A lot of the lyric poetry we’ve been reading in class deals with how short youth is and how awful being old is. Mimnermus practically says ‘I hope I die before I get old’. Semonides of Amorgos, in the following poem read and translated by Edmund Keeley, takes a somewhat more optimistic approach: when you know that life is short (and this is pretty hard to know, since young people think they will be young and awesome forever), go do fun things. At least that’s how I’m taking it.
The man from Chios called Homer said a beautiful thing:
“The generations of men are like the leaves of a tree.”
Few mortals who’ve heard this take it to heart:
all men carry the hope rooted in their youth.
While mortals are still living in youth’s lovely flowering,
light-headed, their hearts cling to many vain things:
they won’t grow old, they’ll never die,
and being healthy, why give sickness a moment’s thought?
Fools to think that way, they don’t yet know
how quickly time moves for mortals, how short the young days.
But since you know this now that your end is near,
treat yourself entirely to what good things there are.
from Poems Out Loud.
εἴ τι φρονοῖμεν, πλεῖον ἡμέρης μιῆς.
Two things I have learned in two years on Tumblr:
- People on Tumblr are great, and holy crap! I might get to hang out with Tristan IRL!
- When you go scuba diving, do not wear an ill-fitting mask. Otherwise, you might breathe in instead of out when trying to clear the water out of it, and next thing you know, your mask is full of water, you can’t see, and you’re breathing in such a panicked manner your regulator pops out of your mouth and you almost die an ignominious death off the coast of Athens.
Photo from Drag Ball ’09 by Ma’ayan Plaut.
Word is, Drag Ball, Oberlin’s equivalent to a Spring Formal (though we have that too) or a prom, isn’t happening this year due to lack of student interest. This makes me sad.
Although it shows how the students only really care about something when it gets taken away. Drag Balls don’t happen without a lot of hard work, people, so don’t be surprised when very few people put in effort and nothing comes out. You gotta fight. For your right. To paaaaaaar-ty (all decked out in your friend’s dress or suit as the case may be)!
It is funny, the things we get all riled up about.
Am I doing it right?
It is a beautiful day in Chicago today. So naturally I am sat inside an Einstein’s Bagels at the University of Chicago campus while my friend is working at her cancer research lab dissecting mice and saving lives (I seem to have a disproportionate amount of friends in the sciences, in great contrast to the frippery that is the Classics), while I am begrudgingly translating Tyrtaeus (or trying to, but not very hard), and surreptitiously judging the people buying hazelnut lattes.
Now that I’m no longer applying to UCLA or Berkeley because the way their fellowship works precludes me from ever getting any money from them, ever (the prof at Berkeley I wanted to work with called my advisor up and told him that their fellowship depends on you getting California residency after one year, which, as a foreign student, I am never going to get, and I will think of that as the reason they rejected me and not because I don’t know any Latin), U of C is my top choice for grad school when I finish with Vanderbilt.
SPRING BREAK! WHOO!
The best part of watching the Oscars: this Modern Family preview.
Too bad there wasn’t Casablanca on it.
Let’s Explore Ohio Coloring Book (via What Makes The Pie Shops Tick)
One summer I had to go through 30 years’ worth of materials like this. Reading Ohio tourism literature from 1974 is oddly fascinating.
