I was yet cast down to the very nook of Tartatus, hurled headlong once the earth itself had gaped, beyond that triple headed hound who guards its gates, into the very infernal regions of Hades. Namely, I had to go into work again.
Before that, entered the bear-pit that is FaceBook, some writers' group. I argue very strongly that self-publishing is the way forward. Even so, this was not particularly well received (especially by those that cannot edit or market books for themselves...). The champions of fuelling the ever avarious publishing giants (the 'Big Five' which is really only one: Random House) are, as I see it, most misguided. In any case, that is the banter of budding writers, most of whom write substandard prosaic fiction, not exalted verse, and certainly not the in the classical style.
At that... place, however, things have gotten worse (one cannot imagine just how much worse they could get, considering yesterday's ordeal). I have noticed something, or rather, I cannot fail to have noticed something which irks me beyond words. I should heed the sage advice of Plutarch or Seneca the Younger, and not allow ira to nest and take root, but it irks me. What happens, is this.
This young, immature, not even yet an adult 'learned' colleague of mine finds fault in anything and everything I do, in order to make herself appear somehow 'better' than I am, and to diminish my own standing. Her sister (the one that is sleeping with the boss) also does this. They are, in Latin subductisupercilicarptores ('eyebrow raising fault finders'). They do not have a positive mental attitude, and have no sense of fair play or teamwork (being incongruous gossips and scheming little imps). As Henry of the Beard once wrote, viculus nescioquis barone suo privatus est. ('Somewhere there's a village missing its idiot').
I cannot stand it, but I accept that this is not the Italian Renaissance, by any stretch of the imagination. We do not live in the heyday of the Abbasid Caliphate during the ninth century or the Umayyad Emirate in tenth century Al Andalus. It is Dark Age Britain, 2022. Education, hard work, honesty, talent, these things mean nothing here, so I accept that my education has been a complete waste of time. I would have been far better off becoming a male prostitute or turning to crime. I would remind you, my miniscule readership, that I am still doing the same job, now, as I did as a teenager, as an undergraduate, as a post graduate, and now as a 'master'.
One member of staff had Covid today (so obviously, he works alongside the rest of us, because this is a place run by brainless brutes and immature clowns) and he asked me if I had a remedy for his illness, because I am a Doctor. I happened to mention to the young man (less than half my age, again related to the twin harridans) that I am not a Doctor, but merely a Magister Artium and that my specialist subject covers ancient medicine (i.e. what not to do with a patient, if only in the minutiae and not in the philosophy or principles underpinning medicine: Hippocrates, Galen, that old chestnut). Then came a kind of compliment, that this was a 'great achievement', as he said. I understand from other members of staff there that my education is merely an object of ridicule. It is absolutely certain that it has been of no use, whatsoever. If anything, it has made me an object of scorn, ridicule and made me even still more marginalised than I already was. But that is only to be expected. This is, after all, not 1463 in the time of Cosimo de' Medici in Florence: it's Dark Age Britain, 2022. It may as well be the mid sixth century during the time of Gildas, for all the "good" education and reading has done me.
Yet one must always at least attempt to maintain a positive mental attitude (even if the world is on the brink of annihilation during a potential third world war, and in the midst of a global plague which racks the world with a lethal severity - absolute proof that this is not some kind of 'golden age' but far from it: the exact opposite is true, in reality).
In other news, I have been reading Ptolemy again (only Tetrabiblos) as research for my current translation. I must say that this project is a very big pain in the backside. It is not exactly the easiest text to translate. Furthermore, though this Latin text may have been held in high esteem during Elizabethan England, such tricky to translate works are not esteemed nowadays. That's okay too. If nothing else it provides further proof that learning, especially classical learning, is of no consequence in the Dark Age which Britain now subsists. Grumble grumble grumble. It's okay though, right? Because at least we're not getting shelled by the Russians! (As though that were the yardstick of a well to do and prosperous, forward looking and civilised nation).
There will come a time when things are better than they are now, but certainly not here, in this place. All that university education means here is debt, ridicule and slavery.
Max.
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