The above title comes from reading my high school students a bonus on firearms manufacturers, where the answers were Colt, Winchester, and Smith & Wesson. After hearing the three questions, Kilhuch asked, "What, no Remington?"
"Remington makes typewriters!" I shot back. "Everyone knows that the typewriter is mightier than the gun!" I grinned at my own unexpected wit.
By the next practice, separated from that one by a week (due to the next of our biweekly practices coinciding with Family Day) we misremembered it somehow as the typewriter being mightier than the Howitzer. Or, I suppose, the Internet cable connection is mightier than the ICBM.
And to glory in the fact that I can type way better than I can shoot (but with a properly aligned air rifle, I was a decent shot) I contribute to the bits adrift on the Interwebs.
Then I went and bought some toothpaste, and was inordinately pleased at this, and then went home to joy in my reading some more.
"Remington makes typewriters!" I shot back. "Everyone knows that the typewriter is mightier than the gun!" I grinned at my own unexpected wit.
By the next practice, separated from that one by a week (due to the next of our biweekly practices coinciding with Family Day) we misremembered it somehow as the typewriter being mightier than the Howitzer. Or, I suppose, the Internet cable connection is mightier than the ICBM.
And to glory in the fact that I can type way better than I can shoot (but with a properly aligned air rifle, I was a decent shot) I contribute to the bits adrift on the Interwebs.
So today my stint as a research assistant ended. It was a beautiful relationship that began in November 2004, outlasted seven coworkers, brought me attendance at conferences, liaisons, letters of recommendation, an A+ on a co-op work term report, a publication to my name, several dinners out, a MS Office suite, some drives home in the rain on the heated leather seats of a 5-series BMW, the photographs of dopey sketches of spectacularly ungrammatical sentences, salsa dancing and broken promises of it, the chopping of more pink legal papers than anyone should be subjected to, gibbering and nearly weeping with stress and hatred, an interrogation technique that went into my fantasy novel and that I do not want anyone ever subjected to, surrealist photographs, the Alt codes 130 and 160-164 inclusive, untold lines typed in Courier monospace font, untold amounts spent on coffee and still more coffee gained through the answering of trivia questions, chatter in Spanish...and laughter. Lots of laughter. Ti amo e non riesco a smettere di ridere con te...Nice while it lasted and now it is over, tear out your heart and goodbye to your lover...
Remember how ships sail on the sea
Without yielding to storms torrential
Remember that for the love of you and me
This world was invented
Remember how two hearts cannot know
Weariness of beating together ---
Only the fact that all will go
One need not remember,
Only the fact that all will go
One need not remember.
Today Anali and I transcribed the last interview I will transcribe, and I am glad I end it here. It was the first interview of a sequence with another student, a student of thirteen years back, a slow stuttering student who did not succeed in putting together one coherent sentence of Spanish --- and not only that, but I realized the source of my stress. Once upon a time, a man with a voice like his, and an accent like his, and a way of hesitating and stumbling and finally flinging out the wrong word in an unfamiliar language, had been infatuated with me --- and the painful awkwardness of that time had been buried deep, and was now resurfacing with my transcription of that interview, so I came out tense and aching, grateful for the solitude to let that emotion pass through me. I can never, ever have a meaningful relationship with someone I have difficulty communicating with. And even without that added factor, take it from a transcriber, the interviews are hell to transcribe and render accurate again. I assembled an instruction sheet for whoever shall come after me, and am glad, perversely, that she shall be the one to suffer for it, if she has any transcriber's ethic.
Masonry brute, unhandled, but written on every stone:
"After me cometh a Transcriber; tell her I, too, have known!"
Remember how ships sail on the sea
Without yielding to storms torrential
Remember that for the love of you and me
This world was invented
Remember how two hearts cannot know
Weariness of beating together ---
Only the fact that all will go
One need not remember,
Only the fact that all will go
One need not remember.
