(no subject)
I have here, in my possession, a Steven Pinker book that I plan to devour whole. How a fairly academic book about language and psychology wound up in the local bookstore I don't know, but thank goodness it did, because I was going a bit mad. Mad in the roaming the moors and moaning piteously sense. "Alas, alas, to read or not to read...whether tis nobler to give in and read Steven King mysteries, or hurl oneself in front of a JR train, and end it?" All in Victorian garb, mind you.
My Japanese is stumbling along. I had a disaster of a lesson and got so depressed that I immediately went out and bought two textbooks, doing exercise upon exercise while painstakingly translating hiragana into sounds, then looking up those sounds and changing them to English. Today I realized I could read a few words here and there, which was an odd sensation. To read an advert. To understand it. I haven't done it in 7 months.
I am so lame that I actually look forward to my Japanese lessons. On Monday I sat down with my teacher, who I had seen at a party a few days earlier. He looked a bit nervous, or restless, or something, so I asked if there was something the matter. He looked at me warily and said while at the party, and a tad drunk, he had tapped me on the arm in greeting, and he felt SO ASHAMED for having tapped me, possibly too hard.
I don't remember any of this.
If I hugged him, I think he might disintegrate in my arms. What's with this bizarre need I have to hug people anyways? Royal Wood, Sarah Slean, the Beatles, fictional characters I like, random people with their backs to me at the train station, stray cats, store clerks... Evolutionary psychology, what dost thou say?
My Japanese is stumbling along. I had a disaster of a lesson and got so depressed that I immediately went out and bought two textbooks, doing exercise upon exercise while painstakingly translating hiragana into sounds, then looking up those sounds and changing them to English. Today I realized I could read a few words here and there, which was an odd sensation. To read an advert. To understand it. I haven't done it in 7 months.
I am so lame that I actually look forward to my Japanese lessons. On Monday I sat down with my teacher, who I had seen at a party a few days earlier. He looked a bit nervous, or restless, or something, so I asked if there was something the matter. He looked at me warily and said while at the party, and a tad drunk, he had tapped me on the arm in greeting, and he felt SO ASHAMED for having tapped me, possibly too hard.
I don't remember any of this.
If I hugged him, I think he might disintegrate in my arms. What's with this bizarre need I have to hug people anyways? Royal Wood, Sarah Slean, the Beatles, fictional characters I like, random people with their backs to me at the train station, stray cats, store clerks... Evolutionary psychology, what dost thou say?