the last day before vacations begin. everybody LOVES panchami. it's the day before shashthi. but nobody wanted to leave and actually begin their vacation, even after the Meeting got over. nobody left for a long time even after work was done. i didn't, either.

this happens every year. it is almost the best part of pujo.

but to be quite fair, there was possibly another reason today.
s has been quite wonderful there. we know that. we won't come back and find him there, though. we know that, too.



there are bamboo thingummies for lights within the campus. the first years are clambering all over them, and all the other years are gently egging them on.
no one wants to submit internal assessment assignments. i am at my wits' end.

p has posted a bit by s. it is chracteristically lovely.

swam to class today.
greek, of course, for what else could quite justify to ploion?

in the course of the holy enterprise, a chanced on some interesting latin: 'i bet you don't know what tripudium means.'
he told us, in a state of ill-contained excitement.
now i cannot stop thinking about the ruddy thing.
your turn.

i grow up every day.

on youth now, after boyhood.
but then, i rather like coetzee.

which reminds me of this from the days of foe and the rest.

'hoper edei deixai' and related have this many options!

hoper edei poiesai.

this is actually seneca.
the roman public bath was, then, just the most terribly socially and otherwise active place!
pity casson doesn't say which letter of seneca's, and dated when, the following is from. seneca is recognisably seneca, though, i must say:

'I live right over a public bath. Just imagine every kind of human sound to make us hate our ears! When the muscular types work out and toss the lead weights, when they strain (or make believe they are straining) I hear the grunting,and whenever they let out the breath they've been holding in, there's the whistling and wheezing at maximum pitch. If it's a lazy type I'm up against, someone satisfied with the cheap massage given here, I have to hear the crack of the hand as it hits the shoulders, one sound when it's the flat of the hand, another when it's the cupped hand. But if a ball-player arrives on the scene and begins to count shots, then I'm done for. Add the toughs looking for a fight, the thieves caught in the act, and the people who enjoy hearing themselves sing in the bath-tub. Add also the people who dive into the pool with a deafening splash. On top of all these, who at least make ordinary sounds, don't forget the hair-removal expert forever forcing out that thin screech of his to advertise his services, and only shutting up when he's plucking a customer's armpit and can make someone else do the yelping for him. Then there's the drink-seller with his famous cries, the sausage-seller, the cake-seller, and all the managers of the restaurants, each hawking his wares with his own special intonation.'


and then there was also this little latin verse on a plaque in front of an inn. anonymous authorship, this one's:

'If you're clean and neat, then there's a house ready and waiting for you.
If you're dirty -- well, I'm shamed to say it, but you're welcome too.'


Lionel Casson, Travel in the Ancient World (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994)

i think thomas coryat is quite priceless. he is a rather hardboiled example of acquired taste, mind you.
but he has friends called M. Pasticrust and M. Protoplast.

the mention of the long strider here is interessant, too. i won't know until i have read it, of course, but things should be very, very, intriguing if our traveller is a dwarf.

the e-f has reminded me of certain happy days, though.

'"Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any arguments about any place, if not about any person.'

rather a pity there aren't volumefuls here. but the bits will have to do.

here it is. one is spinning, btw.

the idea seems fairly simple: find a picture that is even further explicit about one's prodigal powers than those around one would normally suspect.

only, i beg leave to remind my gentle reader that it is worthwhile to contemplate the constitution of the man who took the photograph with steady hands, while said one went round and round and round.

[the e-f got me, just when i was having a good quiet hoot of my own.
in turn, i exercise my privilege, and thirst for the blood of thehaplessoutsider.]

s has scrapped me the link to eliot's wasteland read by himself.
sweeney read by eliot is simply wonderful, too. i wish i knew where that was, if available on the net.

the same philanthrope, i think, is responsible for this.




p.s.

the picture of stephen fry, btw, goes directions of its own!
and while we are at it, there's also this.

and i can't resist quoting :'I can remember exactly what I was doing when I heard the news. I was listening to the news.'
but that was simply a taste.