Well promises are one thing, and results are also one thing. I've just enumerated two objects to no great end. I've taken on some new duties which have proven both daunting and humbling, a potentially fruitful combination of adjectives I'd wager. The new 'job' (it hardly seems fair to combine 'Writing Assistant' under the same heading as 'Miner' but there's the problem with language down to the bottom!) makes me realize how much I take for granted in my native tongue. Explaining, or pointing out, why a "there" or an "as" is misplaced in a certain context is difficult, especially considering how uncomfortable I am with my own ability to swim in this language English. But it is interesting to see how different peoples' linguistic structures lead them to make different sorts of mistakes. So far the Russians have the most interesting difficulties with the copula and the Polish the most interesting difficulties with the article... I haven't encountered many Asian students yet so I'll report back on that in due time!
I'm on top of the underside of something awful...
A considerable turbulence has erupted in my life combined with a number of smaller ones. Girlfriend troubles combined with thesis troubles have made my calm demeanour less endearing and more of a handicap, for all concerned (and perhaps me especially!).
Play date anyone?
Well I've been killing time reading Kant and breathing air for the first time in a while. Leaving my warren only to find another one. I'm being cryptic but really its like this: I've changed my daily rhythms to fit a new place and now I've changed them again to fit into occupationality. It makes me feel strange and not just because of the late unpleasantness regarding the one I've failed to impress.
Book Club! Get Party!
Well, my Solzhenitsyn practice continues unabated, though perhaps a little slower now that I've dove into Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. A little bit of Nietzsche but read s-l-o-w-l-y this time instead of at the breakneck pace I'm accustomed to. I also picked up and am 30 pages into Philip Roth's already-hilarious book The Great American Novel. I fucking love baseball. In a different life I could have been a baseball scout, or maybe a first base coach. Nothing spectacular but something to hold onto.
And that's all you need. Purchase.
On the acquisition of knowledge
Well this week I've learned to turn a grudge into a gift. And I've learned to judge a life by it's own standards, and to judge those standards sparingly and with a pleasantness I'm trying hard to feign. I'm also experimenting with a form of 'brutal' honesty which hasn't really paid off yet; I think unthinking pleasantries have their place (we can't be creating ourselves every second of the fucking day, and we need to BREATHE).
How neatly you've segmented your life.
And how painful it proves to be.
And a parting shot, from the depths of self-appraisal: