Vivid and not so vivid dreams

 A wolf carcass by the side of the road. I had seen it alive earlier. 

***

A vivid dream; I was in a well-appointed house, walking from one room to the other. I knew it was a dream, and was proud of myself for being able to create all the visual detail in my own mind, what the rooms looked like, the people, with clear features. I was telling them that, that they were my creations, then they started making fun of my pronunciation, because it was not high class enough. I laughed at them, because their examples of the vowels I was mispronouncing were not valid ones. 

I was happy to be in my dream house, and would wake up from time to time to look at the clock by the side of the bed, but I had the capacity to go to sleep again and resume the dream, repeatedly.  

Bird census

At the bird feeder and balcony, cardinals, doves, other usual suspects. 

Near the apartment, robins, starlings. 

At the wetlands, loons, ducks, geese, blackbirds, tree swallows, grackles.   

Another cardinal. Fox sparrows? (I think.) A bluejay.  Sandpiper (a new one for me).  A heron.  

Catalan

 I am reading a Murakami novel in Catalan.  I get bored by fiction so I always read in languages I want to practice a bit; someone told me about a novel I hadn't read by him, so why not? I downloaded it on my computer. 

Anyway, I understand perfectly well all that is going on. When I tried to download the dictionary, the kindle app decided I needed a French dictionary rather than a Catalan one, but I understand all but a very few words. 

What I find difficulty getting is the tone. There is a particular voice in English translations of this novelist that is casual, a bit wry. From the Catalan I am getting a kind of affectless, dry realism. Maybe a native Catalan speaker would get the correct tone, but I am not. I would have to compare this translation to the one in English to see what is going on here.  The original might also have a different tone from other Murakami novels.  

Mentions

 Graduate students will write "menciona" in their papers as almost as a default.  Foucault mentions that.... 

That will also talk about "académicos" when they are talking about anyone who has contributed to the field.  I don't know where they get these habits from. 

La casada infiel

 After my talk, I got a question about "La casada infiel."  The questioner did not like the poem (nor do I). I pointed out that it is virtually the only Lorca poem with a heterosexual male speaker, and one clearly differentiated from Lorca himself.  He is at once the macho seducer of women and the honorable man, since he would not have seduced the woman (or let himself be seduced) if he had known she was married. Surely this is parodic?  

Dalí hated this poem, and I'm sure Lorca regretted having written it, because, well, taking the poem straight would have been more normal, except for those of us who are Lorca scholars or who like to question texts rather than taking them at face value.  

My colleague in Slavic wrote this

 reading Russian literature

What do you think? I'm not crazy about this type of articles.  It is well intentioned, but to me it seems like a mishmash.  

Lorca and Flamenco

 Talk Tomorrow