Information takes the place of your dreams
I've had a weird taste in my mouth for the last couple of days. I have a few theories as to why, some more plausible than others.
1) I scraped a layer of cells off my tongue when I ate those salt and vinegar potato chips from Jimmy John's the other day, and now I'm experiencing a similar phenomenon to when you burn your tongue and everything tastes funny. It sounds implausible that I would have scraped a bunch of cells off without feeling it, and my tongue doesn't hurt or anything, but it does seem like the weird taste thing started after I ate that Vito. I'm just saying.
2) I'm coming down with something. This is actually very plausible, since it's the end of the semester and I'm not sleeping well and I'm constantly tired and today my throat hurt. Solution: MORE ORANGE SLUSH. There can never be too much.
3) I have one of those infections that cause bad breath. I hope this isn't the case, because then I really will have to get off my ass and find a dentist in North Carolina I like to help me out.
4) I'm tasting some sort of change in the air. That would be cool, like maybe I'm tasting the weather changing or the lower levels of pollen or something. Maybe I'm turning into a superpower.
Yeah, honestly, I really don't know. I just hope it goes away soon.
So continuing my trend of the last couple of nights of going classical for my poetry, here's one of my favorite elegies by Propertius. Unlike most of his elegies, it has nothing to do with love. It and the following poem are kind of a weird way to end his first book of elegies, but hey, that's just how Sextus Propertius rolls.
'Tu, qui consortem properas euadere casum,
miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae.
sic te seruato possint gaudere parentes:
me soror Acca tuis sentiat e lacrimis,
Gallum, per medios ereptum Caesaris ensis
effugere ignotas non potuisse manus;
et quaecumque super dispersa inuenerit ossa
montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea.'
'You, who hasten to avoid our common misfortune,
a wounded soldier hastening from the Etruscan ramparts,
why do you turn your swollen eyes from my groan?
I am the nearest part of your army.*
So may your relatives rejoice that you're safe;
let my sister Acca know from your tears
that Gallus, delivered through the midst of Caesar's swords
could not get away from some unknown hands;
and whatever bones she finds scattered over the Etruscan mountains,
let her know that these are mine.
*(Or, "I was just now part of your army," depending on whether you take "proxima" as referring to time or space.)
Ed. W. A. Camps
Translation mine
I don't know what it is about that poem I find so memorable, but it's stuck with me for a while now. I think I read it for the first time my sophomore year of college, and for some reason I thought it would make for a cool song if somebody wanted to put it to music and stick it on, like, a folk album or something. Maybe it's the way the "you" has to face Gallus--"Yeah, I know it's unpleasant that I'm dying here, but you owe it to me to look me in the eye." Maybe it's the contrast between the "you"'s relatives, who will be rejoicing, and "you"'s tears when he tells Acca what happened to her brother. Maybe it's the tragic cruelty of fate that got Gallus through Caesar's army only to let him fall to some stranger, maybe someone in his own army who wanted his gear or something like that. Maybe it's the mental image of Acca wandering the hills in the aftermath, searching among the dead for her brother. I don't know--for a short poem, it's been giving me food for thought and emotional reflection for about six years now.
1) I scraped a layer of cells off my tongue when I ate those salt and vinegar potato chips from Jimmy John's the other day, and now I'm experiencing a similar phenomenon to when you burn your tongue and everything tastes funny. It sounds implausible that I would have scraped a bunch of cells off without feeling it, and my tongue doesn't hurt or anything, but it does seem like the weird taste thing started after I ate that Vito. I'm just saying.
2) I'm coming down with something. This is actually very plausible, since it's the end of the semester and I'm not sleeping well and I'm constantly tired and today my throat hurt. Solution: MORE ORANGE SLUSH. There can never be too much.
3) I have one of those infections that cause bad breath. I hope this isn't the case, because then I really will have to get off my ass and find a dentist in North Carolina I like to help me out.
4) I'm tasting some sort of change in the air. That would be cool, like maybe I'm tasting the weather changing or the lower levels of pollen or something. Maybe I'm turning into a superpower.
Yeah, honestly, I really don't know. I just hope it goes away soon.
So continuing my trend of the last couple of nights of going classical for my poetry, here's one of my favorite elegies by Propertius. Unlike most of his elegies, it has nothing to do with love. It and the following poem are kind of a weird way to end his first book of elegies, but hey, that's just how Sextus Propertius rolls.
'Tu, qui consortem properas euadere casum,
miles ab Etruscis saucius aggeribus,
quid nostro gemitu turgentia lumina torques?
pars ego sum uestrae proxima militiae.
sic te seruato possint gaudere parentes:
me soror Acca tuis sentiat e lacrimis,
Gallum, per medios ereptum Caesaris ensis
effugere ignotas non potuisse manus;
et quaecumque super dispersa inuenerit ossa
montibus Etruscis, haec sciat esse mea.'
'You, who hasten to avoid our common misfortune,
a wounded soldier hastening from the Etruscan ramparts,
why do you turn your swollen eyes from my groan?
I am the nearest part of your army.*
So may your relatives rejoice that you're safe;
let my sister Acca know from your tears
that Gallus, delivered through the midst of Caesar's swords
could not get away from some unknown hands;
and whatever bones she finds scattered over the Etruscan mountains,
let her know that these are mine.
*(Or, "I was just now part of your army," depending on whether you take "proxima" as referring to time or space.)
Ed. W. A. Camps
Translation mine
I don't know what it is about that poem I find so memorable, but it's stuck with me for a while now. I think I read it for the first time my sophomore year of college, and for some reason I thought it would make for a cool song if somebody wanted to put it to music and stick it on, like, a folk album or something. Maybe it's the way the "you" has to face Gallus--"Yeah, I know it's unpleasant that I'm dying here, but you owe it to me to look me in the eye." Maybe it's the contrast between the "you"'s relatives, who will be rejoicing, and "you"'s tears when he tells Acca what happened to her brother. Maybe it's the tragic cruelty of fate that got Gallus through Caesar's army only to let him fall to some stranger, maybe someone in his own army who wanted his gear or something like that. Maybe it's the mental image of Acca wandering the hills in the aftermath, searching among the dead for her brother. I don't know--for a short poem, it's been giving me food for thought and emotional reflection for about six years now.