Πάντα ῥεῖ

Clouds over Marin, April 2005

All my personal e-mails end with a quote from Abba Poemen, one of the desert fathers:

Do not give your heart to that which does not satisfy your heart.

This is often a useful guide in making decisions about how one spends one's time and one's life.

Last summer and fall I was eager to get back to Russian classes. Then this spring came and Russian 2 was not offered, so I wound up in conversational Russian. Way beyond where we had gotten at the end of Russian 1.

Now, I am capable of learning Russian on my own with class to guide me and I could have stayed up with the conversational class. If I studied. But I have not been studying Russian. And if you don't do any homework, any drills, any reading, you cannot retain what flies by in class. And I understood no more than 40% of what went in on in class. I think I can say I remember one word I learned in class all semester. One. The rest all blurs together.

So, I could keep up if I studied, but I have not been studying.

My heart is elsewhere.

Right now my heart is in writing fiction. I can work on that almost every day with pleasure. I don't seem to put in even 30 minutes a week on Russian.

I have been wondering for almost two months why I was banging my head against a Russian wall. So today I showed up just to say Thank you and good-bye. I dropped out.

I can do Russian again, when I am up for it. Right now, I am not up for it. I can also do it when I can work my way up through more grammar before launching into conversation where I simply do not know the vocabulary, the syntax, or the word endings.

My ex observed, rightly, that this has given me an opportunity to understand how most folks feel when they take a foreign language and struggle but are lost. So it may have been good for my soul.

This is not the first thing I have dropped out of in my life (two doctoral programs, for instance). I have not regretted either of those, though there was a cost and a loss involved.

Tonight I can return to my fictional world and spin out plot lines and my heart is happier. Much happier.

--the BB


The header is an aphorism of Simplicius that summarizes the philosophy of Heraclitus ("all things flow" or "all things are in flux").

"Ποταμοῖς τοῖς αὐτοῖς ἐμβαίνομέν τε καὶ οὐκ ἐμβαίνομεν, εἶμέν τε καὶ οὐκ εἶμεν."
"We both step and do not step in the same rivers. We are and are not."

Some progress

Which is to say, I actually worked on my Russian homework this week. At the last minute, I grant you, but still I was much more prepared for class tonight.

I also took the laptop in to class tonight so I could take notes by typing instead of writing Russian cursive (which I can do, but I find it so hard to read). Much faster. It helps that my Mac keyboard can adapt to phonetic Russian at a click of the mouse and I touch type.

Oh, that's the Winter Palace (Hermitage State Museum) in St Petersburg in the photo with the Neva River in the foreground.
--the BB

Русский язык - 16 February 2009

Сегодня мы с другом посадили два дерева, четыре розы, и три лозы в моём дворе.

"Today my friend and I planted two trees, four roses, and three vines in my yard."

(The first round of the sentence above had a few errors in it; this is the version that emerged after correction in class.)

Ever onward, even when one has not done one's homework. Or very little of it.
--the BB