thisCassandra

Opposites and Not

Contrary to what many people seem to believe, the opposite of "to want" is not "to not want". I haven't found a word that is opposite to "to want". "To want" implies action, the action of wanting. "To not want" implies an absence of action, rather than a negative action, and these two things are not the same.

There is a similar issue about "to like" and "to not like". What I mean is that many (most) people seem to think that if I say "I don't like green", I mean the opposite of "I like green", that is "I dislike green". "I don't like green" just means "I don't like green". It is not the opposite of "I like green".

Just as "I don't love you" is not the same as "I hate you", "I don't hate you" is not the same as "I love you."

So is "to diswant" the opposite of "to want"?

I don't love imprecision in language.

A Plurality of Possible Pluralizations

Is the plural of mouse (peripheral, not animal) mice, as in mouse (animal, not peripheral) or mouses? If mouses, is it pronounced like spouses or like blouses?

Anna called last night just after 10. We talked, for just over two hours, of many things, the most interesting being the recall of a conversation we had (ages ago now, back when we all lived in Montreal) about me being Avery's godmother. Nothing was done about it then, but it appears to be happening now. So I think I'm adopting a godson. I wonder if there's an official ritual for adopting godchildren.

Doesn't matter, we can make up out own rituals and traditions (first, as I told her, he is now obligated to send a birthday card every year).

What fun life can be if you're willing (and able) to play with things a little...

Drag...I again felt nauseated while on the bus (twice) this afternoon and had to get off quick or be sick. Observation: I had a cup of coffee this morning and I had a cup of coffee on Friday morning (the other time this nausea thing happened was Friday afternoon). Might there be a relationship between morning coffee and afternoon sickness? Maybe...

It's Its and They're Their Sound-Alikes

It's: Contraction of "it is" (third person singular neutral pronoun plus the third person singular form of  the verb to be);

Its: Third person singular neutral possessive;

"It's its" is a complete sentence.

They're: Contraction of "they are" (third person plural pronoun plus the third person plural form of the verb "to be");

Their: Third person plural possessive;

"They're theirs" is a complete sentence.

I find it interesting that the plural forms of it's and its, they're and their, are homophones too. English is an odd language.

The pigeons that live outside of the Student Union Building have to be among the most pleasingly plump pigeons on earth. Even considering the cold today, they are too big.

Trigonometry, Calculus, Thermodynamics, English and Painting

In a right triangle it is possible to determine any of the other angles: where A is an acute angle and hypotenuse is the long side of the triangle,

Sin A = length of opposite side over length of hypotenuse,

Cosine A = length of adjacent side over length of hypotenuse,

Tangent A  = length of opposite side over length of adjacent side.

I've been feeling a bit mournful about the lack of a relationship with higher math in my life, and have decided that I need to relearn geometric relationships first, then algebra, then trigonometry, then calculus - differential and integral - the study of the rates of change.

I do have a bit of spare time these days, and could maybe work on it for fifteen or so minutes a day.

From calculus I can learn to differentiate between good and evil and to integrate my new knowledge into my world. Critical faculty courtesy of Sir Isaac Newton and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Legend has it that an apple played an important role is Sir Isaac's life, and an apple played an important role in at least one other legend of knowledge.

One of my favourite things to do when I was studying engineering was to make up silly equations. I haven't made up any silly equations for a long, long time, but I recall that one of the last was related to Newton's Law of Cooling (which states that the rate of cooling of a body is directly proportional to the difference in temperature between the body and the ambient temperature - but this is thermodynamics, not, strictly speaking, math): the rate of change of boredom is inversely proportional to the difference between the threshold boredom level and the ambient boredom level.

I get pretty excited when I think of relearning my math, but I think that I should wait until after the painting course is over. After all, the limit of dv/dt, where d is the rate of change, v = ability to learn new things and t = time, approaches 0 as t approaches 0. It is a direct proportionality.

I should have got a degree in math, but by the time I transfered out of engineering (to English - alpha order) my love of math was worn out of me.

For me dl/dt = m, where l = love, t = studying engineering and m = math, approaches 0 as t approaches infinity.

Maybe I should find some way to combine the math with the art: create a form of expression called art-metic. Many artists have successfully combined language and art, so why ever not? Interesting...

The picture demonstrates what I am currently learning in the painting class: discords. The colour of the wood table is a broken orange and is a bit darker than the blue cup, but being close in tone they shimmer a bit. I like these colours together I like it a lot. I bet there's an equation to be made here.

