Saturday morning was spent with a backache prone on the floor with a copy of a text and translation of a fragmentary author that I’m reviewing. A portion of the work has been carried out by a very capable scholar who I’ve only met once in the spring of 1998. I was looking for private tuition in Ancient Greek prior to grad school. I never did well in class based language instruction because of the dyslexia. I made an appointment with the scholar being clear about what I needed and my goals. He invited me to meet with him in his university office. He then proceeded to tell me that it was impossible to do what I wanted to do and I’d never learn enough Greek in such a short time to succeed in grad school. My mission was ignorant, arrogant, and pure folly. He declined to be my tutor. I left not sure why he’d agreed to meet with me. Maybe he felt a moral obligation to tell me to cease and desist. I try to remember that conversation every time I want to rain on the parade of some bright-eyed student with outlandish dreams and no sense of what might be involved in fulfilling them. His work is very good: there is no question of a hostile review. I didn’t even know he was part of the project when I agreed to review the volume as his is not first author (perhaps a personal oversight).
And all is well that ends well, I found a lovely lady at a local seminary to work with me. And well, I’m not a linguist, but my Greek ain’t SO shabby.
We then went bookshelf hunting and celebrated a family birthday by making vast quantities of homemade fettuccine and harvested garbage bags full of swiss chard and I even fit in a run yesterday. I didn’t know how weekend would work on the blog but this seems a not half bad approach. I do feel guilty for taking 36 hours off of research and writing and I’m anxious that my plan is to go to another lecture this afternoon, but not all work can take place here. I’m also anxious that my BOOK won’t be as good as the other books in the same series because all the other authors are so much more dreadfully clever than I am. I can get over this. Perfection is the enemy of done. And my work is worthy of being read regardless of whether it is the best or the brightest.
Liv Mariah Yarrow 