Good point. Must have missed those entries. Our Sam sure is a complex character. Innocent enjoyment of life and art and games and music, combined with violence and greed. The spell he has over us comes from his honesty, which is pre-modern, so we don't really understand it. Nor does he. A joy to follow him here on Mastodon in the 21st C.
Not sure I understand this, but I think our Sam is weeding our fraudsters in the public procurement process. If so, well done, Sam, we need you here today.
Plus, of course, based on recent entries it seems that Sam is taking an Open University course on basic arithmetics, learning the multiplication tables. Never too late!
Good work, Sam. A model to public servants everywhere and at all times.
Sometimes that is what we have to do, Sam. Those of us who still feel bad about the falsehoods we are forced to perform are ok. It's those who don't feel the remorse anymore who are the problem.
"There is no right life in the false one." TW Adorno
@samuelpepys Answering my own query:
"…he built up a substantial personal collection of books and manuscripts, which is chiefly preserved in the Pepys Library at Magdalene College, Cambridge. …[his] correspondence now widely dispersed in public and private collections. He also left, in official and other archives, a very large quantity of working papers. These include several hundred autograph manuscriptss, many of them written in his shorthand notation… "
Done this myself, Sam, a few times. Better kind & sorry than unkind & lossless. You did right.
"we" being the critical word here.
"... and so he and I sat singing upon the leads till almost ten at night and so he went away (a pretty, harmless, and ingenious man), and I to bed, in a very great content of mind, ..."
Oh, Sam, how innocent and charming. We love you because of entries such as this, full of childlike innocence and joy..
And, if I may, Sam: you write this sweet note one day after you whipped a child so hard that your arm ached in the night. Stop beating the weak, for heaven's sake, buddy, but keep singing and keep enjoying the mutlitude of life's pleasures.
Pepys on Cicero: "and more I discern therein than ever I thought was to be found in him."
I love: (a) Sam's willingness to read the text afresh; (b) his enjoyment of the text; (c) his recognition that in the past he did not read it right.
But most of all, I am so moved by the fact that now that he has put Cicero aside and scribbles in his diary, he is so much under the spell that his English in style and melody and grammatical structure reads like a Latin sentence.
Pepys has a way with words.
As I have posted many times, for our Sam the executioner is never far.
"I did get a vote signed by all, concerning my issuing of warrants, which they did not smell the use I intend to make of it ..."
Good work, Sam. Lay the trap.
" ... for that I am resolved much to enquire into the price of commodities."
Nicely phrased, Sam. Could easily be remoulded to say "I am resolved to enquire into the origin of species", or some such deep declaration. You have style, Sam.
We witness the birth of an economist, or a statistician.
Pepys in his office, dressed formally, doing paperwork. A previously neglected old chest is being opened, and, surreally, an intricate model of a beautiful ship lies inside. Pepys looks at it with wide eyes, willing to get drawn into a dream. The camera rests on his face for a minute, in the background we hear a mother singing a children's song about Peter the Adventurer.
A senior member of the King's administration, being innocent.
Good work, buddy, standing up to the fraudsters.
"... and the boy crept through the hedge and gathered abundance of roses."
Oh my, Sam, you are a poet. I see a 1920s surrealist photograph here. Man Ray?
I grew up as an introvert bookish type in an environment of status-conscious & entitled children of the upper middle class. I felt different and isolated. He would have seen me as a loser, I would have thought of him as arrogant and superficial. Neither of us would have seen the other's diary entries! :-)
Oh, bless you, Sam, you can be quite horrible at times, but--- my! --- in entries like this there is so much joy in the simple exercise of being, it almost makes me cry. Such childlike enjoyment of basic things, so honestly recorded. I can't help liking you, Sam, though I know that if I met your reincarnation today we would avoid each other.
"... and there evened all reckonings to this day".
Did he owe some bills? Either way, this is poetry.
Yeah, lit feels good to be singled out by a senior and seen by everyone as someone who matters. Happens rarely enough!
[Note to self 1: show those who work with you that they matter.]
[Note to self 2: dig out your old notes on David Cooperrider's and Suresh Srivatva's model of "Appreciative Inquiry". They served me well when I had a management role.]
#Pepys #appreciation #AppreciativeInquiry
#DLCooperrider #SSrivatva
