When I finished my master’s degree in 2006, I thought I was done reading sentences such as:
“Indeed, the creative reintegration and renewal of the cosmos proves to be one of the fundamental duties of the religious virtuoso when engaging in the life of holiness.”
And I was pretty sure that I would never again have to read page-long paragraphs that include phrases like “normative categories of space and time,” and “transcendent ontological status,” and “blurring of cosmological and epistemological categories,” and especially “the two opposing foci of a complex dialectic.”
Yet here I sit, dutifully hacking my way through language as dense as a jungle forest. Just as I imagine jungles to be (hey, I’ve seen my share of B movies) it is as beautiful as it is frustrating.
Gotta go and sharpen my machete for another foray. I’m only on page 7 of 43. It’s gonna be a long night.
SRQ Jew 
If you ever catch me writing that kind of stuff, you have my permission to slap me!
LikeLike
You have my full admiration. I don’t think I could take it on at this point in my life. You are brave.
Even better, you will never write that kind of dense and ridiculous prose.
LikeLike
Toby – so true!
George – This guy sure has me spinning.I finally stopped looking up words in the dictionary….and by the way, I have a pretty good vocabulary but I’m on page 20 and already have looked up 6 or 7 words, some of which I didn’t think were real words. Hylic?? Refulgence?? Really????
LikeLike
When you have nothing to say and insist on speaking or writing then be as obtuse, confusing, and ridiculous as possible; then and only then will the gray beards nod their heads in wonder and deliver their imprimatur. To quote Oscar Hammerstein; “They toil not, they toil not, but oh how they spin!”
LikeLike
If they wrote in plain language instead of academese, it would at most be a short article and not worth much on the “publish or perish” rankings. Also, it might turn out to have no substance at all if one could easily understand it!
LikeLike