i trample the first fallen snow

Я по первому снегу бреду.
В сердце ландыши вспыхнувших сил.
Вечер синею свечкой звезду
Над дорогой моей засветил.

Я не знаю — то свет или мрак?
В чаще ветер поет иль петух?
Может, вместо зимы на полях,
Это лебеди сели на луг.

Хороша ты, о белая гладь!
Греет кровь мою легкий мороз.
Так и хочется к телу прижать
Обнаженные груди берез.

О лесная, дремучая муть!
О веселье оснеженных нив!
Так и хочется руки сомкнуть
Над древесными бедрами ив.

С. Есенин, 1917

It's the fate of geniuses, I think, to die so young, as if nature regretted squandering
an unreasonable amount of wisdom upon a single mind.

Ah, the perfect season of the year for a cuppa Russianness.  Кто не любит зиму?

Finally experienced my first snowfall of the year today. So light, almost invisible.

The heavens cracked open a little
shedding miniscule, pristine tears 
as the sun releases its last breath from the horizon.

And there I stood
By the dim light of the lamposts
At the curve of the road
Wondering,
If this was a latent surge of prudence
Instead of my youth trickling by
With every languid fall
Of those infinitesimal tears.

Это всё

Between Esarhaddon's and Cyril's beard

No, I have not developed a sudden fetish for hirsutes. (oh well, maybe I have)

My disdain towards ROSI is no secret - you would think that a university consistently listed in the top 20s in the world would have a better course registration system and a more aesthetically palatable website.

http://www.utoronto.ca/

Even my dentist, the Lord's executioner in disguise, has better colours in his website.

I digress - but why is it that the courses that you want to take are always full, or cannot ever fit into your schedule? Or the ones that you are taking just conveniently happens to be on the most eventful evening of the week, and stretches for 3 hours long?  *groanssss*

If I'm sacrificing my favourite weekday evening for a 3-hour lecture, I expect some Babylonian erotic poetry by a drunken sod after a wild orgy in Ishtar's name.  Or read excerpts from the Hymn to Ninkasi. In the original.

Professor, please don't disappoint me

Or hit the jackpot and have an in-class discussion on the world's first yo mama joke in those multitude of clay tablets locked in a basement somewhere in an old curator's house that no one ever pays attention to anymore.

Or, I could just take that Mediaval Russian lit course on Fridays and endlessly pore over Old Church Slavonic manuscripts, thereby finishing off my Russian major (aside from the Advanced Russian that I would have to take next year).

Ah, decisions, decisions. 

I cannot believe that September will mark the commencement of my final year in undergrad, and my third full year in the True North. 

Egads, me stomach be flutterin'.

On another note, I dropped Middle Egyptian *gasp!* Yes, I need to take my mind off logograms and concentrate on Cyrillic alphabets for the moment (I am miserably falling behind!).  I am sincerely putting my hopes up - I need to skip the prereqs and just go straight into fourth year historical or religious texts next year. More importantly, I need to be egggsssellent and pass and and and...crap why am I so annoyingly ambitious?  Oh of course - I am penniless and too dumb for Grad School.

I can't even begin to describe my jealousy towards my former classmates who will read my most favourite ancient tale ever in the original next week.  It's a beautiful story of adventure, guilt, absolution, and homecoming that one should read at least once in their lifetime.  Personally for me it is also one of the best prose work from the golden age of Middle Kingdom literature in Ancient Egypt. Ahhh Sinuhe mri.i tiw.

Here's a link - with Lichtheim's translation no less.

http://www.touregypt.net/storyofsinuhe.htm

I have yet to get my hands on a copy
of Mika Waltari's adaptation of this timeless tale.
Soon.

Till next time, when I finally grow my epic Assyrian beard.

До свидания

shattered glass

You can never fully reconsturct a broken glass. Once shattered, you can stick the pieces together, but the cracks will never disappear, like scars on old wounds.

How will you find the light at the end of the tunnel, when all you see is darkness?

How can you find happiness and solace in hearth and home, when every homecoming is met with funerals?

Oh Lord please alleviate this sorrow from my heart. I am done grieving alone and being angry.

Please make my family truly smile again.