Monday, August 20, 2007

Eight Random Things

Clayton tagged me for an eight random things meme. So here goes:

* Books currently scattered and stacked on my desk:
Etienne Gilson, Linguistics and Philosophy
David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals
Nicolas Malebranche, The Search after Truth
Leonard J. Brooks, Business & Professional Ethics for Directors, Executives, & Accountants
Edith Stein, Finite and Eternal Being
Isaac Newton, Principia Mathematica
Richard Fafara, The Malebranche Moment: Selections from the Letters of Etienne Gilson and Henri Gouhier
Paul Guyer, Kant and the Claims of Taste
Peter A. Redpath, ed. A Thomistic Tapestry: Essays in Memory of Etienne Gilson
Henri Gouhier, Fénelon Philosophe

* I'm a tea-drinker. I favor Darjeeling and Earl Grey.

* Change currently in my pocket: $3.31 (7 quarters, 14 dimes, 1 nickel, 11 pennies)

* CD currently in my Discman: Lifehouse, No Name Face.

* Brand of shoes I usually wear: Vans.

* I have been writing and revising, off and on, for several years now, a fantasy novel whose title is The River Already. The title is derived from a Kabbalistic gloss on Ezekiel 1:1.

* I attended first grade and part of second grade in Opelousas, Louisiana, in St. Landry Parish. (Counties in Louisiana are called parishes.)

* My favorite bit of geographical onomatopoeia: Tzintzuntzan, on Lake Pátzcuaro in the Michoacan province of Mexico. It was the capital city of the Tarascans (also called the Purépechas), one of the indigenous peoples of Mesoamerica whom the Aztecs could never conquer. It was named after hummingbirds, which do, of course, go tzin - tzun - tzan. I briefly visited the Yácatas of Tzintzuntzan one summer when I was studying in Morelia.