ritas kleine welt

grab your daffodils, hug a stranger and sing, sing, sing!

happy saint david's day!

we only got to meet a couple of times during my last visit to wales one year ago. but we clicked instantly and had a couple of animated conversations. this is how i will remember duncan tanner:

you are sorely missed!

i have finally started outlining my thesis. most of you are probably now asking, 'what the hell has she been doing the past year?' well, it's easily explained. although i have all these crazy and wild ideas flying through my head, i hate pinning them down. i hate being nailed onto the concrete word. i don't want to be pinned down. of course, resistance is futile. who ever was awarded a title for being silly? (apart from chaplin! but he was a genius in his own field. i'm not even going there.)

so. outline. because, lets face it, if i don't start conquering my demons pretty soon, there's hell to pay. probably even quite literally.

for about a month now, i have been learning welsh. rydw i'n dysgu yr iaith gymraeg, to be precise. and, my duw!, it's difficult. it's one thing to wrap your heas (pen) around all those different forms of 'bod'. and just when you thought you managed, out jumps a variant for forming questions. or another special rule when aswering a question that begins with 'pwy' (who). and that is not yet including the two different versions (or at least the two i have found out about so far) of saying, 'no.' but on the upside, i've found a couple of words that made me smile a lot. like the translation of 'shop assistant'. if it's a woman, it literally translates to 'working woman' -- gweithwraig. how sweet is that! (still don't know what a male shop assistant is called in welsh, though. maybe they don't exist...)

next, i shall find out the real difference between the use of 'nabod' and 'gwybod'. in english they both mean 'to know' -- but in german they are 'kennen' and 'wissen'. so there's a slight difference. till then, i'll keep on trying to wrap my head around all the evil mutations. 'benyw' mutates to 'yr fenyw' -- but 'llaw' stays the same when attaching the definite article. randwm!

from jan morris, the matter of wales: 'in the course of the year 1902 the caban at one blaenau ffestiniog quarry, for example, which met over jam-jars of tea by candle-light in a damp tunnel, organized a mental arithmetic contest, a singing contest, a discussion on the recent education act, a lecture on the subject 'how much greater is a man than a sheep', a spelling bee, a contest to create welsh words, a discourse on vanity, a debate on 'whether a wife is a choice or a necessity', a quiz on the bible, a debate on whether ministers should be appointed for life, a contest to interpret a set poem and several competitions concerning the writing and memorizing of verse.' (267) (though if truth be said, this book isn't worth much because it reads a bit too much like, 'cymru am bydd!' and 'death to the english!')

i love my field of research!

wales. land of the hills and mountains and farmers -- and sheep with LED blankets.

this is what made this nation great!

after just about 48 hours back in wales, it seems i'm picking up the local accent again. but that's not the most important news of the week. dear gentle reader, after more than two years of separation, bedlam celebrated its long awaited reunification. members included rhiannon, jim, lucy, stiw and ce moi. and what can i say? it was more than just great! it was the perfect ending to a perfect day.

the youth hostel that i have booked into for my week's stay in bangor at the end of february is located not quite in bangor. actually, it's just by the golf course ... right at the outskirts of maesgeirchen, the one town in the whole of the yookay with the highest crime rate. thanks a lot, google maps!

wish me luck that i make it back in one piece!

i am not much of a poetry person; my nature is far too prosaic for that. however, there is one poet i really like. maybe it has something to do with the fact that he was one of the guest poets from the "20th century literature" module in bangor, two years ago. anywho. the point is, peter finch rocks. and he has a web page and a blog to prove it. i especially advice you to read "Zen Cymru" and "A Welsh Wordscape".

once upon a time, a dear friend of mine spoke the wise words, 'rita, bureaucracy is the sign that we have managed to build up a somewhat civilised society! in the olden days, people didn't need paper. instead they just bludgeoned each other to death with their clubs.' she being much wiser because she has seen the passing of many more moons than i have in my short and humble life, she is right of course.

but dammit! i want that club so badly right now!!!

ps. i just wanted to book a single room in one of the cheaper B&Bs in bangor -- but jochen beat me to it. i'm still without shelter at this point.

pps. on that occassion i should mention that i have been able to book a flight with the help of maria and her trusty credit card and i will be staying in bangor for the length of a week at the end of next february. YAY!

today, i gave my first "guest lecture" about all matters welsh. i was talking for roughly 25 minutes about 100 years of welsh nationalism and some of the basic developments since the turn of the century. and when everything was said and done, dietmar presented me with a beautiful calendar for next year which he had bought during the summer on his trip through wales. how sweet is that?!

with every passing week, i could gush more and more about the sweetness of my colleagues. i could go about the entire english department and squish the stuffing out of everyone. how on earth did i deserve to work with such nice and lovely and awesome people? maybe that's the protestant girl somewhere deep down inside me saying, 'you don't deserve such luck -- and even get payed for all the fun on top of it all!'

who of you has ever sworn a holy oath never to start doing things you despise with all your heart?!? like you would have sworn on your mother's grave or your first born?!? in my case, it was the solemn promise never to create a single bloody powerpoint presentation.

i upheld this promise -- until this evening. i am going to bury myself under a rock now.

over on LJ, grayswandir completed this meme and i got inspired by her answers. and because it is monday morning and i enjoy some quality time at home, i thought, i could answer it now instead of waiting till i get home this evening.

the past two hours i have spent with browsing through the extensive archives of the microsoft library and digging up obscure texts of 19th century wales. it's pretty amazing what you can find there. so far i have unearthed books about angling, copper smelting, nonconformity, ancient stone circles and just traveling through wales in general, be it on foot, by train or with the family. of course there are also lots and lots of novels and collections of short prose and poetry. somewhere hidden among these treasure should be at least one or two references to hybrid identies in wales.

it's quite indicative that it is much easier in these times to come by scanned copies of obscure old books than to have a new commentary and published researches based in our library here in leipzig.