. Not that I've done that yet. Though it needs to be in their hands by the end of the week. (This is not a Bad Thing; it is money-related, and hopefully opens doors for me to go work in libraries and research my options and apply for scholarships. Hell, I got into one of the best programs in the country, so I still have that going for me.)

I am planning a garden. Radishes will abound. So will weeds, probably. We shall see if I start anything from seed. I should do it soon. Peppers, maybe?

After a month's hiatus, I started translating again. Thirty-eight days straight of productivity later, I have finished another first draft. (This probably has something to do with my blogging absence--I was scared of jinxing the streak) I am up to a novel, a novella, and two collections of short stories. 150,000 words, maybe, since November of 2004. I don't want to lose my short-term momentum. I guess the editing pen must come out again.

I'm on the negotiations committee at work for full-contact, full-contract negotiations. Preliminary meetings are a bitch.

Finnish? Better not ask. (Damn, those lessons are expensive--I've only taken two, and am having fun, but haven't the time to study vocabulary. Or haven't been making enough time.)

I'm moving at the end of the week, too.

As easy as yksi, kaksi, kolme...

It's been a positive week. Light travel (mainly to see kin), lots of sitting around writing (getting back into the translating thing, hope my first-quarter deadlines for Andrew's Czech studies can be met), lots of nice, relaxing time...

And I started my private Finnish lessons today, occasional semi-outrageous expense be damned.

Now I just wish there were a Finnish etymological dictionary within several hundred miles of here. Not that I have a tendency to get ahead of myself or anything.

Näkemiin,

"Dear Andrew,

It is my pleasure to inform you that the Admission Committee for the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Simmons College has admitted you to the master's degree program for fall 2007."

So there's that, at least. Also, I'm on vacation for a week, and there's two feet of snow on the ground. It's been quite the last few days.

Revitalized

Nuts to all that 2 am nonsense. I'm taking the Finnish lessons (we're working on scheduling), and though I spilled a drink in my bag, causing the cheap fountain pen ink to run an inch at the centerline on my first draft of "The Way to The Promised Land," I'm off to the coffeeshop now to begin reconstructive work.

Oh, plus, I did the Penguin Plunge again. Lessee if I can rustle up any pictures.

Not a good line of thought to be having at two in the morning...

"Anyway, I was reading this arcane edition of this rather arcane mediaeval book, and I looked up, and suddenly I realised that the literary world in which I was immersed bore no relation to the one around me. It wasn't just that it was old. If I'd been reading Hamlet there might have been one or two people in the carriage who could relate. Sometimes you see pretty UCL or Goldsmith's girls reading Eliot and the like. Vergil, Beowulf, Chaucer, fine. But Reynard the Fox? At that moment I felt trapped, as if in a bubble or cocoon. I was overcome with the utter irrelevance of my intellectual life."

Italics mine. From this VUnEx post.

Replace "Reynard the Fox" with "translations of Ladislav Fuks and musings about private introductory Finnish lessons" and we're where I am right now. I would try to be defiantly proud, but that would just seem to be more isolating.

Ach běda mi!

Quick question...

I sign up to take private Finnish lessons, even if they're somewhat expensive, right? I mean, money spent on education and all...

A short referát--Myši Natálie Mooshabrové

I am finally making more of a good-faith effort to read my collection of Fuks, both as a way to assimilate his oeuvre prepatory to future translation efforts and just as an attempt to keep myself in Czech input. I can stil read, and, from what I can tell by talking to myself, my spoken skills aren't going away as quickly as I might fear.

I've recently read 1970's Myši Natálie Mooshabrové, (Natálie Mooshabrová's Mice). It's a change of pace thematically for me, as there is no perspective on the encroaching Holocaust, (as in My Black-Haired Brothers, Burner of Corpses, The Way to the Promised Land, and parts of Death of a Guinea Pig). The sense of horror and alienation in a confusing and ill-defined world remains, however. We are placed somewhere in a great Czech-speaking city, a sort of alternate Prague, fleshed out only with a few almost-real placenames, in a world where flights to the moon are becoming commonplace. Even people's names add to the disorientation--the title character's long dead husband was called Medard Mooshaber and their children are Wezr and Nabule. The police drop in unannounced, every civil servant in the city is evidently independently preparing a Dies irae, strange things occur in the cemetery Natálie works in, seedy characters appear and dissapear, and the crowds in the streets gather for a reckoning and a long-practiced requiem. (I don't normally talk like this, do I?)

And this is about all anyone will get to read of it in English for some time, unless someone picks this up as a project before me, which I simultaneously would embrace and fear; it's a lengthy work, and a bit farther down on my translating list, after the novella I'm currently working on, and then his first novel, Mr. Theodor Munstock. I mean, it's not like there's just a Czech version; I've definitely found Hungarian and German translations, and there might be an Italian--I've seen it referenced by name, at any rate. Maybe 2009 or 2010, the way I've been going, for a second draft?

Follies of scheduling.

It must have seemed like a good idea six months ago when I was at the dentist's, scheduling this morning's appointments. 8 am on a Monday's perfect, right? It's not as if I knew i'd be taking a job which required me to work until nearly midnight.

Three hours' sleep? Severe wind chill advisory? A half-hour walk uphill? I am there. Ah, the things we do in the name of oral hygiene.