Chattin' with the Nina.

Our little convo with Nina piqued(At this point in typing my blog, I was confused about the structure of the phrase "piqued my interest," as I was unsure which spelling to use. When I looked up the word "pique" I got a bunch of things, including a type of fabric-weave and the act of being offended. I didn't want anybody to think that Nina Scott offended me or that she did any kind of weaving to my benefit, however, I eventually decided that "piqued" was the correct form.) my interest in the process of translation, especially the not getting any credit part. It's pretty crazy to think about all the books that were not written in English, and how people just sat down and cranked out translation just for the good of the world. You gotta appreciate that in a person. Then, though, thinking about all those books that have been translated, I started thinking about all the books that were not translated. Books or letters or philosophies or anything that was lost or hidden or burned or destroyed for any reason. It's a real shame. That's a real crime, and thank goodness for computers and the internet for being able to Log indefinitely all these works of the pen. Or the keyboard. Or the hammer and chisel. I hope that society's infrastructure is capable of retaining all this glorious information for posterity. There are some more cents.

Day one: Bello, Bolivar and their TropAg delirium.

Reading Bello's ode to tropical agriculture, it was totally easy to see his disdain for the spanish conquistador bros. He was all up their grill, blaming them for a significant portion of the problems in south American colonies. He blamed them for inciting urban civilization and making the natives lazy alcoholics. It's hard to understand, from an outside perspective, how people could drag civilization down into sin like this, but like we talked about in class the other day, they really brought down the quality of the civilization by essentially banning art and literature. I guess my naivety can blind me. I'm so sheltered. It's definitely reasonable that he would be Bolivar's teacher, though, considering Bolivar's strong opposition to the Spanish occupancy of South America. And speaking of Bolivar, I still think that the reason he didn't make a reference to Christian God, despite the fact that many of his followers were assuredly devout Christians, was that he was trying to disconnect himself with European religious beliefs. I was also thinking while I was reading, it is rather unbelievable that he would see the face of god, even if he was supposed to be on a higher plane than everybody else. It reminded me of something I heard one time--this, in fact

"when you see the face of god you will die
and there will be nothing left of you
except the god-man, the god-woman
the heavenly man, the heavenly woman
the heavenly child
there will be terror under this day of night
there will be a song of jubilee waiting for your king
there will be nothing you will be looking for in this world
except for your god"

It makes it seem as though if you see the true face of god, it is impossible to return to the world of the living. I'm not sure though, It's all a pretty foreign concept. That's my couple of cents.