![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wenn der Schnee ans Fenster fällt
Jan. 10th, 2007 11:59 pm
Currently at UW: -7.9. High today: -4.9. Low this morning: -13.8. So, winter. How about that. Supposed to be back to ten degrees above normal on Friday, though. Today was a bit below normal; the first below-normal day in over a month, I guess.
This is the second time this cold season that it's decided to be winter, and the second time that I'm surprised by the fact that I like it. Snow on the ground makes the world seem more gentle, somehow. Certainly more quiet. When I was a kid, the only time the neighbours would ever talk to you when you walked by was when they were out shovelling their drives.
I am pleased to report that teaching still can and does make me euphoric. I was getting a bit worried there for a while, where by "a bit" I mean "desperately", by "worried" I mean "terrified", and by "a while" I mean "years".
Not only euphoric but cheerful, even, almost. And tired. (But it was, after all, Plato, today. And Aristotle, but mostly Plato. (An Interesting Fact I learned today: the earliest extant manuscript of Aristotle's Politics is from the 11th century, and it's in Latin.) On the way up, I saw a guy on the TTC bus reading a textbook that looked just like ours, and he was reading something by Aristotle, and I thought he was one of my students, and then I realized that the text wasn't exactly like ours--which reminded me of the great round of life in philosophy: the year begins everywhere with Plato, and then moves on to Aristotle, some twice as fast and some twice as fast again; in January, some chime in from the beginning with Plato....)
I was saying to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
fascinet the other day that I'm too unambitious to be all that worried about never getting a tenure-track job, but my little taste of life on contract so far has rammed home one reason life on the tenure track would be vastly preferable: I still feel homeless. Last term, I was sleeping under a bridge; this term, I've moved into a shelter. Or I'm sleeping on someone's couch, or something. (There's a computer in "my office"--for which I have to sign out a key for my office hours--that has wallpaper of someone's kids.)
I am also pleased to report that I liked "Tempests", a lot, even though I read it over a number of days. The ending killed me, especially when she says she'll wait an hour(--"and see if that small, sailing cloud will hit the moon. It hit the moon." What makes it all the better is that you can see exactly what's coming for so long. Which reminds me of something I'd meant to say I like about McCarthy: he tells you that something terrible is going to happen in such a nonchalant way that you shudder and then wonder whether he really means it, but of course he does.)
This is the second time this cold season that it's decided to be winter, and the second time that I'm surprised by the fact that I like it. Snow on the ground makes the world seem more gentle, somehow. Certainly more quiet. When I was a kid, the only time the neighbours would ever talk to you when you walked by was when they were out shovelling their drives.
I am pleased to report that teaching still can and does make me euphoric. I was getting a bit worried there for a while, where by "a bit" I mean "desperately", by "worried" I mean "terrified", and by "a while" I mean "years".
Not only euphoric but cheerful, even, almost. And tired. (But it was, after all, Plato, today. And Aristotle, but mostly Plato. (An Interesting Fact I learned today: the earliest extant manuscript of Aristotle's Politics is from the 11th century, and it's in Latin.) On the way up, I saw a guy on the TTC bus reading a textbook that looked just like ours, and he was reading something by Aristotle, and I thought he was one of my students, and then I realized that the text wasn't exactly like ours--which reminded me of the great round of life in philosophy: the year begins everywhere with Plato, and then moves on to Aristotle, some twice as fast and some twice as fast again; in January, some chime in from the beginning with Plato....)
I was saying to
fascinet the other day that I'm too unambitious to be all that worried about never getting a tenure-track job, but my little taste of life on contract so far has rammed home one reason life on the tenure track would be vastly preferable: I still feel homeless. Last term, I was sleeping under a bridge; this term, I've moved into a shelter. Or I'm sleeping on someone's couch, or something. (There's a computer in "my office"--for which I have to sign out a key for my office hours--that has wallpaper of someone's kids.)I am also pleased to report that I liked "Tempests", a lot, even though I read it over a number of days. The ending killed me, especially when she says she'll wait an hour(--"and see if that small, sailing cloud will hit the moon. It hit the moon." What makes it all the better is that you can see exactly what's coming for so long. Which reminds me of something I'd meant to say I like about McCarthy: he tells you that something terrible is going to happen in such a nonchalant way that you shudder and then wonder whether he really means it, but of course he does.)
