Motto

Funny what you chance across when looking for something else. Case in point, from the rather arbitrary-sounding List of Latin phrases at Wikipedia:

Words to live by.

I know virtually nothing of Latin as a language, just a bunch of loan words and stock phrases and the spiny tentacles of Romantic etymology that entwine and penetrate and underlie so much of my own beloved tongue. Morsels to fling into conversation at amusingly inappropriate moments, some sketchy sense of how antiquity's inexplicable grammars still bamboozle our own.

Enough, though, surely, to make the components of the earlier quoted phrase unexceptional? I've certainly encountered the first two conjugations before, and while I'm not sure about the third it carries no surprise. Yet taken together it all does seem like some kind of discovery. Not quite epiphanic, but at least an illuminating collision of meanings.

And an interesting (to me; feel free to wander off if you're bored) coda to a day of metaphorical gymnastics.

We have, at work, an irregular series of lunchtime reading groups and seminars whereby some fragments of information from the multifarious knowledge domains we encompass can be disseminated and dissected and integrated in the hope that, just possibly, our general level of understanding of whatever the fuck it is that we all do may be marginally increased.

This is, of course, A Good Thing, but also potentially a chore. It's lunchtime, for crying out loud! Sure, the company provides food, but I could be at home catching 20 winks on the sofa! These occasions are entirely voluntary, but there's a certain amount of pressure to attend from time to time, especially when they're being organised by people I really like and respect who seem to value my contributions.

One current occasional series is about software design, and I have somehow -- by dint of being old and cantankerous more than anything else -- acquired a reputation for having a clue about how that goes. Modesty forbids, etc, besides which I suspect one or two of my colleagues quite despise how I deal with such matters, but even so it was inevitable that sooner or later it would fall to me to present at one of these sessions, and today was that day.

The usual form of this kind of presentation drives my into a narcoleptic frenzy, even when very smart people are explaining things that I'm genuinely interested in and want to know more about, so I dispensed with whatever template there might have been and opted instead for full-on tub-thumping, hellfire & brimstone mode. Also full-on performance anxiety, but I've had plenty of occasions in many different environments to master that particular phobia, and in comparison to some of those occasions this was a light summer breeze.

I have no idea whether anyone learned anything from my talk, but I had a good time, so I choose to count it a success. The main thing that struck me, though, was how powerfully it was influenced by my father. How, even though he knows next to nothing about software development, there seemed a real sense in which, to the extent that anything was being taught, Peter was teaching it.

It's not that he would say the same things, or say them in the same way -- probably I have a few of his mannerisms, but I'm a different person with different experiences and a whole different body of knowledge, in addition to which I'm a great deal more obnoxious -- but it does seem to me that there's some underlying structure, an eclecticism, an intellectual range and rigour, an exploratory instinct that comes from him and to which, when I find myself cast in a pedagogic role, I aspire.

And it is unquestionably Peter's fault that, explaining software design concepts to an audience of mostly programmers, I wind up drawing analogies to rhetorical tropes, with slides that say things like:

"...and my personal favourite, hyperbole, which I've used a million times in this talk already and will probably use a million more..."

Peter is, as I think I mentioned before, in town just now. Leaving on Tuesday, and I expect to see him two or three more times before then. We have, for example, arranged to meet for lunch tomorrow.

I think I may try to express a little of this to him then.
Posted by matt at September 29, 2005 11:58 PM