Highlights of 2023, sure. And have we learned anything?
My mind still blotched on the latter question, let’s defer and entertain the first.
Severe progress with the French language. Though my sixth language in overall facility, already the third in the (disproportionate) amount of verse read.
Released Humours of the Wood, my initial poetry/prose collection, in so far a PDF-only variant. Still pending a better distribution mechanism.
Written some new poetry since, destined to make the contents of a future collection if I manage to expand with other material. For the time, the muses have gone elsewhere.
Read most of Dante’s Commedia in finally the original.
Travelled to unusual destinations after years of a too familiar rhythm. Three months of Morocco severely challenged my emotional fortitude.
Perhaps owing to the newly acquired conception of heat after Morocco; perhaps age makes me wearier and appreciative of the simpler natural delight; but I’ve fostered greater appreciation for the coast, the sands, the reefs, the waves, the sea fowl, the shipping merchants, the sea-faring tales; perhaps even some (minimal) tolerance for the higher concentrations of people around such settings … No, in hindsight, the tolerance remains as before.
Now back to the question of being learned.
Learned of the colossal influence of various Germanic tribes in shaping the demographics of Western Europe.
No, kidding … But not really.
Advanced in the craft of Latex book formatting.
Beyond the French progress, gained severe insight into the evolution of select languages.
Look, nothing new that previous years' annual reflections haven’t already addressed. Mere reinforcements of the same lessons. Probably incumbent over thousands of years.
For example, opt for silence unless strong motive otherwise compels.
Reuse old technology. Reuse old wares in general.
Our view into the present opens to overwhelming noise that will not clear for a while. Better wait some fifty/hundred/two hundred years to demystify the sermons of today.
Unless it is your job to be the oracle of that noise, strongly emphasize emotional distance and retreat.
I would add, feel free to dubiously consider my positions … And to consider them extreme. But that subtle, half-implicit epigraph has too, accompanied my writings many a year now.
Questions, comments? Connect.