Essayz

So, I'm up again writing an essay, haha. You all probably think that that is all I do, and you'd be right. This is essay 3 of 3 for this installment, and I gotta say it's a doozy. I'm taking a break so I thought, "Hey, since I quit Facebook, I should add to the blog."

Seamus and I have been busy, but have been able to make some time for friends and family. Courtney and I went to the tattoo convention, as she is looking to have her tattoo finished. I was tempted for a few minutes myself to get one, but then I remembered how fickle I am and figured I would be better off just drawing on myself as usual :) There were some amazing artists there though, it really made me wish tattoos weren't permanent! My favorite tattoo that I saw in one of the artists' books had a griffin and said Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? I was very proud of myself for being able to read it despite my very poor Latin skills. It means "Who will watch the watchers?" I have always liked that phrase even if it has been hijacked by various political factions. Beautiful Latin phrases will outlive them all, so it doesn't bother me too much.

Speaking of good phrases, I was reading an excellent book by Fawaz Traboulsi, and he opens with an Arabic proverb,

"Men resemble their present more than them resemble their fathers."

I had to stop for a moment and just allow the elegant brevity of the statement sink in. I really love it when a phrase can say so much with so little. This is especially true given how needlessly wordy historians can be... I crave the terse because of it. Ussama Makdisi is just about the opposite, a talented but fairly convoluted writer at times... still I'm happier for having read him even if it made my eyes nearly bleed.

Speaking of Middle Eastern things, I made a chickpea-sweet potato thing the other day that I was very happy with. I love cooking Moroccan food, but I almost always get the spice blend wrong. This, however, turned out wonderfully. I love it when simple recipes outstrip the complicated, a lot like that proverb.

Back to my paper though... it is frustrating, as every essay is, but it is bringing up a lot of questions in my mind that I haven't really explored before. I always took the failure of the Middle East to modernize for granted (an assumption that Islamic and modern cultures are mutually exclusive) but I realize now I was being naive because the complexity of the reality of the situation is...staggering. I don't pretend to know all about this (if I did, my essay would be finished, haha) but I am happy that I know a little more about the world than I did last week. I wish my professors had the same outlook on my education!

I've been thinking a lot about graduate school recently. My gut tells me no, but I'm thinking that my gut is just scared. If I took a year or two to do some serious reading to catch up to where I've been pretending to be, and to start up another language properly, maybe this would be worthwhile. I don't know, I guess we'll just see.