The final day of class ended without a bang and something of a whimper. Not quite the way you envisioned. I suppose in the old days one would be concerned about the destiny of one's students. Right now that is the last thought in my head and I can't wait for it to get colder so I can make some hot toddy.
At the fruit & veg. shop a man's shopping back split open and out spilled his veg (parsnips and sweet potatoes). He scrambled to pick them up from the floor in one quick movement, his arms trawling the floor for any ones that might have escaped his eagle eye. Standing next to him, in the centre of the shop, was a middle-aged man, puffing away on his cigarette like a chimney. Another man walked in and asked: "Why did you throw the stuff on the floor?". The man took a deep drag of his cigarette and said, in a Zen moment of detachment: "He didn't like the prices."
~~~
At dinner in a trendy 'cafe' Tony told me that his supervisor had told him many years ago that a Ph.D was about knowing everything, knowing everything about nothing.
~~~
Trying to explain to little r what a deadline is. How does one do that? Through abstraction or examples? A general rule or particulars? I tried the latter and then asked her to make up her own example.
She roared, "Scar (from the Lion King, in case you didn't know), says I will kill you, Mufasa, next week."
Er...not bad, r, that's a deadline and a dead lion.
(I can hear Roxana groan at that but Ubo, the specialist in awful jokes, would be quite proud, I'm sure)
~~~
So, here we are, in this dissolving hour, looking at the changing light for a sign, waiting for the world to be drawn down, curve inwards, offer some kind of protection. Gold columns of light filter through stiff leaves, and the road is glazed with a brilliant yellow film of sunlight. The trees, that have withstood so many variations in temperature, climate..extremes and long hours of boredom, seem so densely packed today that you think of them as holding hands.
In the first-light round white globes dance as the stars fade, turn their backs. It's getting there but you want the cold to break you. On the way to school you see a beautiful young woman walking precariously on the grassy island between two busy roads, stylish and self-conscious, her large Sophia Loren glasses the thing that would be picked out in a caricature. You think back to the old man in the Seventh Seal and his scathing comments about how all beauty must fade. True, but while it lasts, let it last.
At the fruit & veg. shop a man's shopping back split open and out spilled his veg (parsnips and sweet potatoes). He scrambled to pick them up from the floor in one quick movement, his arms trawling the floor for any ones that might have escaped his eagle eye. Standing next to him, in the centre of the shop, was a middle-aged man, puffing away on his cigarette like a chimney. Another man walked in and asked: "Why did you throw the stuff on the floor?". The man took a deep drag of his cigarette and said, in a Zen moment of detachment: "He didn't like the prices."
~~~
At dinner in a trendy 'cafe' Tony told me that his supervisor had told him many years ago that a Ph.D was about knowing everything, knowing everything about nothing.
~~~
Trying to explain to little r what a deadline is. How does one do that? Through abstraction or examples? A general rule or particulars? I tried the latter and then asked her to make up her own example.
She roared, "Scar (from the Lion King, in case you didn't know), says I will kill you, Mufasa, next week."
Er...not bad, r, that's a deadline and a dead lion.
(I can hear Roxana groan at that but Ubo, the specialist in awful jokes, would be quite proud, I'm sure)
~~~
So, here we are, in this dissolving hour, looking at the changing light for a sign, waiting for the world to be drawn down, curve inwards, offer some kind of protection. Gold columns of light filter through stiff leaves, and the road is glazed with a brilliant yellow film of sunlight. The trees, that have withstood so many variations in temperature, climate..extremes and long hours of boredom, seem so densely packed today that you think of them as holding hands.
In the first-light round white globes dance as the stars fade, turn their backs. It's getting there but you want the cold to break you. On the way to school you see a beautiful young woman walking precariously on the grassy island between two busy roads, stylish and self-conscious, her large Sophia Loren glasses the thing that would be picked out in a caricature. You think back to the old man in the Seventh Seal and his scathing comments about how all beauty must fade. True, but while it lasts, let it last.
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