This is Life!: Revolutions Around the Cruciform Axis

So, This Is What Academia Looks Like

In addition to being a husband and a new dad, with another on the way, working full-time, teaching two classes, completing incomplete papers, and prepping my dissertation proposal, my life as a grad student looks a little like this.

Tuesday afternoons, about 4:30, my colleague, Darin "Son of Angus" and I sit down and read Aristotle's Peri Hermeneias (De Interpretatione, or "On Interpretation") in Greek. We're collaborating on a translation that each of us have threatened to use in our dissertations.

We come across such interesting linguistic facta as the word tragelaphos, or the goat-stag. One of them-there mythical creatures used to argue about ontology and articulate speech.

There are the etymological digressions. For example, one of the ancient commentators on Aristotle is named Philoponos. What does his name mean? "Lover of toil." We both decided we should start doing the Bush-nicknaming-the-White-House-press-corps thing in class. So those slackers who show up every other week, or who clearly never do the reading, I'll start calling them "Philoponos" (or, "Philopone").

Then there's the attempt to properly decline the Attic equivalent of American vulgar slang. We finally decided on kephale koprou.

But best of all are the Scotch parties.

Invitations come out every semester that look something like this:

You great drink, what would your happiness be had you not those for whom you distill?

Please mark on your planners, calendars, and backs of hands that Friday, Dec 3rd shall bear witness to a great tasting of scotch at the lodge of the Son of Angus. . . .

"Behold, this cup wants to become empty again, and Darin wants to become man again."

Thus Darin began to go under.

And some replies come back that look like this:

"You higher men, do you not smell it? A smell is secretly welling up, a fragrance and smell of eternity, a rose-blessed, brown gold-wine fragrance of old happiness, of the drunken happiness of dying at midnight, that sings: the world is deep, deeper than day had been aware."

Now I don't know, but it seems to me that Zarathustra here speaks of the milk of the highlands, and I aim to find a label indicating those fine qualities. And what if we should all perish at midnight?

"My friends, all of you," said the ugliest man, "what do you think? For the sake of this day, I am for the first time satisfied that I have lived my whole life. And that I attest that so much is still not enough for me. Living on earth is worth while . . . . 'Was that life?' I want to say to death. 'Well then! Once more!'"

A fine invitation, Megos Kunos [i.e., Greek for "Big Dog"], and let this be my happy affirmation.

And there's this one:

O glorious Scotch
Elixir of gods and men
Sweet barley mistress

How sing I of thee?
Tongue-tantalizing Scotch
Never harsh with me

My lips sweet greet thee
O Scotch, the gentle draft
No head-crusher thee

If I abuse thee
Still thou lovest me right well
No thunder-head morn

Be it six or eight
Or ten or more drafts of thee
No ill do I fare

For thou lovest me
And I sweetly lovest thee
Sweet golden god-draft

So, aye sayest I
Count me as party to thee
Ere this Friday night

I've got a Balvenie, twelve-year, double-wood singing sweetly on the shelf, waiting patiently for this evening's serious frivolity.

Posted by Clifton at December 3, 2004 09:23 AM | TrackBack