Whoop-dee-freakin'-doo cough
Illness has become me. My apologies for not writing the past few days. Between Czech homework, German tests and now hacking up my lungs, I haven't quite had the time or strength for it. Quite literally. I'm doing much better, though in the past hour or so my respiratory system's anomalous behavior would belie that contention. So, I give you the rather unexciting update on my life.
I managed to finish my Czech homework late Wednesday night, before it was due Thursday afternoon. I even got a slight jump on my work for this week right before my lesson. The combination of late-night studying and 11th hour homework succeeded in placing me a sufficiently Czech mood so that I hardly lapsed into German during my lesson. This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but given my daily exposure to German, versus my scant study of Czech, it takes me quite a while to switch to the right foreign language. The only good thing is that I've advanced far enough in my studies of Czech and German that I never accidentally slip into Spanish, as I was wont to do back when I first started learning Czech some two years ago.
Wow. Has it really been that long since I began my Czech studies? Or so long since I was last in my beloved Praha? My, how the time has flown. I've made definite strides in my Czech skills. I can sort of hold up my end of a conversation; I've more or less been exposed to all of the grammar, and can pretty much conjugate verbs and decline adjectives and nouns without continuous reference to a language manual. Pronouns remain sticky, and there are certainly some facets of the language that remain beyond my grasp. But still, it's kind of exciting to be able to discuss something or describe my plans at any reasonable length, particularly when I don't have to stop every other word to ask my teacher for the appropriate vocabulary.
Of course, my vocabulary still sucks. That's largely a product of two things: 1) me not getting the kind of daily, persistent exposure to the language that would give me a much larger active vocabulary, and 2) me not making a very concerted effort to expose myself to the language with greater frequency. Czech is, unfortunately, a fairly obscure language; it's not like German (or especially Spanish) where I'm liable to find someone around who knows a bit and with whom I can have brief conversations in the halls. So, outside of relocating to Prague (which is always under consideration, in no small part because of this), it's very difficult to get enough immersion to really become better. But I'm nonetheless very guilty of the second charge.
Still, I've advanced far enough in my language study to probably satisfy any graduate program's language proficiency. I can easily read and translate a 200-word passage in an hour or two with the judicious use of a dictionary -- it's generally how I go about reading the short texts and plays I'm assigned for homework. I'm not at the high level of proficiency (or virtual fluency) I'd ultimately like to reach, and I'm not sure I'll ever quite get there, but I've made great progress.
The really out-of-this-world experience is reading absurdist Czech drama, in Czech, and being able to not only comprehend it literally, but on a more interpretative, metaphorical level. It's rather mind-boggling. Again, I'm not sure if my understanding owes more to my historical background (which I think helps in leaps and bounds) or my linguistic prowess (admittedly limited), but it's really kind of beautifully frightening to have those moments of epiphany. For example, this past week, I reread a short play by Václav Havel, Vernisaz (Private View), which I had read the previous week. I didn't get a lot out of it the first time around, but I had this great moment of understanding the second time, when I suddenly realized that one of the characters, Bedrich (Frederick), was a subversive of sorts, someone who refused to collaborate (or to not resist) the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and suffered materially for it. Once I figured out this small, slightly important detail, the whole play began to make sense. Truly frightening.
After my Czech lesson Thursday afternoon, I began to develop a sore throat. This is never pleasant, but it was a different kind of sore than the usual post-nasal drip discomfort. It hurt a lot more, but I more or less ignored it because I had to study for my last German test and finish the entire chapter's workbook section, which, per normal, I put off till the night before the exam. The test turned out all right, but I didn't, when I took it Friday morning. Ignoring my better judgment to go back to bed and rest, I opted to head to work for a couple of hours before my already-scheduled appointment at the health service center to have my head (well, my ears) examined. They took a look in my ears, determined that I had ear wax buildup, took a throat culture, assigned me prescription strength Sudafed, and scheduled me an appointment to have a surgeon examine my various moles. Then they cleaned out my ears as much as they could, took another look, and debated whether I have otitus media, a middle-ear infection. Rather than overmedicate me, they opted to check me out again when I return (too) early Monday morning.
After that fun experience, I trekked up north to do my daily hearing trial. With my thesis complete, I signed up for a hearing science study. It's pretty simple: sit at a computer in a soundproof booth and listen to tones randomly chosen. I then have to determine whether the tone was inside or outside the noise. There are 50 of these noises in each block, and 10 blocks in each day's trial. The whole process takes about half an hour, and I get paid $7 a session. Not a killing, but it's nice, low-stress, supplemental income.
