During the first quarter of this year I`ve unexpectedly received a few personally designed letters from certain friends. I love the feeling of knowing that this very untraditional and slightly time-consuming message has been especially made to me. That piece of extra time you`d most likely spend on dozing off on the sofa seeing a film or whatever has instead been spent on writing me a creative letter. It`s brilliant! And (notably) unselfish. The daily deja vu`s break with a rare thrill. It`s kind of a mixture between a most welcome surprise, euphoria, and a dash of self-importance. And not least the fact that the mail is for once substantial and doesn´t consist of the regular 1`s and 0`s. Keep on posting letters or envelopes, they`re much appreciated! I will write back to you of course. If not, what am I wishing for any haha..
In the recent weeks I´ve had an incredible amount of spare time (job hunt). No important obligations, no economical problems nor any annoying obstacles standing in my way. These circumstances combined have put me in a quite rare situation. All daily perpetual questions about how to live one´s life, future prospects, passions, hopes and essential truths inevitably become clearer. Fortunately it´s been mostly positive for me. I could might as well gone miserable or indifferent for some time. But I chose to be superactive and to set up small goals.
Not being distracted by everyday-must-do´s jobs or whatever that keep your mind occupied, I´ve had the luxury to concentrate and focus all my energy on myself which created this long-term insight. I´ll skip the spiritual stuff becuase that´ll be looong and dull. anyway it was very liberating. When it comes to practice I´ve noticed for instance that Books are superrrrb and can contribute to A LOT. Perhaps studying subjects that didn´t intrigue me at all in school killed some of my pleasure in sucking knowledge from thick books. A few weeks ago I read a book about japanese history, partly because I need it in order to pass an entrance examination for a university I´m gonna apply for. Now I´ll start reading it it japanese as well.
Right now I´m reading a book called "Latin, the culture, the history, the language" (in swedish). It covers those areas in a very smart, sensible and rich way. You find out more about everything that has coexisted with the language and other earlier languages/societies relatively related to Latin. So basically it´s origin, development, cultural and linguistic significanse in modern european languages. But also plenty of history about how normal people lived during the antiquity, relations between powerful kingdoms etc. There´s even information about what roman emeperors knew about swedes by the time we probably first started to call oursleves swedes (not literally "swedes of course") haha... On top of that the book consists of descriptions and explanations of how latin is gramatically constructed (pretty complex sometimes!) famous qoutes and a glossary with verbs, adjectives, nouns, substantives, all mentioned quotes bla bla and all what grammar includes.
It´s amazing how influenced many of european languages are by Latin, much thanks to the church and it´s missionares of course. I read that around 80% of the englsh words in usage today derives from latin. In swedish the percentage is 40%. This fact become even more obvious when you reach the the latin glossary section. In most cases the stem of verbs and loads of adjectives are origins to modern words with just a different ending or modification. For example descendere - descend, or: desperare - despair or: divinus - divine. Learning latin means thus learning for example a bit french, spanish, italian or german too in a sense. Did I bore you yet? Anyway to me this is fascinating. I´m thinking about improving my german, and then start studying some french, Italian or spanish. That`ll be my next project after I´m done with applying for admission to TUFS in Tokyo! I hope I can get that %#¤& scholarship because then I don´t have to worry about not affording the semester fee haha.. It´s kinda fundamental.
Another thing I have time for now is to watch films that have haunted my mind for a long time. Films I want to watch. The french movie "Persepolis" (linked below) was on that list. For those who like black humor, innovative filming or political depictions I think you should see it!
During the first quarter of this year I`ve unexpectedly received a few personally designed letters from certain friends. I love the feeling of knowing that this very untraditional and slightly time-consuming message has been especially made to me. That piece of extra time you`d most likely spend on dozing off on the sofa seeing a film or whatever has instead been spent on writing me a creative letter. It`s brilliant! And (notably) unselfish. The daily deja vu`s break with a rare thrill. It`s kind of a mixture between a most welcome surprise, euphoria, and a dash of self-importance. And not least the fact that the mail is for once substantial and doesn´t consist of the regular 1`s and 0`s. Keep on posting letters or envelopes, they`re much appreciated! I will write back to you of course. If not, what am I wishing for any haha..
