Train Wreck

I have not died, but I’ve been keeping pretty busy staying sick and even making plans to. So far this year there’s been a septoplasty, pleurisy, pneumonia, bronchitis, various lesser infections, migraine after migraine, and now I get to have a biopsy next week to make sure I don’t have some form of cancer (they don’t think so; they’re just checking), and then abdominal surgery. We are not talking laparoscopy here. We are talking big gut pain. I will be out of commission from whenever I have that (sometime in June) until around August or so. This is getting ridiculous.

The good news is that Kaye is practically retired. She just has the second summer session to go and then she’s free at last. She had a small party (she requested no party, but got a surprise party with just a few friends, and was flabbergasted, mortified and delighted) Saturday with some very good friends, whom she’s known longer than she’s known me, which is getting up there. Here’s the part I find hilarious: she got a brick on the brickyard at State. It gives her name, her department, says “Thanks!” and gives her dates of service. I don’t know if I have to go polish the brick (wherever it is) and observe a moment of silence every year or what. Her department was very generous and kind, and I’m glad to think they appreciate what Kaye’s done. She isn’t tenure-track, but she does lots of little things. Her students love her. I think her colleagues like her – I know some of them love her, anyway. She’s been there longer than anyone else in the department except one person who came in the same semester that she did. So congratulations, Kaye!

I feel very grateful to have her with me when she is so well-liked. I mean, what’s she doing with me? :p Look at the people she had to choose from.

So I’ll be sporadic through August, but I’ll be here when I can.

Studying the Guitar

I’m hoping to begin guitar lessons next month. It’s really prohibitively expensive, but (potentially) priceless. And I’d do it on a month-to-month basis, so if I don’t like it or start living on couscous, I can bail. It’s just these four nice guitars I have staring at me, and twenty years of music I’ve bought – and sometimes learned – with the idea that sooner or later, I’d have time for it. When I was programming, I didn’t have time for it. Sometimes I went in at 6:00 AM and left at 11:00 PM. Once, I even got called at home at 11:30 PM after working until 11:00. The message was waiting for me when I got home. Grad school and teaching didn’t leave me with loads of free time, either. Now I have loads of free time and am overwhelmed by all my choices. I don’t expect much sympathy here. But I think I need guidance to move from classical to folk guitar.

Of course, my mother said that I was just always starting new things and never finishing them. I beg to differ (yes, we’ve been down this road before) – who comes up with the finish lines? I can read English better because of having studied French, Spanish and Italian, however sporadically. The cognates help with the words I’ve never seen before (mostly these came up in a few of the “Play for Rice” questions). That’s not nothing. All learning is good, if sometimes painful. I may never be able to speak these languages – and that’s never been my goal: I want to be able to read them and maybe understand them. My mother knows nothing about living in the moment. Funny, I talk to a former teacher who’s now a friend, and she always encourages my ventures. There’s never any of this “What happened to your conversion to Judaism?” or whatever. I learned something going to Temple. I learned a lot trying to piece things together. I could whine on, but I just want to say in really big font:

I DON’T HAVE TO BECOME AN EXPERT AT SOMETHING FOR STUDYING IT TO BE WORTHWHILE!

Is this a mother thing, or did I just get lucky? If she had her way in this wicked world, I’d do one thing for my entire life. Rant over. For now.

I Wonder as I Wander

I talked with my mother this afternoon. I talk with my mother on a more-or-less daily basis. She is willing to take my calls once a day. It sounds worse than it is, I guess. I mean, if I had to listen to me go on about nothing every day, I’d never answer the phone if it could possibly be me. Today, I was going on about the guitar and methods to try to use to learn it. She said, basically, that I start a bunch of things but never finish them. To a certain extent, this is true. To a certain extent, it may be a neurological quirk. Whatever the case, though, it is a characteristic my mother believes I should work to get out of. And, I might add, it is characteristic that she believes it. She is very goal-oriented.

