Saturday, December 30, 2006

Latin Languor

I was in a town center that was being rebuilt, though I'm not sure what town it was. I was sitting on a low concrete wall next to some steps that led down to the water behind me. There were a few buildings in front of me on the other side of a square that used to have parking spaces on all four sides. All vegetation was gone and the land between me and the buildings had been razed. There was nothing left there but dirt. It was winter, and I commented to my mother (who I don't remember seeing, but I do remember commenting to) that I was glad they didn't choose to do this in the spring because the flowers there had always been so pretty in the spring. I remembered in particular some tall purple flowers, but I don't know what they were called.

I was reading a book, and had just finished the first chapter. The heroine was an unmarried woman in her 40's, with short, prematurely grey hair. It seemed she had no interest in relationships, but she had just met a man that I liked very much based on what I had read, and I wondered if they would end up in a relationship after all. I skimmed ahead in the book, saw a couple of italicized paragraphs in Latin, wondered what that would be about, and noted the last part of Chapter 2, which led me to believe she would indeed be won over by this man, and very soon. I woke up with two things running through my head: a Latin phrase ("quo glorius annum," by my translation meaning "in which a glorious year") and the last part of the last sentence of Chapter 2 ("...and she decided she wasn't distracted anymore.")