hearings: absentee, emmy the great
anna pulls her face back from an orange lily, aware of its pollen and of the hovering bee. its ancestors must have done the same, shimmering down a stem of chicory some day in 1561, here or beside the church in the distance. she has noticed the guardian cycle past to unlock its doors. there must always have been a bee here to hear Catholic music and witness a verger's arrival. the past is always carried into the present by small things. so a lily is bent with the weight of its permanence.
-michael ondaatje, "divisadero"
i sit on a buttoned sofa that is dimpled with age & by our tuesday night bodies. beside me, a man who wears round glasses and has moth-holes in his sweater. (a calm voice, a smile turns his face to circles.) he talks of thirty-five years working on poetic translations; waiting for a word, transmuting the voice. from russian (the richness...) to unforgiving english is difficult & painstaking & slow. not everything can be turned. i listen, hoping that the syllables will break into units of meaning but they do not. i linger wistful over such futile sound.
this week: extravagant & grown-up dinners, quince jam on toast for breakfasts. the beginning of a polaroid project (600 film & the darkest setting & a playing card seem to work with my SX70). nibbling at tiny squares of last week's osmanthus cake & making up teas with lonely pieces of ginger, lemongrass, vanilla. reading the library by shelves: fortune-telling dolls & the windsor castle dollhouse. (on one embarrassing occasion, queen mary caught her earring on the beard of the plumber who was showing her that the lavatory cistern really worked.) last minute articles and early work on midterms. torturous torte puns during coburg coffee lunches. alighting teabags in alleys to watch ashes fall, more slowly than the snowflakes.
i am collecting sidewalks that end with red doors.
-michael ondaatje, "divisadero"
i sit on a buttoned sofa that is dimpled with age & by our tuesday night bodies. beside me, a man who wears round glasses and has moth-holes in his sweater. (a calm voice, a smile turns his face to circles.) he talks of thirty-five years working on poetic translations; waiting for a word, transmuting the voice. from russian (the richness...) to unforgiving english is difficult & painstaking & slow. not everything can be turned. i listen, hoping that the syllables will break into units of meaning but they do not. i linger wistful over such futile sound.
this week: extravagant & grown-up dinners, quince jam on toast for breakfasts. the beginning of a polaroid project (600 film & the darkest setting & a playing card seem to work with my SX70). nibbling at tiny squares of last week's osmanthus cake & making up teas with lonely pieces of ginger, lemongrass, vanilla. reading the library by shelves: fortune-telling dolls & the windsor castle dollhouse. (on one embarrassing occasion, queen mary caught her earring on the beard of the plumber who was showing her that the lavatory cistern really worked.) last minute articles and early work on midterms. torturous torte puns during coburg coffee lunches. alighting teabags in alleys to watch ashes fall, more slowly than the snowflakes.
i am collecting sidewalks that end with red doors.
1 comment:
your translator reminds me of my russian class, as well as a few evenings ago when i saw alan jenkins read his translation of rimbaud's "bateau ivre;" it took him (just) fifteen years to do that one!
we are also living parallel lives in terms of the making of teas & polaroid goals. my friend b has been collecting the film for years, believing every rumour that Polaroid is closing up shop. she may have suitcases full of the stuff, but at least she'll be prepared.
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