From there I went to the "I Survived a Slavic Language" Party thrown by the Slavic Department. Of course, the only people I knew there were professors, since I do Czech as an independent study, and all of the people I might tangentially know from the regular Czech course didn't show. My head cold has sapped my appetite, so I didn't dig into the free pizza and other goodies on offer. Instead, I downed a couple of glasses of Mattoni, a popular brand of Czech mineral water, as well as a bottle of regular water, and felt myself getting hotter and more ill by the minute. I probably should've left very soon, but I just couldn't get myself to leave until I was fairly sick and the party was starting to wind down. I did, however, correctly identify one of the Russian songs being played in the background, "Ty ili Ja" (You or Me) by the pioneering Soviet rock group Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), which I wrote about in my Russian folklore class last year. Essentially, as I explained to the department adviser, I argued that Mashina was the Russian equivalent of the Beatles, at least in terms of the influence they had on subsequent Soviet rock bands, and in winning the Russian ear over to rock music as an art form. The very clever point I made in my paper was that they had poetic lyrics, which was essential to gain legitimacy in the proud Russian cultural heritage that dates back to Pushkin. Of course, I failed to make this point with the department adviser, who tried to convince me that Mashina was really the Russian Pink Floyd. I really had no way to argue with her, since she was fluent in Russian and the only Mashina lyrics I knew were the scant few translated into English in one of the books I had cited for my paper, so the debate was a lost cause.
When I returned home, I felt pretty awful; certainly not up to cooking pasta as we had planned previously. So, we went to the dining hall, which mercifully had smoothies on offer the one day I really needed them. I drank three while at dinner, and nicked two more to keep in tow for the evening. I really had no appetite; I managed to eat some cheese, a bowl of Lucky Charms and two brownie cookie bars, which was the sum total of my food intake for the day. After dinner, I opted to accompany Colleen, Britt and Kathy to the apartment Colleen and Britt will be inhabiting next year, on the off chance that I'll find employment in the Chicago area and be needing a place to stay. This place didn't exactly knock my socks off, and it wasn't quite so big as I had imagined. But, I also realized that, realistically, on a college student or recent grad's budget, this is about as good as one can do. All that became moot, however, when Kathy pretty much decided that she loved the place and wants to move in. By this point, I was feeling really awful, so we all headed home.
Once back, I got ready for bed (at 7:45 p.m.) and then slept for three hours. I woke up and decided I should stay up a bit so I wouldn't feel like getting up unnaturally early the following morning, so we watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I went back to bed around 2:30 or 3 a.m., and slept till a quarter to two. Not too shabby.
I did have this awful nightmare, dreaming that I was back in Anaheim and the United States was at war, but the fantastic military we've sunk billions of dollars into failed to prevent the enemy combatant from bombing my hometown at will while I was powerless to do anything but watch in horror and try to shield myself from the dust, smoke and debris. I keep having these terrifying visions of wartime, imagining what it must feel like to be in a war zone, to have soldiers and armies and air forces trying to destroy you. It doesn't happen all the time, and usually I'm awake, but something will just give me the sense of being in that war zone. I think the first time it happened was back in January, when we were driving to San Diego to visit my great aunt. The highway cuts through Camp Pendleton, the nation's largest Marine base, where preparations clearly were underway for the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Military helicopters were flying overhead, carrying men and materiel to battleships and carriers situated just off the coast in the Pacific. It was a sobering experience, to think that this must be something like life in wartime, except that the helicopters weren't trying to bomb the hell out of the highway we were traveling on or us for continuing to cruise along despite the military presence.
But I had never experienced this sensation in a dream, or at least not in one so haunting as this nightmare. It was appalling. When I woke up, I couldn't be sure if I was actually awake or still asleep, or if I had dreaming at all. I was confused, disoriented, unsure if the country was actually at war. At moments I resented the U.S. military for proving so utterly incompetent and unable to defend the homeland from wave after wave of foreign bombers that rained fire and terror and devastation on my city. Then, as I gained greater lucidity, I realized that the real blame for this illusory devastation belonged to U.S. foreign policy, which meddled in things that should not be meddled in, prompting anger and retaliation. Of course, this was all a dream, but it felt so real; my panic and horror seemed tangible, concrete. If I rolled down the window of the van in which I sat, the entire car would be flooded with the smoke and dust enveloping the environment, the result of another bomb striking a target two or three miles away. And the really scary part of it is that this was only a dream, just a figment of my imagination. None of the horror or fear or agony could ever compare to someone living in an actual war zone and watching helplessly as some foreign force laid waste to his or her hometown. Certainly it was quite a wake-up call for my own pacifism, a shocking reminder that war is real, it is hell and no end justifies this means.
