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February22,2006

"love of languages" music: Straylight Run - Existentialism on Prom Night
mood: optimistic

i just spent the last 4 hours at the library engaged in my language homework. that was an intense 4 hours of languages, but i renewed my love for them. it's amazing how much greek and latin i can understand now, despite my weak vocabulary. i really need to develop my vocabulary in all three languages, but it's really difficult to just memorize it all cold. i'm really good at just memorizing things when they're needed, but i'm bad at storing them in my head. so right now, i'm just struggling with permanently memorizing chinese characters, greek forms, and latin words that are too obscure to translate into english sometimes. i'm also getting into the didactic latin poetry we're translating. prof. polinskaya handed out the first sixty pages of this commentary on lucretius's de rerum natura, which is what we're translating, and it's actually quite interesting to see the interwoven poetry with epicurean theory. i mean, it's really basic for philosophy, but it's still intriguing to see how words work together, the implications of the modifiers and word order.

anyhow, enough on classical languages that are of no practical use to me, but only satisfy my intellectual curiosity, haha. these days, i've lost all motivation to work at school, but i'm regaining it. sometimes, i just have to ignore the unanswerable questions of the future and focus on the present. because in the end, what else can matter but the present moment that you're experiencing? oh the simple things in life that keep me moving on.

mmm...two weekends in a row being away from bowdoin. boston, then bates last weekend. no more this weekend because i need some time for myself to just catch up and enjoy the other things in my life. like leisure reading at bohemian cafe with a guava smoothie.