Elizabeth and I finished reading through the Ramona Quimby series last night. We sat silently next to each on the floor of her room after I finished reading the last page.
“I’m gonna miss Ramona,” Elizabeth said after several minutes pause.
“Me too.”
I put Ramona’s World back on the small pine bookshelf at the foot of her bed next to the other volumes of Beverly Cleary.
“Don’t worry, we’ll read it together again soon.”
Elizabeth smiled, stood up, and went off to take her evening shower.
My friend Isabel calls it “apologizing for not posting more.”
There are many reasons for the insubstantial and infrequent posts of late. One of them, at least, is interesting.
This past weekend I took Christian and Elizabeth up to a cabin near Lassen National Forest to visit their uncle, aunt and new nephew. We had a blast.
I have been working on memorization. There is not much else that you can do with your mind when a six-month old baby wakes you up at three in the morning.
While pacing between our darkened living room and the cold linoleum of the kitchen floor, Nathaniel and I have completed the periodic table of elements, The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, and are currently working on Florante at Laura:
Kung pagsaulan kong basahin sa isip
Ang nangakaraang araw ng pag-ibig,
May mahahagilap pa kayang natititik
Liban na kay Celiang namugad sa dibdib?Yaong Celiang laging pinanganganibang
Baka makalimot sa pag-iibigan,
Ang ikinalubog niring kapalaran
Sa lubhang malalim na karalitaan.
For those wondering at the long silence on this website, it is the holidays. I am happily busy playing games and telling stories, reading out loud and conversing. Here I am in the midst of an animated and sound effect laden rendition of the three little pigs. Nathaniel is an attentive listener.
Despite being hard at work on my thesis, I still have time to read to my children. This has always been one of my favorite activities.
Right now we are in the midst of reading The Hobbit, A Wind in the Door, and A Little History of the World.
Yesterday, Elizabeth and I read this passage:
Now goblins are cruel, wicked, and bad-hearted. They make no beautiful things, but they make many clever ones. They can tunnel and mine as well as any but the most skilled dwarves, when they take the trouble, though they are usually untidy and dirty. Hammers, axes, swords, daggers, pickaxes, tongs, and also instruments of torture, they make very well, or get other people to make to their design, prisoners and slaves that they have to work till they die for want of air and light. It is not unlikely that they invented some of the machines that have since troubled the world, especially the ingenious devices for killing large numbers of people at once, for wheels and engines and explosions always delighted them, and also not working with their own hands more than they could help; but in those days and those wild parts they had not advanced (as it is called) so far.
J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966), 73.
We took Christian to the optometrist yesterday. He has mild astigmatism and may need glasses. Elizabeth and I sat and waited in chairs by the wall of the cramped examination room.
The doctor handed Christian a card with very fine print on it.
“Can you read this?” she asked. She seemed less concerned about his vision than she was the difficulty of reading the card which was designed for adults.
Christian glanced at the card and looked up with a broad smile.
“Hey! It’s the Autobiography of Ben Franklin.”
Christian continued with his exam; I surreptitiously took the card and looked at it. I was hunting for the attribution. I wanted to know how Christian recognized the text instantly. This was all I saw.
Then I walked up the street, gazing about till near the market-house I met a boy with bread. I had made many a meal on bread, and, inquiring where he got it, I went immediately to the baker’s he directed me to, in Secondstreet, and ask’d for biscuit, intending such as we had in Boston; but they, it seems, were
not made in Philadelphia. Then I asked for a three-penny loaf, and was told they had none such. So not considering or knowing the difference of money, and the greater cheapness nor the names of his bread, I made him give me three-penny worth of any sort. He gave me, accordingly, three great puffy rolls. I was surpriz’d at the quantity, but took it, and, having no room in my pockets, walk’d off with a roll under each arm, and eating the other. Thus I went up Market-street as far as Fourth-street, passing by the door of Mr. Read, my future
There was no way of identifying the source of the text. My son knew Franklin’s autobiography at a glance.
I mentioned the card casually as we walked to the car to leave. “That was pretty cool about the Franklin quote.”
“Yeah,” he responded. “It makes sense though - that they would quote Franklin. He invented bifocals, right?”
I chuckled. “Let’s go home, ‘kay?”
Ang babaing tanging-tangi’t may sariling kilos, hilig,
May sariling kasaysayan sa ugali’t pananalig
Ay dito lang makikita sa silong ng ating langit;
Siya’y iba sa dalaga ng Kanlurang maligalig
Na kukunin ka sa mga kasuotang makikisig,
Siya’y namulat sa gitna ng bukiring matahimik,
Sa tahanang mahirap ma’y punong-puno ng pagibig;
Hiniram sa pipit-puso ang lambing ng kanyang tinig,
Ang tamis ng kanyang puso’y sa tubig ng ating batis
At ang iwing kagandaha’y sa magandang panaginip!
Saang lupa pa kikita ng ganitong paraluman
Na taglay nang lahat halos ang lahat ng katangian?
Kung sa ganda, kung sa sipag, kung sa hinhi’t kabaita’y
Wala ka nang ipipintas ubod ka man ng pihikan …
Kung sa pagkabinibini ay si Laura ang kabagay
Sa pagka-ina’y si Sisang matiisi’t matimtiman
At ang bunying Tandang Zora kung sa ngalang kagitingan:
Ang Babaing Pilipina, ang Mutya ng Silanganan,
Ang hiyas ng ating lahi at dangal ng ating Baya’y
Isang yamang mahalaga, sa lahat ng kayamanan!
-Amado Hernandez
Epic of Evolution: Seven Ages of the Cosmos by Eric J. Chaisson
A Brief History of Neoliberalism by David Harvey
My System: 21st Century Edition by Aron Nimzowitsch
Their Morals and Ours by Leon Trotsky