I managed to finish my Czech homework late Wednesday night, before it was due Thursday afternoon. I even got a slight jump on my work for this week right before my lesson. The combination of late-night studying and 11th hour homework succeeded in placing me a sufficiently Czech mood so that I hardly lapsed into German during my lesson. This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but given my daily exposure to German, versus my scant study of Czech, it takes me quite a while to switch to the right foreign language. The only good thing is that I've advanced far enough in my studies of Czech and German that I never accidentally slip into Spanish, as I was wont to do back when I first started learning Czech some two years ago.
Wow. Has it really been that long since I began my Czech studies? Or so long since I was last in my beloved Praha? My, how the time has flown. I've made definite strides in my Czech skills. I can sort of hold up my end of a conversation; I've more or less been exposed to all of the grammar, and can pretty much conjugate verbs and decline adjectives and nouns without continuous reference to a language manual. Pronouns remain sticky, and there are certainly some facets of the language that remain beyond my grasp. But still, it's kind of exciting to be able to discuss something or describe my plans at any reasonable length, particularly when I don't have to stop every other word to ask my teacher for the appropriate vocabulary.
Of course, my vocabulary still sucks. That's largely a product of two things: 1) me not getting the kind of daily, persistent exposure to the language that would give me a much larger active vocabulary, and 2) me not making a very concerted effort to expose myself to the language with greater frequency. Czech is, unfortunately, a fairly obscure language; it's not like German (or especially Spanish) where I'm liable to find someone around who knows a bit and with whom I can have brief conversations in the halls. So, outside of relocating to Prague (which is always under consideration, in no small part because of this), it's very difficult to get enough immersion to really become better. But I'm nonetheless very guilty of the second charge.
Still, I've advanced far enough in my language study to probably satisfy any graduate program's language proficiency. I can easily read and translate a 200-word passage in an hour or two with the judicious use of a dictionary -- it's generally how I go about reading the short texts and plays I'm assigned for homework. I'm not at the high level of proficiency (or virtual fluency) I'd ultimately like to reach, and I'm not sure I'll ever quite get there, but I've made great progress.
The really out-of-this-world experience is reading absurdist Czech drama, in Czech, and being able to not only comprehend it literally, but on a more interpretative, metaphorical level. It's rather mind-boggling. Again, I'm not sure if my understanding owes more to my historical background (which I think helps in leaps and bounds) or my linguistic prowess (admittedly limited), but it's really kind of beautifully frightening to have those moments of epiphany. For example, this past week, I reread a short play by Václav Havel, Vernisaz (Private View), which I had read the previous week. I didn't get a lot out of it the first time around, but I had this great moment of understanding the second time, when I suddenly realized that one of the characters, Bedrich (Frederick), was a subversive of sorts, someone who refused to collaborate (or to not resist) the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and suffered materially for it. Once I figured out this small, slightly important detail, the whole play began to make sense. Truly frightening.
After my Czech lesson Thursday afternoon, I began to develop a sore throat. This is never pleasant, but it was a different kind of sore than the usual post-nasal drip discomfort. It hurt a lot more, but I more or less ignored it because I had to study for my last German test and finish the entire chapter's workbook section, which, per normal, I put off till the night before the exam. The test turned out all right, but I didn't, when I took it Friday morning. Ignoring my better judgment to go back to bed and rest, I opted to head to work for a couple of hours before my already-scheduled appointment at the health service center to have my head (well, my ears) examined. They took a look in my ears, determined that I had ear wax buildup, took a throat culture, assigned me prescription strength Sudafed, and scheduled me an appointment to have a surgeon examine my various moles. Then they cleaned out my ears as much as they could, took another look, and debated whether I have otitus media, a middle-ear infection. Rather than overmedicate me, they opted to check me out again when I return (too) early Monday morning.
After that fun experience, I trekked up north to do my daily hearing trial. With my thesis complete, I signed up for a hearing science study. It's pretty simple: sit at a computer in a soundproof booth and listen to tones randomly chosen. I then have to determine whether the tone was inside or outside the noise. There are 50 of these noises in each block, and 10 blocks in each day's trial. The whole process takes about half an hour, and I get paid $7 a session. Not a killing, but it's nice, low-stress, supplemental income.
