Za mną płaczą anioly

I finished Woodrell's Bayou Trilogy today, only about a week later than I thought I would. Starting Edith Wharton's The custom of the country had something to do with that. All this week, I've been reading of the misadventures of Louisiana low-lives on my way to work and of Gilded Age socialites as I drift off to sleep. If I were like clever and stuff, I'd be able to write an interesting post about the commonalities between John X Shade's quest for a life of pleasure unencumbered by entanglements and Undine Spragg Marvell's and what this says about the American Dream and whatnot. But, bad luck, I'm dull as a tush hog and about as sharp as an invisible toothpick.

After many misalignments, I've got a tutoring session with the Rabbi again this Sunday, which has got me wanting to read some German again. To this end, I went digging in some boxes the other night and pulled out a book of Arthur Schnitzler's short stories. Such a natural choice of reading materials, how is it that I hadn't read it before? Well, judging from the position of the bookmark, I already had, at least up until I hit a 100+ page story and decided to take a breather. Or that's what I think happened; my memories of the stories earlier in the book are so vague, it's difficult to tell whether I've read them all before or not.

I'm still looking for a language to begin studying, however. This time last year I was hip-deep in Swedish, but I tried getting into that again last month and failed. Irish has been hovering at the edge of my consciousness for a while--November weather sometimes does that--but to no great effect so far, and discussions about Slavic prompted me to pull out a Russian grammar, the Ukrainian textbook I never made much progress in, and to think about reviewing my Polish. I just wish something would seize my imagination; this kind of linguistic drift just feels unnatural.