Mix and Match

I am so disorganised.  Kate, over at The Catalan Way is doing Virtual Vermut, like Bodhi does Virtual Coffee.  Fortunately, my post today lends itself to the theme...though my drink of choice is Tea, so I may have to move to Tuesdays....


I am home today again, but the big new is that the man seems to be improving!  I talked at him three times so far for more than five minutes each!  YEAH!  He even responded sometimes!


He came and ate a MAMMOTH lunch (and then needed a nap) which is very good.....


I will also say that a two hour walk in the mountain with a supremely happy dog does wonders for a person's outlook on life.


Poetry...not something I usually quote, but Knopf is emailing a poem a day this month, and today's I liked a lot:

Two Poems On Fishing Should I go drinking and wenching? Oh, no. It isn't proper for the poet that I am. Shall I go hunting wealth and honor? I am not inclined that way either. Well, let me be a fisherman or shepherd and enjoy myself on the reedy shore.

When it stops raining at the fishing site I will use green-moss for bait. With no idea of catching the fish I will enjoy watching them at play. A slice of moon passes as it casts a silver line onto the green stream below.

By Kwon Homun, a Korean poet whose dates are 1532-1587, translated by Jaihiun Kim


What I like about it?  My kind of fishing.  I could enjoy fishing if I could have my own supply of hooks.  They would look a lot like the weights, you know, round and dull and just heavy enough to make the line look respectable, but no sane fish would consider nibbling it.  Either that or some kind of hot-dog fish-feeding mechanism.  Know what I mean?  The object would be to feed them off the end of the line...and watch them at it rather than catch them at it.  I think I would find it more fun.


I have also spent MANY hours today studying Catalan.  It is not a barrel of fun at our house this week. Can I also say that Catalan pronouns are going to be the death of me?


Brace yourself, I am going to cover some grammar:


No, I'm not, I am making myself nauseous thinking about it.


Let's just say that it is NEEDLESSLY complicated.  M'kay?  The fact that there are major differences between how it is written and how it is spoken, and the fact that there are two kinds of pronouns, forts (strong ones) and febles (weak...and the difficult ones) and that the febles (weak and difficult) are 'mengat' - eaten - as in the Catalans barely pronounce them when they speak....so as a language learner you barely hear the d*mn things.....


*inhale*


*hold*


*exhale*


At the very least I am fending off alzheimers in my old age.  Or maybe I'm causing it.

Perfection

I have been ruminating on the idea of perfection for the last couple of days.  Probably as a result of spending so much time studying Catalan and painting - when not completing nursing duties.  Lord I am bad at that.  The man continues to be ill, but I can actually have a conversation with him for more than five minutes before he runs out of breath or falls asleep.

Seems he has some fluid in one of his lungs.  Considering he's done marathons not too long ago and can do a 10k run like I walk to the corner for some chocolate, the fact that he was seriously winded at the top of a flight of stairs was somewhat worrying.

He seems to be s.l.o.w.l.y. on the mend.  We think it is whatever I had last week, (see the running note that I have no lungs) but worse.

ANYWHO...

I have been contemplating perfection.  A nice idea that I think does quite a lot of harm.  I have had many adult students who beat themselves up quite horrendously because they aren't doing something perfectly.  I always say to them that perfection is an ideal towards which we strive, but realistically are aware that we will never acheive (and don't really want to, were we to think about it for any length of time).

I mean, really, if we pulled it off, what would be the point of going on?  That sounds trite, but I do mean it.  If you create a 'perfect' novel, or a 'perfect' presentation what do you do next?  No one speaks a language perfectly, not even the most highly educated native speaker, we all make mistakes from time to time, and that is soooo OK.

So WHY do we get our shirts in a knot about it.

I rumble this around in my head while I paint.  You see work in museums and galleries and it looks so....slick.  So polished, so finished.  Then you look at a video of someone doing art restorations and you realise that Matisse painted in the eyes of a portrait three times!  And the first time they were in a truly disasterously unanatomical out of place.

Goodness, but if they all mess it up, and simply cover it with another layer of paint, can't the rest of us?  Except watercolourists. They simply have to burn the evidence.  No going back with that medium at all. But really, if  multi-million dollar funded software programs that have hundreds of professionals working on them come out 'buggy', or like Vista, hopelessly flawed?

So why should the rest of us believe that we have to work to this standard?  I think it's OK if I sometimes modify a painting cause I smudged the d*mn thing..OK, so his mouth is going to be a little wider than I first thought of...is that all that bad?  I messed up my freaking pronoms febles, which are BRUTAL in Catalan, all of you English speakers....kiss the word 'it' next time you see it.  (Go on...it's just a computer screen, it can handle a quick smooch). You have NO idea the problems 'it' avoids.  None.

Does that mean that I don't want my painting to improve?  Does it mean that I don't want my accent to improve, my grammar and vocabulary?  Of course not, of course I want to be better at all of these things, of course I put a lot of grinding time and effort into it, some of which is even fun.  But perfect?  SHUT UP!


