Ravelling is the loss of aggregates...

I am reading about asphalt, computational fluid dynamics, and bio-fuel. Among other topics. I am back at work. Editing. Not exactly what I have spent all these years in gradschool for but it is work at the moment. The language institute wants me, the museums here seem not to. So this is what I do, as it pays and I can do it at home in whichever room I want to and whenever I want to, as long as I make the deadline. So far, I always have. I could argue that I am learning new things... but to be honest I don't really care one computational parametric bit about this stuff. Although I of course hope that the asphalt on which I drive is strong and doesn't tear or ravel beneath my tires and I hope to God that the bio-fuel produced from waste will take the place of Bush's oil, but still I don't really care. The point is that all these professors and engineers and scientists cannot (some not for the life of them) write decently in English. So I get to fix it and rewrite it and make sure an English-speaking/reading audience will not raise too many eyebrows at the Dutch-isms in the texts. I get to do the eyebrow-raising, the difference is that I do know where the Denglish is coming from, and mostly I actually know what they really want to say in English (and when I am not sure, they inadvertently end up saying what I think they wanted to say...)

Since I am not too interested in the actual topics I try to get interested in the Denglish and I feel that I now would be prepared to teach a course on it. And by the sound of it, they (the University's Language Institute) is actually planning to do so and are thinking about asking me to teach it. The point of the course would be of course, to teach these academics how NOT to use the Denglish, and how to take the D(utch) out of it. Should be an interesting experience?

Other than the varying forms of Denglish I AM however learning quite some new (to me) vocabulary and terminology. I am just not so sure, given that the topics don't really strike me as of vital importance in my life, when I will ever be able to use the new stuff like turbulent flow, laser ablation, and biosurfactants. Oh well. We can never know, right. Once in a while a line strikes me, like "ravelling is the loss of aggregates." Now what could be more true than that! In the past few months I myself seem to have lost some aggregates and am feeling a bit "ravelled" or is it "unravelled?" Can I feel both? (And interestingly enough, going back to the Denglish, this is actually an English word derived from the Dutch). Enough of the babble. I might be boring you, my reader.

Or am I? And should I care? This is MY blog, isn't it? And why are you reading it anyway? Who is my audience and what does it want? To check in and see that we are all fine? To see whether the house is moving along or still in chaos? Now that this blog is "open" and available without log-in, I no longer have a readers-list. By making it easier to all of you (who are you?) I have made it a black hole for myself. But as one of my friends and readers (!) said, "I completely understand your conundrum regarding public/private blogs. However, from MY standpoint as an interested observer, I don't need another username and password in my life, so I'm game for keeping it public." And well, she is right of course!

I used to think that whoever REALLY wanted to read this blog, wouldn't mind logging in, and it would keep all the others out. Now that mine is open, I have done a little bit of browsing myself into other people's blogs and the hesitation I used to have about being out in the open has slightly vanished. Mainly because, honestly, I find that I myself am not that interested in other blogs anyway (exceptions are those in my list) and certainly not those written by people I have never even heard of. I can barely find the time to write my own, or read the musings of the blogs listed, let alone get engrossed in the blog-lives of others. So why would anyone be interested in mine? That allows me to sleep for the moment. Yet maybe not for long...as I can think of quite some people of whom I feel that they have absolutely no business at all peering into the snippet of my life I reveal inhere. (Okay, now that I think of that, I might lock it up again! Ha.)

Blog-life. Blog-self. That is all it is, isn't it? I asked my sister-in-law (the fencing bear) whether she doesn't make herself feel too vulnerable or naked after writing her often insightful but (seemingly) very personal and diary-like posts (see previous post). She answered that it isn't her but fencing-bear writing. The alter ego thus, or who and what she would like to be? And yet,don't we all do that, whether we call it something or not? Isn't this what this is about? A modern and convenient "good-letter-home" without a stamp and with the world as our mailing address. Whoever picks up the envelope can read the letter within. A wishful self-image? Or a carefully selected amalgamate of specific parts (Ha! aggregates) of who we are in truth. Yes, I think so. And that is fine. Look at www.willworkforplay.blogspot.com and who do YOU see? A sprightly, canine-loving woman who is into acrobatics and living life to the fullest, wearing perfume while inverted atop a horse? Yes. But she is much more than that. This is who she chooses to be, right now, for the world. I am fine with that. Brassai is still on my mind. Maybe he would have liked blogs -- the appearance of the truth, but in fact, all merely staged. But I still manage to let you all know my story, and that of the house with us in it. Even with the loss of aggregates.

From Antwerp with love.