The agreeable eye

an eudæmonistarchives

Archive for 2011

Citation (40)

4 January 2011, around 16.26.

on studying hard…

tandz

6 January 2011, around 10.23.

pears before նոր տարի. These pears were remarkable both for their color and their flavor, and the pigs had already been slaughtered.

layers upon layers

11 January 2011, around 16.57.

The cut direct.

Azerbaijan Diary

15 January 2011, around 19.48.

Thomas Goltz. Azerbaijan Diary. London: M.E. Sharpe, 1999. You cannot persuade a party of frenzied nationalists that two blacks do not make a white; consequently, no day went by without a catalogue of complaints from both sides, Armenians and Tartars, of unprovoked attacks, murders, village burnings and the like… —C.E. Bechhofer (1920) (qtd. in De […]

Citation (41)

22 January 2011, around 19.13.

what must be kept…

1 February 2011

1 February 2011, around 20.53.

a snow day Guests were supposed to arrive in the afternoon, but the constant snow made the passes dangerous and the roads, if not actually closed, perhaps should have been. The students were restive and fussy, as were the teachers. Snow kept falling, and managed to find the gap between my scarf and the back […]

fresh your feeling

5 February 2011, around 20.15.

the local library

11 March 2011, around 17.39.

NB: This entry was initially published as a page to solicit donations to fund a project supporting the library; the campaign was successful. Goris is a small town located in the rugged mountains of Syuniq marz, which is the southernmost region in Armenia. Once the cultural center of the region, its situation on the road […]

aydqan mard es

22 March 2011, around 21.10.

The more languages you know, the more of a (hu)man you are.

dining out

24 March 2011, around 7.36.

the importance of reading long books.

Citation (42)

2 April 2011, around 10.14.

derring-do among the philologists…

beautiful-good-true

11 April 2011, around 16.06.

Sow seeds for flowers right now, I thought this spring, and sowed many more than usual

stupid snow

13 April 2011, around 13.08.

woke up to rain, which turned to snow, which I had to walk through to get to work

a spring febricitation

1 May 2011, around 12.16.

on overstimulation and minor authors and spring-time

хийд

2 September 2011, around 18.19.

Books. There’s an invoice there, too.

paper bullets of the brain

3 September 2011, around 8.04.

After a while books grow matter of fact like everything else and we always think enviously of the days when they were new and wonderful and strange. That’s a part of existence. We lose our first keen relish for literature just as we lose it for ice-cream and confectionery. The taste grows older, wiser and […]

A view (31)

6 September 2011, around 17.02.

The sky is huge.

edifying

7 September 2011, around 15.26.

Design for a chimneypiece (ca. 1762) A few months ago, I was reading Nikolaus Pevsner’s 1968 article on ‘The Architectural Setting of Jane Austen’s Novels’ and it got me to thinking. It must have, for here I am, still muddled by it months after the fact, which is not something that normally happens after my […]

Crambe repetita (19)

8 September 2011, around 19.12.

William Hazlitt, ‘On the Pleasure of Painting’.

counterpane

24 September 2011, around 15.19.

And in choosing, from the mid-afternoon drowse, between a biography of Virginia Woolf, some slightly silly essayettes,1 and English Society in the Eighteenth Century (which is, as it sounds, an introductory history to society in 18th century England), I must choose the latter – because its aims are clear, and it will not fight with […]

Citation (43)

28 September 2011, around 16.49.

in which Lord Chesterfield gives some useful advice regarding time management…

A view (32)

29 September 2011, around 6.57.

the common reader

30 September 2011, around 6.07.

…or observations on using a digital reader.1 My brain hasn’t figured out the digital reader yet.2 It doesn’t know how to process the small swiping screen of text with the same efficiency as even the most crabbed, cramped printed page. Of course that efficiency is the product of decades of practice, which obviously haven’t been […]

goats and sheep

2 October 2011, around 20.46.

books and souls, sheep and goats.

new vocabulary

4 October 2011, around 9.12.

The other sign in the classroom says ‘Knowledge is essential to freedom’.

interactive

20 October 2011, around 8.09.

In which Boswell observes some annotations.

mirabile dictu

22 October 2011, around 17.57.

Women from the surrounding rural districts come to the city to sell food; milk and yogurt in the morning, and vegetables in the afternoon. Running late for school one morning, I saw two women quarrel over their barrels of yogurt. Three men in fur-collared coats had difficulty in keeping them apart, as they went at […]

neatly done

4 November 2011, around 21.00.

The opposite of showy excess was neatness. Neatness was an utterly positive quality with many nuances of meaning. Indeed, neat emerges as a Georgian keyword of unexpectedly wide social purchase, which could be applied to towns, houses, objects, personal appearance, and even events. […] Neat conveyed a simple elegance of form, finely made and proportioned, […]

a ramble

13 November 2011, around 16.10.

View of Darkhan. The snow stays on the ground mingling with the dust, not melting even under the sun. Everything is very dry. The dust is the same color and texture of finely ground coffee, as though one could scoop it up into a սրճեփ and enjoy one’s cup of bitterness on the rolling steppe. […]

housekeeping

14 November 2011, around 14.43.

Adorno laments the writer’s living situation.

on biography (1)

15 November 2011, around 6.12.

Alexander Theroux. The Strange Case of Edward Gorey. Seattle: Fantagraphics, 2011. After much consideration of this point, I came to the resolution of writing truly, if I wrote at all; of withholding nothing, though some things, from their very nature, could not be spoken of so fully as others. —Elizabeth Gaskell (Life of Charlotte Brontë, […]

talent

16 November 2011, around 16.42.

Getting ready for the talent show. It was the last day of the fall vacation, and the teachers competed in a talent show. Each of the departments put together as many performances as they could, in the least amount of time. I think the foreign language department started working on their act on Monday. Luckily […]

the doubtful guest

17 November 2011, around 8.50.

Mrs. Boswell reacts to a visitation by Samuel Johnson.

clearance

18 November 2011, around 9.20.

Four men in orange vests clean the street. Two men work with overgrown spatulas – or worn down snow shovels – tapping the surface to break up the compacted snow, then scraping it towards the side of the road. They work together, each working on half of a lane (with, meanwhile, a clear lane of […]

Crambe repetita (20)

19 November 2011, around 8.09.

Boswell, Life of Johnson.

A view (33)

21 November 2011, around 7.07.

Citation (44)

22 November 2011, around 8.12.

a writer’s notebook…

frost

9 December 2011, around 6.56.

The changing patterns of frost on the window are always interesting to me.

ego hoc feci mm–MMXXIV · cc 2000–2024 M.F.C.

 ::