So lately I've been wondering if my posts make me sound like I'm younger than I really am (26). I know I'm eccentric and a bit of a goofball, but I hope I don't come across as acting childish for my age.
Why would you worry about this? Any perception is going to be mitigated by uncounted variables. For example: I know you feel 26 has a shade of oldness to it because 30 is on the horizon. Buddy, what I wouldn't give to be raising 30 from the prow of my mighty ship, rather than 50. 26 seems a time of fantasy. I remember little of it. Marijuana was copious and easy to get in my 26, so large parts are hazy and soft. I'm 45 in two weeks, poppet, and allow me to asure you that there will be no line, no demarcation, no "this was youth, this was young adulthood, this is now senior adulthood". It never happens. There is no warning. There is no text on your phone as a reminder. It's all a big tornado slide. (This particular image chosen because these kids from the 70's are my contemporaries.)
You never once struck me as childish, and as Wrey asked, why would it matter? When I'm your age, I actually want to be as craZAY as I am now.
In real life, people mostly think I'm younger than I actually am (23). I used to care, but I'm not too bothered with it now. As a future primary school teacher, I'm going to be surrounded by kids all the time anyway, and it's important to remain youthful.
'from the first I recall' - I don't know why but that seems like such an odd phrase. Does it make sense? Am I just being an idiot?
It's from the first stanza of the Voluspa, first poem of The Elder Edda: A Hearing I ask of all holy offspring; both higher and lower of Heimdall's brood, Do you want me, Odin, to well tell the Ancient tales of folk, from the first I recall? I keep looking at that last line and thinking - I know what it's trying to say 'From my very first memories', but it is a really awkward phrase I think. I've been looking at it for literally the past 10 minutes, trying to find some way to make it make sense to someone else if I was to (say) read it for someone.
With poems such as this (a quick Google search told me it's an old Norse poem), I just roll with it. It may not make sense to my ears, but if it made sense for the writer of the time, then sure. They were probably even going for the dramatic when they wrote it.
You are lucky. I do the opposite. I obsess, and try to find a way to make it make sense - even going back to the original (which is what got me into translating).
My experience is with history, not literature. Though it is interesting to see how the original Norse compares with this translation. I always found it funny how there were multiple translations of the same text. Take Antigone for instance. I had to read two translations of the same text for my Classical Lit. class and the one thing on my mind was, 'how did one story get translated into two different things?' There was the Heaney translation and the translation written by a Frenchman in 1940s Paris. Same premises, but apparently two different interpretations of the play. Especially with Creon. The former depicted him as a hardass, borderline tyrant while the latter depicted him as a ruler who did something stupid and is now forced, by virtue of being the ruler, to stick to his decision. How is that possible?
Ah, that's fair. I know someone, an expert, who wrote out the original Norse version of that poem with his own translation. I can't read Norse at all. Nor can I read many runes either, and thankfully this guy posted the words in the Latin alphabet. Oh well. I remember the Heaney translation well. And I use the Fagles a lot, and was given another translation of Antigone back in uni. It's purely because linguistically, words between languages almost never mean exactly the same thing, they always have different connotations that come with culture. And also, it's inherent in the act of interpretation - every time you read something in English you could be said to be creating your own version of it from what you understand of it and take away. That's infinitely more so in translation - in fact in translating was the first time I became away of what the so-called 'Death of the Author' really meant. I'll send you an essay I've wrote and shared with a few people on this forum, about the act of translating - though it's talking about Beowulf.
The bad part about living in North Dakota (well there are many bad points but this is one of them) is that there has to be a huge amount of snow/wind to justify not going into work. we are so use to plowing, shoveling and driving on snow and ice that its not really a problem.
But yeah immaturity is a huge issue to overcome. Suspense for progress journal though. I might just be too childish to realize how cynical I am - cynicism is so immature.
And when I lived in Atlanta, the entire city would be paralyzed by what was called "black ice". Rain followed by a drop in temp that freezes the road, but only for a few hours. The city treated it as the Matmos had come up from below. Ok, moment of annoyed sadness. I go into google to pluck a pic of the Matmos for visual fun and instead I am presented with page after page of two nerdy gay guys who make music, I think. I mean, don't get me wrong, yay nerdy gay band couple, but how do their images override the images of the Matmos from Barbarella, the source of the name of the thing?
