First Day of School - What tree would I be?

Walked to work today. It's the first day of school. On Sunday we went to Half Moon Bay. On the way there (or back) Raji asked us what tree we would be, if we were a tree. It wasn't immediately obvious to me then, what tree I'd be, and I started thinking of stately pines with ponderous cones, curvy-crazy windswept cypresses, a lonesome softly swaying weeping willow, a showy mimosa with flirty pink fringes for flowers. None of them was me though. Today walking to work it hit me. Doh! I'd be a plum.

These days the pretty plums lining Idylberry have their leaves all black, black with the vaguest tinge of maroon through the light. Bruisy purple, dropping slightly, full and thirsty in the late summer heat. All the fruit has long fallen and in a few months it will be the leaves' turn to fall, ripped and rustled in the breeze, flying down the street, gathering in black puddles at our feet. Then the trunks and branches stand there, bare and stately, grasping plaintive at the sky. I've always loved bare branches in winter.

Off to the Beach

Today we're off to Half Moon Bay to celebrate Kathia's birthday.

Sere to Sere, Longing for a New Year

This seems to be the time of year when I get the urge to write again, to reorganize as I hold on tight in the time before the rains. Late August doldrums, a fire season looming, trees bent on dying, plants wilting, drooping in the heavy valley breeze. The California harvest is here. It's time to pick the fruit before it dries on the branches. How are the Gravensteins? Dare I answer?

In the spirit of creating my own calendar, I've decided that my personal New Year is September 1st, the hereby-proclaimed beginning of Seretowet. My goal this year, besides keeping the house in normalcy and the kids well-adjusted and doing well in school, is to greatly increase my translation, research, writing and general creative output. It looks like my job will continue to be computer lab lady at the school so I might as well use that extra time well. Facebook is a hideous timesink, as is even emailing. Gonna go Garbo again. I just want to be alone.

The big problem is that there are so many things I'd like to study and do. Reading and translating news articles is deadly. It's gotten to the point where I, a former news junkie, can't even bear to listen to or watch the news in any language. It doesn't look like I'm going to get hired in a full-time position for something to which I would be appropriately suited. So be it.

Here is a list of things I am interested in studying and doing:

1. Translate poetry and literature. Below are the languages I feel readily comfortable to translate written materials. I should put together a goal schedule for poetry traslation.

• Russian poetry (already doing that a bit on my other blog), short stories?
• Arabic poetry (I'd love to give this a try!)
• Romance language poetry and short stories - Italian, Spanish, French (I've done a little of this, why not more?)

2. Study Other Languages. This part is a little overwhelming since there are so many I would like to study. Here is the list in order of my exposure and inclination:

• Hindi/Sanskrit (Bollywood songs and narrative, Rig Veda, Mahabharata (Bhagavad Gita, Shakuntala), Ramayana, (Hanuman story)
• Biblical Hebrew/Modern Hebrew
• Classical Greek
• Latin
• Avestan?/Old Persian?
• Swedish or Norwegian or Icelandic
• Lithuanian
• The list really could go on and on and on. It's crazy. I need to make a limited list - maybe choose 3 and focus on them. I'll decide in the next week. Right now I'm leaning towards Hindi/Sanskrit, Biblical Hebrew and Classical Greek. Then again, Swedish would be a lot of fun. Crap.

3. Zoroastrian Studies. I started a Zoroastrian blog. I want to fill it with entries on my 20+ year fascination with Zoroastrianism and related traditions. Learning Avestan and the other languages is just too much right now, and I'm not sure that I even really want to do that. There's an awful lot of silliness in the Zoroastrian holy texts, as there is in the other holy texts of the world, and fewer people are impacted. I need to keep it in perspective.

4. Read more. People keep throwing these crappy recently-published books at me to read. It's onerous and, being a slow reader as it is, I get bogged down. What I really want to read are more classics and history and grammars, not some cutesy treatment of philosophy written by a bored housewife (haha). Here is my reading plan for the next year. Let's see how it goes

• Finish Dreaming in Hindi
• Read that book Amanda and Sam gave me about stealing the Mona Lisa
• Read The Elegant Hedgehog that Teri gave me and which Geneva is bugging me about (Tell people not to lend me any more books kthxbai)
• Re-read some Dostoevsky, esp. Karamazovy, Double, Possessed
• Re-read selected Chekhov stories and plays (Душенка, Чайка, etc.)
• Books about Zoroastrianism
• SHAKESPEARE - a few plats
• War and Peace? (never read it!)

Then there are activities like music and art. Where would I even begin? The cello is gone. There's a piano, recorders, two balalaikas in the house. I bought a portable easel for a drawing class that ended up being a disaster being given by an awkward incompetent (if not an outright fraud - I could have taught it better). If I were to indulge in music or art again, I would need goals to make it happen. Maybe go back to the Robert Saul opera idea? Write some more songs for it? Work on calligraphy in various writing systems, decorating choice quotes or letters even? There are some ideas.

5. MSS - Make it happen again this year. This one is actually the most time-sensitive. I need to get on bugging potential speakers next week - pronto.

6. Decide on classes to be taught this year. GATE, for fee, both? Classical Philosophy and Greek and Latin roots? Need to put proposals for those together this week too.

Oh, and the adoptee rights thing? I decided forget about it.