An Elephant of One's Own

I've talked about and narrated dreams elsewhere in this blog. If I don't do so more often, it's simply because I rarely remember them. Experience has taught me that if I cared to remember more, I would have to pay 150 bucks a month for biweekly appointments with a floor-lamp , and I don't have that kind of money. So it's only ever going to be the one or two per year I actually remember, owing to fortuitous circumstances like waking up at the end of it and then staying awake long enough to retell it to myself a couple of times, to fix it in my mind. But I certainly wish I could remember more. Dreams are interesting. As I always say, though, it's not what happened in the dream, it's how you felt about what happened. That's generally the most interesting aspect. In this case, as usual, the beginning of the dream is lost to me. At the point I begin to remember, I am alone, walking along a road in Durán, near where I used to live, though later it turns ou...

This was always one of my stalking horses in the old Spanish blog. I mean, really: "liderazgo". What a turd of a word. They take an English word, misunderstand it (probably) by an angle of about 10deg, small but significant, badly adapt it to the Spanish phonetic system, add a silly suffix, and (this is where you want to scream) turn it into a cardinal virtue, the attainment of which requires you to read three self help books per month (check out your local supermarket, just past the turnstile and before you get to the apples and tomatoes). As a teacher, I have a particular aversion to "leadership", for the simple reason that it's one of those things, usually the main thing and in some cases the only thing, that my job description and the mission statement of whatever institution I am working for tells me I have to instill in my students, irrespective of the subject taught, and which I have neither the inclination nor, probably, the means to instill. I don...