Lost Tongues

I had lunch with my mother today at the Congee Noodle House. She wanted to get dry garlic ribs to take out and asked me to order them for her, so I did, kind of. The waitress didn't understand much English, and my mother is losing her Cantonese. She doesn't use it anymore now that Gramma is dead (since 1993).

I could speak Cantonese before I could speak English. I remember being able to speak it, and I remember knowing that I had known how to say things in Cantonese, but couldn't remember how to say them anymore. Then I remember knowing that I no longer understood or spoke Cantonese. I remember losing my language. I was very young, about four years old.

I am pretty good at learning languages, but I am also pretty skilled at forgetting them. Cantonese is not the only language I have learned and forgotten. I have learned and forgotten: French; Mandarin; Middle English; Spanish. I imagine that if I were to move to a place where I no longer spoke English regularly  that I would lose English too.

This idea saddens me.

Seeing my mother lose her skill at functioning in her world also saddens me.

La Bruja Se Esta Casando

It was sunny this afternoon. After work Susana and I went to Nester's Market and when we came out, the sun was still shining strongly, but there was a cloud overhead and a fine rain was falling. Fine misty rain. We would have been able to see a rainbow, but a tall building blocked our view.

Susana said, "A witch is getting married," and explained that in Argentina when it was sunny out and rainy at the same time, that is what people said. When I asked, she translated it as "La bruja se esta casando." I like Spanish idiomatic phrases; I often find them charming.

Susana said, "The day I got married it rained, but there was no sun. That's how I knew that I wasn't a witch."

I wonder if it would be sunny and rainy simultaneously if I got married.

My friend Pat (another voluntary crone) has been wanting to do a cake toss: in 1981 Mrs. Pat's Mother  made a wedding cake for her (Pat) and stored it in the freezer for safe-keeping. A few years ago Mrs. PM brought it with her at Christmas to give to Pat. Pat, who never married, and who, as far as I know, doesn't intend to, didn't have any use for the cake except as the basis of a piece of performance art (food based). She wanted to wear a wedding gown and prance across the Lion's Gate Bridge and when she got to the middle, throw the cake over the railing (channelling she and Billie Joe McAllister on the Tallahassee Bridge), while chanting the words, "Adieu, I do, adieu."

Well, she did it on Labour Day. She had broken up the cake into much smaller chunks (so as not to kill anybody or destroy property should they land on anything), and attached purple streamers to them. It was a beautiful day for a wedding: the sun was shining, but no rain was noted. Maybe rain isn't a necessity when a crone marries herself or rather publicly divorces herself from the desire or hope to marry.

I wish that I had been able to be there. Experiencing such a beautiful ceremony I probably would have ended up in tears. Crying. Rain. For. La. Bruja.

Hablamos

Susana, la secretaria temporaria es de Argentina. Ella y yo encontramos en el autobus, y hablamos espanol. Me he olvidado mucho, pero, si hablamos frecuentemente, podria recordar todo, y aprender mas.

Tengo mucha esperanza de recordar mi espanol.

Mucha.

thisCassandra as Polyglot

I got to speak six languages yesterday:

I used English most of the day;

I used Espanol, twice (with two separate people - one a former teacher who asked me to come back for more Espanol, one a fellow student in my Putonghua class who is a native Spanish speaker who told me my Spanish pronunciation is very good);

I used Putonghua during my class;

I used Hongyin during my class;

I muttered to myself in Francais during the bus ride home;

I spoke Deutsch - "Schlauf Gut" - before I went to sleep.

Trying to Learn Putonghua (Again)

Wo xuexi hanyu.

You fill in the tones.

Little Old Chinese Ladies

I love to see little old Chinese ladies: the ones who are thick around the middle and bow-legged; the ones who wear weird hats and too-short-pants and odd shoes (I saw one today wearing bedroom slippers); the ones whose clothes have mismatched patterns; the ones who run around in wild gangs of little old cackling Chinese ladies, pushing people out of their way. You know the ones I mean, the cute ones.

This morning I saw just such a gang on the bus. The ringleader was a homely little creature, a teeny crone troll with frizzy white hair, wearing a brown snowflake toque unrolled and sitting high on her head, a purple and gray chenille scarf, a cream ski jacket, and dark plaid pants. She had big glasses and gapped teeth. I did a quick sketch of her (as part of my final drawing project - 1x24, 24 drawings within a parameter - my parameter is 24 quick sketches done on the bus in a little sketchbook), and showed it to her and her friends. They liked it. I think she was flattered. She thanked me in Chinese.

If I analyze these women I see them as my future physical self. I wish I could understand them beyond their thanking me for drawing one of them.