3/18: (neg)otium

The Romans' word for "leisure" is otium. Their word for "business" is a negation of that: negotium.

It's spring break, which should be the time for otium, but I have a conference to go to on Wednesday, with a presentation that needs to be finished before I get on the plane. And I have a pile of midterms to grade.

On the negotium front today, I managed to grade the beginning Latin midterms this morning, more expeditiously than I had anticipated. And I finished a draft of my talk this afternoon. There's still revising to do, and a PowerPoint to go with it, but at least all the basic articulation is done.

Getting things done relatively smoothly gave me a little time for otium. Of course I took my camera and headed out amid the blooming things. And then I played with Photoshop while drinking my afternoon tea. I love the "cut-out" feature on Photoshop since it reminds me of Cubists and Matisse's collages. Here's a tulip:

2 comments:

Barbara said...

I like that too!

RR said...

Thanks, Barbara. I think I'm going to get a few postcard prints of this one made; it makes me smile to look at it.