Slog

Here's a quote I found apropos of my last post:

"How beautiful it is to do nothing, and then rest afterward."

It's attributed to "Spanish Proverb"...don't know much about that guy.

I'm reading a book right now that is a real slog. It's important for some work I'm doing, but it should also be an interesting story. And it's not unrolling like that. Usually I would quit by now, I have a low tolerance for the wreckage of language. Interestingly enough, I almost never stop watching a bad film. There is the time thing, of course--there's more of a commitment to a badly written book--but there's also more forgiveness in me for bad films. I think it's probably because I'm more of a verbal or language-based person than visual, which is ironical considering my profession. But words badly used feel like chewing on tin foil, or worst of all horrors for me, wiping dry hands on a paper napkin. Even just writing that sentence about napkins gives me the heebeejeebees. I don't know why I hate that so much, but it pierces me as few things can.

This tendency to be tortured by tortured verbiage has made this a rather rough eight years. Sometimes I think the main reason I supported Obama is less noble and more just for the visceral relief of not feeling crippled all the time by disgust.

The hurt this kind of language puts on me is not like those who can't stand the bastardization or their beloved mother-tongue or similar grouching. I've taught kids and worked with remedial readers and could find plenty of joy in their struggling syntax. It's those who use words to purposefully work away from their own hearts, whether it's Bush or some poseur college professor writing about their somehow allegorical affairs with graduate students, that tear me into shudders.

Lying movies still make me angry, but I somehow want to catch the whole trainwreck...books are too precious.