Slight perspective for a frog in a well
8 hours of quality time with Gudai Hanyu Cidian is only 2/3 of 12 hours.
I went to bed at 6:30 this morning and then went to class clutching my ant colony (cross-section) of notes. Prof. O only went over the bones of it and left to meet YYM, the brand name cellist. His name reminds me of the zipper empire YYK.
Tomorrow, another famous scholar is coming in to take over the class and I haven't read 1% of what I should have. It's been a double-dosing kind of week and I just want to sleep. And it'll rage on for the next 2-3 weeks without stopping to let the horse have water or freshen its coat. I just want to move house to the rented thatched roofs of the High Tang and write my own cliched cleverness about rustic living and embracing the Dao in my middle years. Except I'm not a semi-retired minister with a thick pension and penchant for wringing out perfect regulated verse like Wang Wei. And though I want to give the moon neverending variations on a name, I do not imbibe nearly enough liquid of any kind to be as taken with non-life as Taibai. And I know too well the embarrassing pitfalls in trying to imitate Du Fu, erroneously coronated absolute master of verse, as per the nodding consensus among bearded literati throughout the ages.
So, what to do? Sleep seems the sensible thing. Gosh, I miss not having this chronic unclarity of throat.
On the other hand, it's been like old times (young college times) looking up at the trees whilst walking around. The reds, yellows, greens, and browns of the leaves I pressed and steadily misplaced years ago are renewed. It's comforting and sad in that Tang poetry sense that in this murky world of troubles on a grand scale, there are still things happening as natural and regular as leaves turning, leaving. Now.
I went to bed at 6:30 this morning and then went to class clutching my ant colony (cross-section) of notes. Prof. O only went over the bones of it and left to meet YYM, the brand name cellist. His name reminds me of the zipper empire YYK.
Tomorrow, another famous scholar is coming in to take over the class and I haven't read 1% of what I should have. It's been a double-dosing kind of week and I just want to sleep. And it'll rage on for the next 2-3 weeks without stopping to let the horse have water or freshen its coat. I just want to move house to the rented thatched roofs of the High Tang and write my own cliched cleverness about rustic living and embracing the Dao in my middle years. Except I'm not a semi-retired minister with a thick pension and penchant for wringing out perfect regulated verse like Wang Wei. And though I want to give the moon neverending variations on a name, I do not imbibe nearly enough liquid of any kind to be as taken with non-life as Taibai. And I know too well the embarrassing pitfalls in trying to imitate Du Fu, erroneously coronated absolute master of verse, as per the nodding consensus among bearded literati throughout the ages.
So, what to do? Sleep seems the sensible thing. Gosh, I miss not having this chronic unclarity of throat.
On the other hand, it's been like old times (young college times) looking up at the trees whilst walking around. The reds, yellows, greens, and browns of the leaves I pressed and steadily misplaced years ago are renewed. It's comforting and sad in that Tang poetry sense that in this murky world of troubles on a grand scale, there are still things happening as natural and regular as leaves turning, leaving. Now.
posted by greenyew at 8:51 PM
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