Today Anali and I transcribed the last interview I will transcribe, and I am glad I end it here. It was the first interview of a sequence with another student, a student of thirteen years back, a slow stuttering student who did not succeed in putting together one coherent sentence of Spanish --- and not only that, but I realized the source of my stress. Once upon a time, a man with a voice like his, and an accent like his, and a way of hesitating and stumbling and finally flinging out the wrong word in an unfamiliar language, had been infatuated with me --- and the painful awkwardness of that time had been buried deep, and was now resurfacing with my transcription of that interview, so I came out tense and aching, grateful for the solitude to let that emotion pass through me. I can never, ever have a meaningful relationship with someone I have difficulty communicating with. And even without that added factor, take it from a transcriber, the interviews are hell to transcribe and render accurate again. I assembled an instruction sheet for whoever shall come after me, and am glad, perversely, that she shall be the one to suffer for it, if she has any transcriber's ethic.
Masonry brute, unhandled, but written on every stone:
"After me cometh a Transcriber; tell her I, too, have known!"
Then I went and bought some toothpaste, and was inordinately pleased at this, and then went home to joy in my reading some more.
I keep thinking that Athaira was right when she said that this is a time for recharging. Indeed, that is probably the point of the previous dream, of the chaos and excitement and war and magic that comes right after a quiet semi-conscious time --- during which I have to stock up on my vanadium! And I won't be surprised if I am not the only person for whom ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
siderea becomes the subconscious's voice of reason in their dreams; whatever vanadium means to me, I will need ten times more of it than I myself think I do. Indeed, I walk around, in peace and quiescence and relaxation, happy as I rarely am --- and plagued by the sense that this won't last, that not only will my family come back and break my solitude, but this peacefulness cannot last as a state, either; coming is what snowfox090 and I spoke of, the whirling cuisinart of intellectual fury --- and the fact that I have the strength and care and support of my friends, and I will need it.
Vanadium, vanadium, named after Vanadis-Freyja, fair goddess, which reminded me of what Snowy also said about "Cups-and-Empress things." Somehow I imagine it as light blue, even though I am told that it is silver-gray, trace element necessary for life, toxic in some compounds. Used in aircraft alloys, in jet airframe wings and titanium rings, and in one of my favourite stones, sapphire, to simulate another of my favourite stones, alexandrite. Used in fuel cells, gears, and rustproofing agents, and in the blood of sea cucumbers. Glass treated with a compound of it blocks infrared and not visible light --- light without heat.
There are several applications meaningful to me in this list, and some that may be meaningful only metaphorically. But apparently, what virtues vanadium represents in my soul, I am going to need a lot of them. Like, forty tons.
siderea becomes the subconscious's voice of reason in their dreams; whatever vanadium means to me, I will need ten times more of it than I myself think I do. Indeed, I walk around, in peace and quiescence and relaxation, happy as I rarely am --- and plagued by the sense that this won't last, that not only will my family come back and break my solitude, but this peacefulness cannot last as a state, either; coming is what snowfox090 and I spoke of, the whirling cuisinart of intellectual fury --- and the fact that I have the strength and care and support of my friends, and I will need it. Vanadium, vanadium, named after Vanadis-Freyja, fair goddess, which reminded me of what Snowy also said about "Cups-and-Empress things." Somehow I imagine it as light blue, even though I am told that it is silver-gray, trace element necessary for life, toxic in some compounds. Used in aircraft alloys, in jet airframe wings and titanium rings, and in one of my favourite stones, sapphire, to simulate another of my favourite stones, alexandrite. Used in fuel cells, gears, and rustproofing agents, and in the blood of sea cucumbers. Glass treated with a compound of it blocks infrared and not visible light --- light without heat.
There are several applications meaningful to me in this list, and some that may be meaningful only metaphorically. But apparently, what virtues vanadium represents in my soul, I am going to need a lot of them. Like, forty tons.
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