Then there are those lovely rewarding moments when understanding just sort of 'clicks' into place and it is like magic.


Honestly, there is nothing, not one single thing (note, my family, I am saying thing here) that is better than that feeling and that moment.


Ping!

FInished Sunday and Wednesday

Immigration series, Acrylic, marker and pen on paper.  57 x 57 cm.

Immigration series, Watercolour, marker, paintmarker, pen and pencil on paper.  20.4.11, 56 x 76.

Note to lexicographers

The man's still sick, so I am working away in Catalan here....

I now have a note for any lexicographers who might be listening:

Can I just say that it is really stupid to define a word using the same word? THIS DOES NOT ANSWER THE QUESTION?

Hello?

Knock knock?

*crickets*

This is the entry:

tarat -ada adj 
1 tarado -da. Fruita tarada, fruta tarada.


Doesn't make it clearer boys.


Sweet mother of all that is good, does this not seem obvious?

Somedays, it's worth the effort

VAL la pena de vegades!

Sometimes, 6 hours of studying Catalan is worth it.  The best part, or at least the most entertaining has been looking at idioms, locutions and eufemismes - n.iii.ce...spelled that in Catalan, that would be euphemisms.  Ways of saying things that are a little different.

Here's some of the fruits of my work:

To be useless, or to do something useless:  picar ferro fred - hammer cold iron.  Good imagery there.

To have diarrea - perdre la clau del cul - loose the key to your *ss.  JEJEJEJEJEJEJEJEJEEEEE

A person who is really irritiating:  un torracollons - a tower of, well you might be more familiar with cojones, but a tower of balls....hehehhehehe

A super wimp, a cockhold - un pet aviciat - a weak fart!  OMG I am dying over here!

Someone who has no opinion, wishy-washy - un pixafreda - a cold pisser!  Not enough heat inside to warm their piss.  I LIKE that image.

A polleguerra is part of a set phrase, it literally means a chicken war - more or less I think - it means crazy, fitting, no?

Oh, and you have to go here and check this out...

I handed in my next assignment for the Catalan course, cross all your fingers and light all your candles (hey!  It's a Catholic country!).  EEK!

Yesterday

Went to a calçotada yesterday in a neighbouring village.  Felt like I was in a movie at times, you know those ones that are selling the Mediterranean life, like that Tuscan one?

Long sun-dappled tables weighted with delicious food and wine and multi-lingual conversations going on around it while children play in the background and an olive-wood fire smokes in the distance on which the food has been cooked?

That was it.

Weirdness.

They were a fascinating and wildly international lot and as a result the conversation was very Spanish - the lingua franca - except my little corner of it.  They are a delightful family, my hosts, three fifths of whom I have taught English.  One of the kids, now pushing 18, sat beside me.  Handy having an 18 year old boy next to you at a big feed, I just kept passing stuff onto his plate and it kept disappearing inside him.  Third helping of botifarra appears?  GONE!

He is a neat bright kid too.  Helpful translator as well when I got lost.

He and I determinedely spoke Catalan to everyone - rather than Spanish - when we didn't speak English.  The man on my left was a delight too, older (late 60's?) and architect, very well read - I love to sit with people I can talk books with! - and fascinating.  His wife was also interesting, though she only spoke Spanish.

I have to say I was amazed how well I understood what was going on, when I listened hard......those Spanish lessons are paying off anyway.

We, of course, ate calçots with homemade sauce, botifarra and costelles (ribs), bread, tiramiso and chocolate muffins and chocolate crisps that I brought, lots of wine, water and some cava that I also handed over to the boy....his parents were right there, it is Spain.....

Got home, had a bath and went to bed with the Murakami book.

Pretty darned delightful day!

Saps què?

Know what?

I am now on TWO WEEKS of vacation!


AAAAAAHHHHHHhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


The kids have arrived safe and sound in the UK for a week with their grandparents....they had some challenges at Immigration in the UK, who phoned their grandmother to be sure someone was there to meet them, and they lost their bag for a while, but seem to have recovered it.

Good on them, they should have a BLAST.  Now to get them back into Spain!!!

In the mean time, I am making t.r.a.c.k.s with the Catalan homework, I have a PACK of paintings lined up, and mass of Spanish homework, walking with the man in the mountains, the beach is calling my name, and there are some new exhibits in BCN we haven't seen yet PLUS  a whole lot of napping zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz  in the books!  And then there is the reading....I'm past page 100 in the new Murakami and LOVING it.

OH, life is Good good goooooood

SUPER sweet.

Is it?

Is it Friday yet?


*please*

WOW!!!

I got a B on my writing assignment, and I got another ****A**** on the next assignment!


YIPEE!!!


Off to bed.  Weirdly tired again!


Bring on Setmana Santa, this girl needs a break!

Do you really want to win this?

The man, man of my dreams, went into BCN and got the new Murakami for me.  Not sure I'll be blogging till I finish it!

On the cover was a contest, the prize, a trip for two to Tokyo!  Sadly the entry had to be submitted by the third of April.  I'm too late.

Then again, it is one of those things that you're not certain you want to win, no?