Levi Herrera

TIL Tolkien’s Beowulf notes: the OE word 𝑒𝑎𝑙𝑢𝑠𝑐𝑒𝑟𝑤𝑒𝑛 means “a ghastly fear,” a horror! and it likely comes from ‘being without ale,’ bereft of drink. No beer in the house!

and blends it with an image from the 𝑆𝑜𝑛𝑔 𝑜𝑓 𝑆𝑜𝑛𝑔𝑠 to create an image of knowability trickling from the honeycomb of wisdom.” — Marion Turner’s biography of the Wife of Bath

“In a fascinating argument, Constance Mews has shown, for example, that the female writer’s use of the term ‘guttula scibilitatis’ (a droplet of knowability) takes a distinctive neologism used by Abelard (scibilitas)

Yesterday at Lake Moraine

Getting soaked by rain in Banff National Park

Quai du Louvre last night, walking along the Seine

The bells at St. Paul’s Cathedral!

Saw a dozen Saint Jeromes, but this one by Albrecht Dürer was my favorite. He’s on the front side of the panel — with his rock, his lion, and book — and this is the reverse: some revelatory meteoric event?

Among other things — I spent a solid afternoon at the National Gallery — this two-piece by Francesco Pessolino of David and Goliath which incorporates a ton of gold foil into the egg tempura painting on wood: extraordinary

Exploring London for a few days

They need to print an edition of 𝑀𝑜𝑏𝑦 𝐷𝑖𝑐𝑘 in which Captain Ahab’s speech is blue ink, like the opposite of those red letter bibles.

Acrylic painting of a blue sea and a white whale and a tiny little sailing ship on top of the waters

Painted Moby Dick and the Pequod

“I devoted three days to the studious digesting of all this beer, beef, and bread, during which many profound thoughts were incidentally suggested to me, capable of a transcendental and Platonic application”

Favorite reads of the year:
5. House of Leaves or Ray Bradbury’s The October Country (Halloween books)
4. The Metaphysical Club (nonfiction) by Louis Menand
3. Unsong, Scott Alexander
2. The Torqued Man, Peter Mann
1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon

Thoguhts Of Life—Ive replaced evero screen in my goon cave w/ a diff. translation of the Epic Of Gilgamesh. My mind has become rather Honed

Favorite new movies of the year:
- Longlegs
- Dune 2
- Anora
- La Chimera
- Challengers
- Strange Darlings
- Nosferatu
- A Complete Unknown

Honorable mentions: A Real Pain, Megalopolis, The Apprentice

Finally saw Nosferatu and immediately thought of the Sopranos meme pages b/c Melfi: “decrease the lithium”

Frasier: “I’ve lately been enchanted by a Calypso of my own”
Niles: “Oh, Frasier, that woman at the café doesn’t like you.”
F: “I told you I was in flirtation”
N: “When she said she liked Noman, it wasn’t a cheeky Odyssey reference — she was turning you down!”
F: “How DARE you!”

Niles: “You know, I’ve always fancied myself a classicist ever since that excursion to Mykonos. I felt particularly touched by the Muse.”

Frasier: “Ah, yes, the trip when Maris spent the whole vacation in traction. You were only aMUSing yourself, Niles.”

Frasier and Niles pooh-pooh the Wilson Odyssey translation but come to blows over the merits of Fagles and Lattimore. Martin tells them to wait for the movie. “I liked Batman!” Niles claims Homer wouldn’t know the true meaning of polytropos unless he’d seen Maris’s scoliosis.

A girl’s favorite movie

At this point everyone in my family better like socks

Googling “more gay books” for Christmas gifts

In the kitchen trying to figure out homemade tortillas so I can make a breakfast taquito

Vesuvius Challenge A $1,000,000+ machine learning and computer vision competition

The irony that the best, most cutting edge world lit jobs right now requires some knowledge of coding or computer science
scrollprize.org/jobs

If I teach the Odyssey again, I’m including a supplementary day of lit that’s inspired by the Odyssey: Tennyson’s “Ulysses,” Madeline Miller’s novel, the Wallace Stevens poem, Carol Ann Duffy’s Penelope, O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU, and I’m assigning dioramas or puppet shows

All my Facebook posts from first semester of college read like quaint Samuel Pepys diary entries. “Dancing with the Stars finale. Brooke won! Hoorah. Now studying for a British lit final, and to sleep!”

Now that I’m thinking about it, Green Knight’s stage animation reminded me of those scenes in Bedknobs and Broomsticks when she enchants the medieval armor with substitutionary locomotion to fight Nazis. Also the Mountain in GoT.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight performance at the college. I was pretty impressed with the costume and puppet design (the knight was like a Big Bird figure, it really was neat)

Occasionally impressed by psychoanalysis so I look for that insight in real life, but then remember Mad Men where Pete Campbell pulled the Freud notes out of Don’s trash and fumbles a cigarette pitch claiming that people really want death after all, and I shut up about it