“Say something in Italian,” she says, mocking the fact that I have worked at Italian (to read Dante), Spanish (because it’s everywhere) and French (because I am of French descent, actually have college and graduate credits proclaiming that I should know something, live with a French teacher and am close friends with a French woman). I also went through a short-lived Hebrew phase when I was considering converting to Judaism. That venture is a story in itself. “Ciao,” I said. What’s it to her, I ask, if I shift gears now and then? I’m not a great multitasker. I tend to take to one thing for almost my entire waking hours and really immerse myself in it. I am trying to make myself do at least a bit of this or that unless I have a really good reason not to, but I’m not expecting to win a Nobel or anything at this point. The thing is, my mother hasn’t done anything like play the guitar or learn a foreign language. She went from high school to marriage and business school to motherhood to bookkeeper/secretarial work to college to teaching high school to retirement and remarriage. I’m not saying she didn’t accomplish anything; I’m saying she’s lived a normal life, worked very hard, and kept two kids and a husband under control. Well, I never burned anything down or got arrested, anyway. No one’s had much luck keeping me under control, which is what this is about, I guess.

The fact that I earned a BS, BA and MA mean nothing because I am not using them to make money (because I am disabled). She hasn’t said that, but I think that’s what she thinks. My brother and sister-in-law have said as much. While I did expect to be working after graduation (and I did work – for five years as a programmer and seven as a college freshman composition teacher), I went to college primarily because I like to learn. I had hoped to keep learning and helping others learn.

What I devote my time to now is learning. What I try to do is observe and learn the mechanics of things I appreciate so that I can create something. To me, the observation is at least as important as creation. Anything tangential that comes from it is purely that: tangential. To that end, I’ve played at the Personality Forge building chat-bots and becoming obsessed with how other bots work, am studying and gradually putting into play Internet languages and trying to learn usable programming languages, since what I know won’t get me anywhere in Windows, and I did enjoy programming. I was actually good at it once. I’m working on and off with paints, charcoal, pencil, digital camera and camcorders, guitar (leaving banjo, sax, flute, clarinet, piano and recorders on the back burner due to the passage of time), doing close readings of various literary works as well as reading for knowledge and perspective. (I consider pretty much all reading fun.) I play at chess. I watch movies on DVD, and, once every twenty years or so, I go to a concert.

The thing is, I’ve felt pretty bad about the whole “you can’t do everything” situation since about the time I turned forty. Click here if you want to see a typical self-centered English major take on the situation. Suddenly I realized that time is passing and I’m all over the map. I am working on and culling a lifetime to-do list. But I think my mom, who is a responsible, decent human being – don’t get me wrong (she might read this) – needs to have an itinerary for everything, whereas I start off somewhere and explore. For instance, I might start off with the Arlo concert to reading a book about Woody to learning more about Huntington’s disease. Then I might volunteer some time for an organization about Huntington’s disease. I never know what I’ll be up to from day to day.

But what is life for? I wonder as I wander . . .

Fun with BabelFish

Since I live with a French teacher, many of my acquaintances know as many as five languages and can puzzle out others, so I feel a little out of the loop when they start speaking French. It's particularly disturbing when my name is the only word I can understand. What are they saying about me? I must learn French, Spanish and Italian (to read Dante, mainly) before I die. Anyway, I decided to take a leaf from Mark Twain's book and translate the "Alice's Restaurant" chorus into several different languages and back into English via BabelFish. I found the results amusing:

English:

You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant. You can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant. Walk right in, it’s around the back, just a half a mile from the railroad track, and you can get anything you want at Alice’s restaurant.

English to Spanish:

Usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia. Usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia. La derecha de la caminata adentro, está alrededor del trasero, apenas una mitad de la milla de la pista del ferrocarril, y usted puede conseguir cualquier cosa que usted desea en el restaurante de Alicia.

Spanish to French:

Vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia. Vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia. La droite de la randonnée à l'intérieur, est autour de ce qui est arrière, dès qu'une moitié du mille de la piste de du chemin de fer, et vous pouvez obtenir toute chose que vous souhaitez dans le restaurant d'Alicia.

French to Greek:

Μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia. Μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia. Η δεξιά της εξόρμησης εσωτερικό, είναι γύρω από το οποίο είναι πίσω, μόλις ένα μισό χιλίων της διαδρομής ενός δρόμου του σιδερώματος, και μπορείτε να αποκτήσετε όλο πράγμα που επιθυμείτε μέσα στο εστιατόριο alicia.

Greek to English:

Can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia. Can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia. Right the campaign interior, he is round which he is behind, hardly one of half thousand way of street of ironing, and can acquire all thing that you in wish in the restaurant Alicia.

Loses something, n'est çe pas?