From there I went to the "I Survived a Slavic Language" Party thrown by the Slavic Department. Of course, the only people I knew there were professors, since I do Czech as an independent study, and all of the people I might tangentially know from the regular Czech course didn't show. My head cold has sapped my appetite, so I didn't dig into the free pizza and other goodies on offer. Instead, I downed a couple of glasses of Mattoni, a popular brand of Czech mineral water, as well as a bottle of regular water, and felt myself getting hotter and more ill by the minute. I probably should've left very soon, but I just couldn't get myself to leave until I was fairly sick and the party was starting to wind down. I did, however, correctly identify one of the Russian songs being played in the background, "Ty ili Ja" (You or Me) by the pioneering Soviet rock group Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), which I wrote about in my Russian folklore class last year. Essentially, as I explained to the department adviser, I argued that Mashina was the Russian equivalent of the Beatles, at least in terms of the influence they had on subsequent Soviet rock bands, and in winning the Russian ear over to rock music as an art form. The very clever point I made in my paper was that they had poetic lyrics, which was essential to gain legitimacy in the proud Russian cultural heritage that dates back to Pushkin. Of course, I failed to make this point with the department adviser, who tried to convince me that Mashina was really the Russian Pink Floyd. I really had no way to argue with her, since she was fluent in Russian and the only Mashina lyrics I knew were the scant few translated into English in one of the books I had cited for my paper, so the debate was a lost cause.
When I returned home, I felt pretty awful; certainly not up to cooking pasta as we had planned previously. So, we went to the dining hall, which mercifully had smoothies on offer the one day I really needed them. I drank three while at dinner, and nicked two more to keep in tow for the evening. I really had no appetite; I managed to eat some cheese, a bowl of Lucky Charms and two brownie cookie bars, which was the sum total of my food intake for the day. After dinner, I opted to accompany Colleen, Britt and Kathy to the apartment Colleen and Britt will be inhabiting next year, on the off chance that I'll find employment in the Chicago area and be needing a place to stay. This place didn't exactly knock my socks off, and it wasn't quite so big as I had imagined. But, I also realized that, realistically, on a college student or recent grad's budget, this is about as good as one can do. All that became moot, however, when Kathy pretty much decided that she loved the place and wants to move in. By this point, I was feeling really awful, so we all headed home.
Once back, I got ready for bed (at 7:45 p.m.) and then slept for three hours. I woke up and decided I should stay up a bit so I wouldn't feel like getting up unnaturally early the following morning, so we watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I went back to bed around 2:30 or 3 a.m., and slept till a quarter to two. Not too shabby.
I did have this awful nightmare, dreaming that I was back in Anaheim and the United States was at war, but the fantastic military we've sunk billions of dollars into failed to prevent the enemy combatant from bombing my hometown at will while I was powerless to do anything but watch in horror and try to shield myself from the dust, smoke and debris. I keep having these terrifying visions of wartime, imagining what it must feel like to be in a war zone, to have soldiers and armies and air forces trying to destroy you. It doesn't happen all the time, and usually I'm awake, but something will just give me the sense of being in that war zone. I think the first time it happened was back in January, when we were driving to San Diego to visit my great aunt. The highway cuts through Camp Pendleton, the nation's largest Marine base, where preparations clearly were underway for the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Military helicopters were flying overhead, carrying men and materiel to battleships and carriers situated just off the coast in the Pacific. It was a sobering experience, to think that this must be something like life in wartime, except that the helicopters weren't trying to bomb the hell out of the highway we were traveling on or us for continuing to cruise along despite the military presence.
But I had never experienced this sensation in a dream, or at least not in one so haunting as this nightmare. It was appalling. When I woke up, I couldn't be sure if I was actually awake or still asleep, or if I had dreaming at all. I was confused, disoriented, unsure if the country was actually at war. At moments I resented the U.S. military for proving so utterly incompetent and unable to defend the homeland from wave after wave of foreign bombers that rained fire and terror and devastation on my city. Then, as I gained greater lucidity, I realized that the real blame for this illusory devastation belonged to U.S. foreign policy, which meddled in things that should not be meddled in, prompting anger and retaliation. Of course, this was all a dream, but it felt so real; my panic and horror seemed tangible, concrete. If I rolled down the window of the van in which I sat, the entire car would be flooded with the smoke and dust enveloping the environment, the result of another bomb striking a target two or three miles away. And the really scary part of it is that this was only a dream, just a figment of my imagination. None of the horror or fear or agony could ever compare to someone living in an actual war zone and watching helplessly as some foreign force laid waste to his or her hometown. Certainly it was quite a wake-up call for my own pacifism, a shocking reminder that war is real, it is hell and no end justifies this means.
posted by Alexander Dubcek | 01:34
0 Comments:
Okomentovat
<< Home